Between paradise and fear

...and further on.

I posted this a while ago on In and Out, but it's about poetry--other people's poetry, by and large--and ought to be here on Outdoor Poetry Season.

I noticed it got a fair number of views recently and in trying unsuccessfully to puzzle out why, I found out that Kim-An Lieberman, who wrote one of the poems featured in this piece, died last year. She was only 37.

Kim-An was a mother of three, a wife and an already accomplished poet. My heart sinks at the thought of her death, but I know she will continue to live in the vivid memory of others. I believe that is no small thing and recently wrote about how life and memory sometimes seem to be nearly the same thing.


I don't love all of "The Creation Story" by Joy Harjo, but I really do love these three stanzas:

"It's not easy to say this
or anything when my entrails
dangle between paradise
and fear.

"I am ashamed
I never had the words
to carry a friend from her death
to the stars
correctly.

"Or the words to keep
my people safe
from drought
or gunshot."

Like Harjo, I've discovered I didn't (and don't and won't) "have the words" countless times, including the words to carry a friend to the stars, but here Harjo finds the words to name the shortfall. And when she rues her inability to keep her "people safe from drought or gunshot," she has named both herself and her people. Good words.

In his poem "Three Women," Donald Hall has come into possession of a few words that do get the job done. They will not carry him or anyone else to the stars, but they work for capturing the richness of some experiences and the loss that sometimes follows. In fact, they work so well that Hall uses the same words exactly in three consecutive stanzas, making up the whole of his poem:

"When you like a woman,
you talk and talk.
One night you kiss.
Another night you fuck.
You're both content,
maybe more than content.
Then she goes away."

The poem is included in Hall's last book of poetry, The Back Chamber, described on the book jacket as "full of the life-affirming energy" of the poet. But I see it full of a rich, inescapable melancholy.

Kim-An Lieberman won a poetry prize from the Dayton Voice in 1995 or '96 (I suppose I could look it up, sort through the bound copies of the paper we have in our possession, but one thing at a time here). A decade later, her book, Breaking the Map, was published and she sent an autographed copy to Marrianne and I. Her book ended up being part of the motivation for publishing Wild, Once and Captured, a book of my own poetry. Sampling Kim-An's poetry I come to "Grandmother Song," and am struck by the fact that she has found a way to lift her grandmother to the stars.

"...Underneath is a ruby of blood.
The needles and tubes are webbed like milliner's lace.
Last the jade necklace, leaking the milk of her heart."

Perhaps, the words come to Lieberman because she so clearly hears and sees and feels her grandmother at the end of her life.

"...She gestures
faintly upward from the bed; I bring my ear
to the rasp of her laboring breath. I watch her draw
pin by pin from the loose chignon
...I roll the soiled gown..."

Hunting more details, I found an interview with Kim-An where she observes that "journalism and poetry, in particular, both share a language of ear-catching 'sound bites' as well as an urge to make a permanent record of fleeting events and observations." This seems an apt description of how Ernesto Cardenal goes about writing a poetry that finds the words to make permanent a record of "fleeting events." His book, Zero Hour, is a collection of what Cardenal calls "documentary poems."

"In Mr. Spencer's gold mines they X-ray
each miner twice a year
to see if he shows symptoms of TB.
If there's a shadow, he's paid off
at once. In due course he spits blood, and tries
to claim: ...
... and so he dies on a Managua sidewalk."

Cardenal, is a poet and a Catholic priest and the Nicaraguan Minister of Culture after the overthrow of Somoza. His poetry is the work of a man who hears music in his head, but feels the urgent need to change the acoustics of the world around him so that others may hear their own music. Cardenal makes poetry relevant as Lawrence Ferlinghetti insisted it should be when he wrote:

“I am signaling you through the flames.
The North Pole is not where it used to be.
Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.
Civilization self-destructs. Nemesis is knocking at the door.
What are poets for in such an age?
What is the use of poetry?”

And Cardenal is one of the poets I was thinking about when I wrote "Wild Dogs of Poets:" 

The wild dogs of poets

speak sharps and blunts,

wish the streets

to the back alleys

of emerald cities;

some singing separately

and, alive for now,

glow in the dusky, dreaming sky.

Some scratch for pennies

wherever there are no such

generosities. Some kill time

as though they are flush,

And some few,

the chosen,

die on the barricades,

hopeful and ready.

What we would do, if we could

Stranger gone by,

alone in his head,

lone wolf set dreaming,

dreaming dark places,

and vast, teeming praries,

a leaping of blood

overflowing old channels,

snarling and snapping

and making the sky.

Stranger gone stalking

and sniffing

and the air sniffing back,

ruffling and dancing and drinking

the dream

of the wolf on the land,

the wolf of the forest,

wolf of the prarie.

The air becomes wind

flowing with news

of the stranger behind,

whispering places

and planning the way

to stay ahead of the sun,

keeping the secrets

of strangers and wolves

and where the blood races,

forever leaps forward

and makes its new way.

Boys and Men

Sinewy dreams,

blinding lights,

boys flexing, pulsing,

bragging, ambitious with life.

Men seeking shares of day,

shares of night.

Dreams of boys and men

carry me through dip and lift

to lands where

boys like men like me

bound and soar on good days,

and on bad days struggle

to stand straight

and still.

Zeroes, eights and the lively wet

I've revised this poem substantially. I think the new version is much better. It can be found here.

Gazing out from the porch,

wind and leaves making low sounds,

scents and sights spilling down slope and up,

mountain spruce casually swaying,

he sits, chisel in his right hand,

a beer ready to his left,

a sharpening stone sits flat

on his blue-jeaned thigh.

The round stone lies,

lightly oiled, awaits the chisel’s beveled edge.

