Elizabeth Dutton's Blog, page 3

the seventh starling

I don’t write the best poems and that is okay. I try to evolve (brief aside here: my undergrad specilaization in English at UC Davis was Creative Writing: Poetry. I studied under Gary Snyder there.  I was accepted into the Creative Writing graduate program at the University of Glasgow on my poetry manuscript. Yet I now consider myself a novelist, albeit one who puts out the occasional humor title — or updated version thereof — just to keep things juiced). I left the protective cocoon poetry provided me to re-venture into fiction/prose and it is there that I now feel most confident (especially after years of writing ad copy at a really upright and just and non-profit investigative reporting magazine and editorials/speeches/business letters for an elected official. I do, though, read poetry voraciously, study poetry, teach poetry, find poetry in expected and unlikely places, respect lyricism of all musical genres as poetry, and adore poetry. I own countless notebooks filled with delicious or interesting or troubling words and phrases I like to keep on deck and let rattle around like soft marbles in my head. To wit: I love words.

It is for that reason that I offer these brief suggestions/comments/notations/observations as a public service. (I don’t want to get all Ezra Pound and H.D. on you, attempting to impose rules. See my previous sentence.)

poetry is not an impossible code in need of cracking. as a reader; it takes thought, imagination, repression of fear or confusion based instinctual judgement, some reasearch and most often discussion in order for things to click.
poetry is also not just a bunch of words strung together, something popped off in a fugue state of beatnik flow. that is what we call a working draft. if the poem cannot be analyzed, if a cogent thought never emerges, one may have some new genre (well, not new. dada has been done) on one’s hands but the point of art is to share ideas. if no reader can understand the core ideas, this is a problem. it may feel hip and intellectual, but it is still a pile of words. let your ego recede and let the poem grow.
the speaker in the poem is not always the poet him or herself. and the whole thing can be fiction in and of itself. it’s not always a journal and really shouldn’t be.
no one should ever be afraid to try writing a poem. poetry surrounds us, from music lyrics (more likely indie than commercial) to found poetry to overheard snippets of conversations, to the stream of consciousness  that livestreams in our heads all day. go ahead. capture it. just know that you aren’t done. everything (worthwhile) in this life takes work, craft, and rework.  we have brilliant, individual thoughts in our minds that need to be shared. the clearer this can happen in any medium (especially the written word) is when we reach true alchemy and human achievement. connecting your thoughts and brains to another so that the receiver understands completely your reality? that’s pure dead magic, is what that is (to borrow from the gorgeous lyricism of everyday Glaswegian parlance).
we like to think of poetry as the Wild West, lawless and full of reinvention. the reinvention remains,  but there are still boundaries. yes, boundaries should be shattered and pushed. I am speaking more toward the general preceding points.
my beloved Gary Snyder gave an excellent talk found here about the difference between academic writing and poetry. he follows is up with one of my favorite of his poems, “Billmgham, Alaska: The Willow Tree Bar.” check it out.  the man knows how to close a poem with a subtle punch in the gut. I love him forever, and not just for getting me into Alan Ginsberg’s funeral.
poetry is mysterious to many and has come to exist is the realms of academia and intellectualism with a stray from everyday life and people. it wasn’t always this way. poetry was in newspapers, magazines, popularly purchased books, public readings. if you love poetry, let’s keep fighting to bring that back.
look to the past for inspirations and cautionary tales, but never mimic. the mimic is not an artist. bring forth the new.
keep it fun.  I know the world is going to shit, but sometimes we have to acknowledge the light, the wonderfully absurd. poetry is neither musty tweed jackets holding frowning faces nor is it solely the painfully sincere yet rote realm of the spoken word stage. it is serious, it is tragic, it is insightful, but it is also absolutely hilarious at times.

