From Eelskins to Glaciers: a Month of Poetry

Here we are, well into the first week of May, and I'm admitting to myself that I barely wrote anything in April - National Poetry Month - about poetry.

First of all, I have to tell you I kind of object to these arbitrary observances, which strike me as only one step away from Hallmark holidays but guiltily induce us all to somehow "get on board." I think it's sad that we have to have a time set aside for remembering a major art form that ought to be part of everyday life. Be that as it may, what I found myself doing this April  -- and I'm a poetry publisher and editor, after all -- was not reading a book of poetry every day, or every week; not writing a poem a day; not writing a series of blog posts about poetry. What I did was to try to notice the poetry around me. Where did I find it in my life, besides the obvious and usual places? What poems seemed to penetrate through the incessant blur of words and stay with me?

I read Seamus Heaney's latest book, "Human Chain," and was blown away by a longish poem in it called "The Eelworks," about Heaney's courtship of his wife: visceral imagery and emotion as strongly remembered as the smell of the eelworks itself:

That skin Alfie Kirkwood wore
at school, sweaty-lustrous, supple

and bisected into tails
for the tying of itself around itself –

for strength, according to Alfie.
Who would ease his lapped wrist

from the flap-mouthed cuff
of a jerkin rank with eel oil,

the abounding reek of it
among our summer desks

my first encounter with the up close
that had to be put up with.

 

At qarrtsiluni, where the "translation" issue has been unfolding, I discovered for the first time - among many other wonderful works -  the poetry of Blaise Cendrars, through Dick Jones' translations of two poems.

The lines we sang in church last month that stayed with me the most, among all the psalms and hymns and motets and scripture passages, were Christopher Smart's, used by Benjamin Britten in his cantata "Rejoice in the Lamb." Smart was a 16th century poet of "brilliant but unbalanced mind" who was eventually confined to an asylum. Smart believed that all creation is continually praising God, and in Britten's piece, there are three long solos about the cat, the mouse, and the flowers -- and how they praise God in their movement and their beauty. The rest of the text, too, has everything from tigers to musical instruments to letters of the alphabet exulting God: marvelous, crazy words and ideas, refusing to confrom to societal expectations. I loved it. An excerpt:

For I will consider my cat Jeoffry
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness....

In April we heard or read a number of poems by John Donne, and I remain stunned by them.

I also read or re-read a number of poems by friends. In the collection Brilliant Coroners, I was again struck by Dale Favier's wonderful "Santiago," and Teju Cole's "Crazy Kev." I re-read Kristen McHenry's remarkable chapbook, "The Goatfish Alphabet," and once again marvelled at my favorite poem in it, "Touring the Glaciers." I read a new manuscript by Nic Sebastian, and one by Khadija Anderson, both of which I hope will be available soon for everyone to read. And I thought about Clive Hicks-Jenkins'  upcoming retrospective in Wales, where my colleague and friend Dave Bonta will be one of six poets reading from a collection of poems written in respnse to Clive's paintings.

And I planned for this weekend's event with The Velveteen Rabbi, Rachel Barenblat (70 Faces: Torah Poems) here in Montreal: called "Modern Women, Old Testament: A Jewish-Christian Conversation," where I'll be talking to Rachel about her book and how poetry and the ancient Jewish tradition of midrash can combine with feminism and contemporary thought to help modern readers respond to these old but often-problematic texts -- many of which are poetic themselves. (Please come if you're in town! Everyone's welcome.)

So: a month of less-is-more, but full of poetric riches that are already spilling over into May.