I’m having trouble
speaking the words of a poem –
with its slashing across lines-
led like the maestro, using a baton,
to encourage the violins
as they tear through the motif
of heroic melodies
it should resolve into
adagio songs-
except for the divertimento
in my head.
It is in the sounds
the leaves make when the breeze blows,
or in the solo song
of the catbird, after the wind dies.
There is a beginning, middle, and end-
to declare origin,
divine their pivot-
The end is always the absolute.
Recalling what came before-
She takes photographs-
framed with a delicate touch between
her thumb and forefinger
to record a point.
a reference to the during
where her moment breathes.
a yellow bird
recently flown from
a cage,
stopped at the end of the hall
to peck at the mirror,
looking for a friend
instead
finding a rival
at every move.
There
are
an assortment of sizes
colors and shapes of
colored glass that sit
on the table and catch
the morning sun.
my silhouette
blocks the glint
in the big red bottle
as an eclipse-
unfettered by orbital
motion.
The lights illuminated,
then passed her
on the serpentine highway,
as she kneeled in prayer;
people in their
own cars looking
at the road
and ignoring the eglantine
bush in bloom.
The poet, from his slant,
saw her lament
-the context in thorns-
and captured her tears,
knowing
she would never
read his words.
I was reminded this week that I could update snippets, those that I briefly discussed here back on February 14th. I did that because I felt like it, not that it was a regular featured aspect of this blog (most of which is just rambly poetry things).
What I am reading. I finally did finish reading The Monuments Men back in May. Interestingly, I read most of it while on a trip to Germany, when suddenly all the place names made much more sense. On the trip, my son, father, and I visited Neuschwanstein Castle, where one of the pivotal finds in the book takes place.
I cheated a bit as well, since one of the in-flight movies was The Monuments Men. The book, as mentioned before, reads as a very dry account of events.The movie was a little better than I expected, given some of the luke-warm reviews that it received. I felt that it did a reasonable job of dramatizing, by combining some characters, making you a little more invested in their work and relationships. What you do come away with is a sense of dedication of these men, who weren’t soldiers and didn’t really fit in, but were very passionate about the art they were trying to save. And much respect goes to Rose Valland, who single-handedly collected information about looted art shipments while working at the Jeu de Paume Museum in occupied France.
So with that book finished, I have moved on to The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway. Billed as a time travel novel, it is something of an anomaly…at least to me…think of The Matrix, The Time Machine, Wuthering Heights, all rolled up into a historical fiction plot amid the political times surrounding the Corn Laws and Reform Acts in Great Britain, and about an unknown society of people who have the gift of controlling time.
What I am listening to: I am a man of eclectic tastes. Earlier this year I discovered The Decemberists and The Henry Girls. Very good working music…I’ve also become enamored with the soundtrack to Les Miserables, even the movie version in which everyone involved (even Russell Crowe) gives a very good accounting of themselves. And for another version, check out this video of the Santa Clara Vanguard Drum and Bugle Corps performing an encore of their 2013 version of Les Miserables. Very, very, nice.
What I am writing In February, I mentioned that I entered an essay contest. This was sponsored by The Center for Homeland Security and Defense. My essay was not selected among the finalists. You can read the finalists’ essays here. All are quite good and well-deserving of recognition. If you’re curious/a glutton for dry reading/ really, really wish to read my essay, drop me an email and I’ll send you a copy. I thought about posting it here…but it doesn’t really fit the intention of this blog.
In other writing, I am looking for other poetry contests, journals, online literature blogs, and am still considering how to construct a chap-book. I haven’t had any great concept ideas yet, but I’m still interested in doing this. I know I need a reader/editor to help me with this, and I guess I haven’t found anyone suitable yet.
Any volunteers can email me. 🙂
On Wednesday,
the piped-in music
is the dulcet tones of
a soprano saxophone, a theme
some clientele believe balances
smooth with the hot and sour soup
and the first plate of butter shrimp
with white rice, fried pepper squid, and
the hibachi chicken, stratifying the ambience
of a buffet; but the second plate,
picked and chosen
among the sesame chicken, and the
general tso’s,
and the chicken with broccoli
all taste
like a thin song
of tempura chicken (sans the
sweet and sour sauce) on the
front serving table.
On weekends, they serve dim sum
and there are family style meals
served in the banquet room. The music
from the erhu and the lute
is the the sum of the whole,
a way to return
the lever to its grounded point
while remaining on the fulcrum.
between the plane trees
by the lake
I would place a park bench
so that I could watch
the water gesture
and volley,
shaded from the sun
quiet interrupted
by a cardinal, or
the leaves that surmount
distant sounds of
traffic,
reminding me of
continuum
states
that overlap
between the plane trees
************
between the plane trees
that overlap
states
continuum
reminding me of
traffic
distant sounds of
the leaves that surmount
by a cardinal, or
quiet interrupted
shaded from the sun
and volley,
the water gesture
so that I could watch
I would place a park bench
by the lake
between the plane trees.
What makes a Poet Laureate?
Is it a lifetime of service, enthusiasm for your craft? A prolific output of quality work?
A willingness to be a part of something beyond yourself?