All that said, here are some of my favorites (as of right now — my list is every changing):

“Wild Geese” (here)

“September 1, 1939” (here)

“Dolce et Decorum Est” (here) and a great reading here

“I am Trying to Break Your Heart” (here)

“The Powow at the End of the World” (here)

“The Fish” (here)

“Strong Men” (here)

“Being a Human Being” (here)

“At Roane Head” (here)

“at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989 ” (here)

“In Back of the Real” (here)

“The Untold Want” (here)

as with all poems, it is best to hear them aloud. read them aloud to yourself or if you like one in particular, try finding a video or recording of the poet performing it.  totally worth it. poems live both on the page and in the air.

love to you all

xo

the sub, the alternate, the also-ran

 

 

It is in my medical charts that I have “an artistic temperament.” I take this to mean that I can be a bit fragile, raw nerved. I also find it hilarious. I don’t think that is medical terminology. I think it is a warning sticker: handle with care. I’ll take it. I need it.

 

I wrote this in a parking lot the other day:

 

LESSONS LEARNED IN TIME AND SPACE

 

It’s a rough world; you’d better grow a shell.

 

Something has to shield those raw nerves

Those murmurations of imagined pleasures and weeping wounds.

 

The sky may seem soft, each swaying leaf an effortless, velvet hello.

But when we fall

We fall

Full speed,

Bare-legged on rough asphalt

Gravel embedded in our tender flesh

Pockmarking knobbed knees and smooth cushion heels of palms

Skin giving way, crinoline crepe buckling

Into tiny vellum accordion strips —

After which the blood will bloom

Mirror the burn core of the sunset

The brightest red of the gaudiest dinner plate dahlia.

 

The red deepens to wine

The shell forms

You’ll want to pick it off

It will feel so good

Bit by bit

Little brown pieces

Inside clear halos of fresh and living skin

Others will do their best to break that human patina, too;

You’ll be tempted.

 

There is always a lure:

the sinister or blasé

or selfishly lonely or plain bored

masquerading as the genuine.

That is an eternal truth.

 

Remember:

Their actions are truths but their intentions are not.

 

Leave it be.

It’s going to happen again and again.

You need that scar.

You need that shell.

The shell is all we’ll have left.

 

drive

  

It is good to be happy (duh). It is essential to be kind. These are wonderful parts of life. 

What, though, is the point if a person lacks drive? Real purpose, not just lip service? Action? Everything good in this world takes hard work. I don’t trust people who don’t invest themselves in real work. I admire those who get their hustle on. 

One of the smartest, most insightful, and direct people I know is Max Everhart. He writes really solid, well-crafted, and highly enjoyable novels and short stories. You can check out more about him and his Eli Sharpe series here. Anyway, he is the person who has really cemented in me something I always knew but needed to have brought to the front of my frazzley brain: no one is anything without a proper work ethic and anyone can accomplish what he or she wants by sticking to a decent, serious work ethic. 

We are surrounded by images of people who have what my boyfriend Cornel West (it’s a shame he hasn’t found out about our relationship yet) calls “foliage;” the trappings of commercialism and empty value. The paper, the fluff, the expendable. Gilding. The work ethic is the tree itself. It is (to take from Dr. West again) the fire. 

This is not in any way to say that we should be labor robots for the profits of other. We should work hard for ourselves and for the betterment of others. The harder I work, the better I feel. The more I give, the better I feel. Right livelihood, my sweets. Drive for significant contribution (not just window dressing), for impact, for creativity, for FIRE. 

I spoke today with the screenwriter who is adapting Driftwood and the producer who is going to connect all the dots to make this happen (they are both brilliant, by the way). They are fucking DRIVEN. They work and create constantly. It was energizing to talk to people who are not just talk, but actual action. 

So: less talk, more rock. Do what you’ve been called to do. And while you are at it, never let compassion and love get left behind. 

I am up at 4:30 in the morning trying to downshift from putting in hours on work I really love, the work that saves me and keeps me going. It is late, I am tired, but it feels awesome. 

xo

out of time

“Time is a flat circle,” said a fascinatingly greasy Matthew McConaughey in the first season of True Detective (which, thankfully, did not include Vince Vaughn). Time may be a flat circle, but it is also fleeting and maliable and strange.

I still think of the 90s as being 10 years ago. Things in the past can feel like yesterday or a million years ago. Emotion and memory affect the perception of time.

Sometimes we find ourselves out of sync — our timeline doesn’t match up with what we think we want or what we now understand. Right place, wrong time. Wrong time, right place. Wrong place, wrong time (that’s always what is said when people are cut down too early or walk into a bank robbery in progress or something — what if that was the right time and place for them, their journey finally complete and right on schedule?).

If all we really have is this moment right now, is time irrelevant? Am I sounding enough like an undergraduate who has taken her first philosophy class? Fear not, I will not examine the possibility that we are all just brains in jars somewhere being fed ideas of reality. Winding back time and remembering being that person, though, is interesting. I often wonder what it would be like to go back in time and talk to myself at 18. Or to just do it over again with the knowledge I have now. I wouldn’t have skipped as many classes and I wouldn’t have worried as much. I would have been braver and would have avoided my brief platinum blonde stage (I made a terrible blonde, but I did like the day glo pink and cookie monster blue I had off and on back in those days).

Anyway, anticipating time going forward is always a dicey prospect. It’s like when you are in a job interview and are asked where you see yourself in five years. I hate that question. It’s lazy and no answer is of any substance. What do we know about five years down the road, let alone five hours from now? Think back five years. Did you see yourself doing what you are doing at this moment? Time is full of surprises. To be honest, from a very young age I had this belief (it felt more of a certainty) that I would not live to see 30. I was a strange child. I don’t know why that was so set in my mind. I was wrong. I made it past that and then some.

Looking forward feels like an eternity sometimes until we find ourselves caught in the headlights of a day that seemed forever far away.

Which brings me to an update about events in the future. An updated version of the smile book, 1,047 Reasons to Smile, will be available on October 6. I have my fingers crossed that I will be a part of something out in California this October. Again, I can’t predict the future. The paperback version of Driftwood — with a new and improved cover and price — will be out in the spring of 2016. (2016! So futuristic.) My next novel is under construction with a constantly shifting completion date. When it is done, it is done. Then I will have to try and get it published. But that’s too far off to think about now.

I do know that in the near future, I have to go teach a composition class in about 40 minutes. For that reason, I bid you adieu. Breathe deep and enjoy this moment right now (you can’t be under too much stress if you are dicking around, reading my ramblings).

xo

The Mustard Field

I used to write poems. Tons of them. Now I focus on prose and shift back to poetry when I need to reset, to get back to the mouth-feel of words and that distillation.

This is a poem I wrote a while back about my earliest memory: the field of wild mustard down the road from the house my parents lived in when I was born. This was in Los Gatos, California, a town that has changed drastically since my arrival in the mid 1970s. What was once an odd little mountain town between the Bay Area and Santa Cruz is now an upscale Silicon Valley suburb full of chain stores and not enough parking. My California doesn’t exist anymore, I fear. That’s pretty much why I split.

Anyway, here’s the poem:

 

The Mustard Field Rambles

 

Think back, you.

Think back as far as you can.

There I am.

In the empty black magnet of memory

I am the originator.

 

Dust and pollen

baking in the sun,

I’m golden, burning,

a yellow so pure, I’ll scorch your eyes.

You’ll never erase me,

I’m your oldest memory.

 

The melted gold of California poppies ring me,

a corona.

You are at the end of the road —

newly paved, an inky black —

the heat dancing

clear shimmy between us.

I’ll stand for everything

from that time in your life:

 

What you know from photographs

            bonneted and crawling

            chubby-legged on a patch quilt

            the grass beneath in wide blades of

            brittle British racing green

What you’ve been told

            your mother in the shed

            piecing smoky crimson, cobalt

            glass together

            listening to The Dead

            your father on the roof

            sawing, finishing

            full of beer and about to

            tumble lazily into the hedge

What you feel

            this was the start

            where you started

            it is what came before

            what will someday be

            I’m always in the distance,

            the farthest thing you see.

 

Tinker with it,

make memory more,

and you’re sitting with me

the hair on your head

muddy reflection of gold

just below my highest points.

 

I am all you’ll really know

a dusty, ripe myth.

I’m plowed through now,

a ghost under someone’s home,

gone.

t.e.n.

Another poem. This time about how my brain doesn’t work. And ancient Russian dead languages.

t.e.n.