Lily Peter (1891-1991) was the Poet Laureate of Arkansas from 1971 until her death in 1991. She was born in rural eastern Arkansas to a farming family, descendents of German/Austrian immigrants who had traveled the length of the American landscape to eventually settle in the harsh Mississippi River delta. Lily was the oldest of nine children of whom only five survived into adulthood. As the eldest, she had responsibility put on her. It is likely that Lily developed a strong sense of herself through schooling and a desire to learn. She was educated at home until her mother and father could no longer keep up with her eagerness to learn; they sent her to area schools. Eventually, she was sent to live with relatives in Ohio in order to receive a proper education. There was recognition by her parents that education was the way to a solid future and it was evident during this time that there were a shortage of qualified teachers in rural Arkansas. While Lily was away in Ohio, her father died in a farming accident. Lily was told not to return for the funeral because she was still in school and wouldn’t be able to return in time to finish the year. It is no surprise that after graduation, Lily chose to enter the teaching profession and returned home to help support the family. She helped educate her siblings, took care of her frail mother, helped run the farm…she took on the leadership role of the family.
Flight of Birds**
Blackbirds
banking into the wind against a lilac winter sky
fill me with wonder and a sense of doom.
How little time have they and I
here to enoy the swirling wintry bloom
of the thin petaled air!
Wild words
crowd to my lips and are not spoken.
Consciousness, the shared treasure we may not
keep,
we spend our breath in destroying, and when it is
broken
and lost in the last sleep,
who will there be to care?
Her imaginative nature was evident in her childhood. In her biography*, it states that when she turned 5, she was convinced that she would be grown up and wanted to clean the barn by herself. When she woke that day and discovered she had not grown, she was inconsolable. She cried all day. It was this emotional attachment to her desires/imagination that shaped Lily’s future. It was clear that as an adult, Lily became very self-reliant. She continued to seek educational opportunities and ways to experience the world. She never married, though she had several suitors and was even engaged at one point.
Lily Peter began writing as a child, as playing with words seemed to satisfy her need for inventiveness. Most of her early writings consisted of journal entries, observations about community life in rural Arkansas, bits of light verse, and correspondence, all of which is contained in the archives at the University of Central Arkansas. Later in life, her poetry held a more somber tone. For example, “The Green Linen of Summer,” shown below is about protection of yourself against difficulties that are inevitable in life; I think it reflects her practical view of the world, based on her experiences with loss (death of her father and mother) and struggles to maintain her family’s farm during floods, epidemics, etc.
The Green Linen of Summer**
image courtesy of etsy.com
I wrap my thoughts in the green linen of summer
Against the terror of the dragon wind,
And pray that the linen may not too soon be thread-
bare,
Its texture thinned.
For by and by I know will come November
With its wintry blast;
And what is there to keep body and soul from
freezing,
If the linen do not last?
She only published four volumes of poetry*** in her lifetime. Yet, this didn’t seem to define her. She was much more to the state of Arkansas than a published poet. She was a teacher for 40 years, a successful cotton farmer, an environmental advocate, an accomplished violinist (studied at Columbia and Julliard), a writer, and a philanthropist. She had supported musical causes throughout her adult life, mostly on behalf of the Moravian Church. One of her ancestors was the composer John Frederick Peter, who was influencial in early American music. She underwrote the cost of bringing the Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1969 by putting a mortgage on her plantation. She did this because she wanted “the people of Arkansas to be exposed to good music, to have a chance I didn’t have.”
Aftersong Instead of a Coda**
To leave this music,
to lie forever in the moonless
dark, where is no peach blossom, cloud or willow,
will be hard for me, who have loved this swampland always.
But in the dark I shall somewhere find Persephone,
and she will take my hand and I will say, “Please
show me the way of the journey back to the sunlight!”
Persephone has made it countless times and would
know!
And some spring morning you will see us running
up the slope
of the thickety bayou with violets in our hands.
And suddenly
I shall be translated to music: a prelude
of April grass; the improvisation of the bacchanal
muscadine; a transposition of chlorophyll,
the plangent chord that evokes the wild elder and
hawthorne
from the numbered bass of the atoms, the rhythm
of light.
Lily Peter lived to see 100 years. One of her more well-known poems is “Note Left on a Doorstep,” which gives us her view of the beauty of life and how it overcomes death.
**************
* A Nude Singularity, Lily Peter of Arkansas, AnnieLaura M. Jaggers, UCA Press, 1993. The title is derived from the astronomer’s terminology of an unexplainable phenomenon. This phenomenon being how Lily Peter became all the things she did, in spite of all the odds against her.
**Lily Peter,
from “The Green Linen of Summer and other Poems”
copyright 1964 by Robert Moore Allen
(out of print)
***Her published works consist of a collection of published poems entitled “The Green Linen of Summer and other poems,” copyright 1964 Robert Moore Allen ; “The Sea Dream of the Mississippi” (another collection of poems), “In the Beginning, Myths of The Western World retold in poetry and prose,” The University of Arkansas Press, 1983; “The Great Riding, The Story of Desoto in America,” originally published in 1966 by Robert Moore Allen (republished by the University of Arkansas Press in 1983).
A feather on the side of the road,
I see, with its charcoal coloring,
glistening with grey.
Once useful,
in a water-proofing, streamlining way,
now laying shed, cast-off.
A feather on the side of the road,
almost a foot in length,
not doubt better for wings
making a goose move faster
between the meadow to the right
and the pond
on the left, but now
they stay mostly to the left
until their molting is done,
with the feather on the side of the road.
It could provide a nice quill pen
with its slender stem, but not many
write that way anymore, what with messy
iron-gall, using parchment and ink wells.
All slow to dry and
stains the fingers black, a darker color than
the feather on the side of the road.
Something once in black and white terms,
now a landscape item on the berm,
its function – purpose
discarded,
now grey,
glistering charcoal
like this feather on the side of the road.
Taps and Ratamacues 