 God’s arrow, ten is your name
This arrow is God’s own
The God directs judgment.
                        Birch Bark Letter No. 292

 

I will walk overland from Olonets

I’ll go to the shores of Onega

Birch bark message in hand

Dash my knuckles on the blushed granite

Slip silent on the water to the shore

Of an island where the sweet scent of larch oil clings to breaths of fog.

 

This arrow

It has a name now and is owned.

Controlled.

Electric and yet so human

dashing roughshod through our skies our clouds our limbs our brains.

This arrow fells trees, men.

All that remains is a blackened hole

burn-rotting the core of a massive spruce

smudging out fractions of memories, moments.

To assign a name to the nameless

is to pin it down.

Limit.

This arrow needs a limit.

And I, a tree with no scars.

 

Destruction of the tangible is its own horror.

Horror has a place in nature.

It is the devastation of what we cannot see or prove

what we only feel

that is true havoc, true madness.

True madness must be contained.

 

I will walk overland from Olonets to Onega

tell the islands

tell the shoreline

all the way to Medvezhyegorsk.

Deliver the Charter Letter –

confine with a name so that I may be set free.

 

12.22.10

and I do

I’ve been working on a poem about pilgrimage (complete with references to tidal detritus!). It’s about 3/4 on the page in its earliest form but needs a lot more molding. I took a break to read some older stuff of mine and found this lost child. Enjoy.

[the title of this poem is the sound of the guitar in Led Zeppelin’s “Tangerine”]

Car windows down.

At 75

the air hurts coming through,

an unending slap.

 

The car is old, my paternal grandmother’s.

A Catalina,

sounds breezy and romantic.

It isn’t.

It’s tan.

 

It’s hot out,

the highway is melting.

I want to slip in,

not return.

Dive down, look for something else,

maybe the real Catalina.

Not really.

I’d been there before –

it was all white people

in shorts and with neat haircuts.

On the dirt road now,

soft air brings in the smell:

Oak trees

Bay leaves

Dust

Dry grass

makes THAT smell:

California.

 

The radio is all tin

treble.

It takes tapes,

eats them, too.

Neil Young said that

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.

And then it was.

 

I pull over,

dust like a fan behind me,

the Catalina a giant tan peacock

screeching through this

central valley

this heartland

this no man’s land.

 

In the trunk, a cooler

Full of melting ice and sweating cans.

I hang my hand in the freezing spike,

Come up empty.

 

The sky is honey now.

Looking at those rolling hills makes me sleepy.

 

I don’t know what I want.

 

me and oceans

I’ve made another one, another poem. Tell me what you think.

T-shirts with No Logos

(with a nod to Stevie Smith)

Will you ever marry?

Why no children?

Have you heard this song?

 

The man I loved has died.

I live in decades past.

 

At 37, I am an old, wooden ship.

 

I am a creaking carrack.

I carry no cargo, never will, just

delicious words and puffed clouds

of ideas

that roll lazily about

my hold.

 

I am no clipper,

I roam open oceans,

my curves comical and oversized,

my sails blowsy,

my lines askew.

 

I look to horizons

without anticipation,

expectation.

The horizon simply IS

and whether it holds that line

of sea and air

or a distant shore

is not up to me.

It just will BE.

 

I am an old, wooden ship

in crests and valleys of now;

not drowning, but waving.

meh

 

Another poem. Not my favorite, but it has its merits. This is what happens when dreams, the oily runoff of a mind processing a day’s worth of overloads, follow one into the next day, the next bombardment of information, images, memories, data. There is no junk. Junk is just what we haven’t figured out how to put to a purpose yet.

 

I Keep My Visions to Myself

dreamt last night

he was a young Bob Dylan

 

woke up with a broken heart

his dead lips softer than I remembered

my love more real

though it turned out just the same

 

if I believed he’d haunt me

if his spirit wouldn’t leave me alone

this is exactly how he’d do it

 

this is all I know for sure

 

xo

tell your younger self not to worry

Here are the things I have running through my head as I try to fall asleep tonight:

1. That “One Night in Bangkok” song from the 80s is rather menacing and I realized this even as a kid.

2. I don’t hear owls often enough at night.

3. Sometimes I feel like I am watching my life like a movie or tv show, as if I am watching myself in the action but not really there. Is that weird?

4.