In a big hour,

or a short two,

the sun will set,

if it stays true,

maybe while he’s still lightly

tracing eights and zeroes

on the oiled stone, the

chisel edge angled just so.

He presses a thumb to the tip,

could be sharper, sips his beer,

back to the stone,

zeroes and eights,

circling slow,

a rolling wave of oil and grit

pushed here, there by the big hand

ruling this tiny universe.

Zero here, eight there, sip here,

another thumb test for sharp,

sharp, could be sharper,

soon to bite the door jamb easy,

watches a cloud scud across blue sky,

flatters singing birds with compliments,

sips, watches, heeds the sentinel pines,

tests for sharp, sun on his face,

zeroes and eights,

fallen into a rhythm

that will not break,

until the tip of his chisel,

covered with his peaceful blood,

calls him back with its lively wet.

He examines the thumb,

with its parallel grooves,

leaking blood,

carved by his fine chisel.

Sharp enough, he thinks,

sips his beer, shuts his eyes,

listens, catching up on what

he may have missed.

Braver dreams, stronger songs, gifts that others give

It’s a soft horn

wails no comfort,

no comfort.

It’s a slow beat

moving slow feet,

slow feet.

It’s a big string bass

plucked in a dark,

dark place.

Drumming comes,

an unroused rhythm

stirring no blood,

and the voice cries next,

a sound like searching,

as if words might ignite,

burning the dead soul underbrush,

torching the tangled discontents,

opening the tender heart’s way

to braver dreams, maybe,

and stronger songs

and gifts that others give.

A Single Star Will Show Itself

Rumored or written somewhere,

the way, the path,

to touching uncoerced,

to flowing swiftly,

channels twinned,

to babbling on and silky,

involves the growling, guttural talk

of tigers,

or a passionate taste

of dark and chocolate,

or the silver leap of fish

or, yes,

to hope or, yes,

to lifting us

on swaying limbs of flowering trees,

full pink and showering

the bay below,

you wrapped in my arms,

me snuggled up in yours.

Rumored or written somewhere,

or handmade

to suit myself,

and sung to you

that were we to wait that way

for the new moon’s rising sliver,

a single star will show itself

and light our dreaming way.

Do What We Do, Do What We Must

In all of the stories,

heroism, struggle,

and buried beneath,

the code words, the secrets;

we all are to die,

the tired old lesson;
the passionate words

sometimes read to a drone,
but words to read over
and over and over

again;

hear, children, the whispers,

you and you, one and two,

many and now,

and now that you’re here,

the meaning, the hope

buried, yet rising

again

and again,

the message,

a life lived in struggle,

oftentimes muddled,

occasionally clear,
always the goal,

listen at first

to the sounding of blows,

the bugles retreating,

the loss and defeat,

so many heroes,

lamentable deaths,

so many prisoners

and exile hordes,

eloquent obits,

men dreaming disturbed,

women bowed by their burdens;

stories sounding like heritage,

sounding like fate--

a blend of our courage,

seasoned by loss,

as though wounds and dashed dreams
are all of our story--

but here it is you
come to hear it all clear,

no defeat is forever;

yes, Espada’s jailhouse suffocation for barbed wire jumpers,

yes, Lorde’s children of war are aging and quiet,

yes, Lorca’s gypsies flee cities of musk and of sorrow,

yes, Hughes' poor boy weary, wishin’ to never be born,

yes, Ginsberg’s factories croaking in fog;

yes, yes, Forche’s Anna exhorting our silence,

our young ears to hear

the fight in the heart

of Crazy Horse felled,

the dream on the lips of Allende--

a leader may fall, but never the people;

harmonies of convicts chained in the sun,

safe houses for women,

healing and moving,

and the singing of blood,

of men dragged behind trucks,

hanging from trees,

the blood singing

catch!

here is the seed,

plant a new forest

that children to come

will find and explore

over and over and over

again.

There Will Be A Chorus

Refugees crying songs off-key,

spent birds in unhinged swarms;

some can hear,

few can grasp,

one or two or three, maybe,
repeat;

amplified sound
a show of faith

that soon there will be a chorus

and a tune to which we might dance.

Bent, brooding and begging

In a shrouded long ago,

I asked a preacher, a Methodist,

if he really believed

in god. The question meant no outrage

and met none.

I did not say

fervently though you believe,

I do not understand your fervor.

Feverishly though you pray,

I do not understand your fever.

I do not understand this god of yours,

neither the shape of the thing,

nor its gender.

Neither do I understand its aspiration

for you or for us all.

I have no grip or grasp

on the universe in which it dwells,

nor why it lives there,

nor why it lives, at all.

I understand your faith has power

and stretches backward

a millennium, or more.

But I fear this is the weight

you drag behind and the cause that has you looking

to the day on which you finally will be weightless.

And he made no response to what

I did not say, but looked

the question do-you-know

of what or to whom you speak.

Ministers aside, consider,

the history of the rulers

and the ruled and why it matters now.

There are also the poems written

to draw nearer to you

and the ones rooted

in an inability to bridge

our mutual gap.

There is also the biography

of my solar-powered self

in every meaning of the term,

warm and heating up,

flaring and flaming,

sunning and indolent,

abiding the gloom,

outlasting the dark.

I am the rustle of the wind

and the sound of revolution,

the silence of defeat

and the rot at the heart of empire.

I am invention

and the means of installation.

I am the sun-dried husk,

the ruined dream,

the broken rampart,

the collapsing core,

the melancholy song,

the calloused, wracked and shackled,

the wicked wish,

the vengeful hand,

the dying.

I miss what I miss and whom.
Soon enough, I will be death

in every savage flake and pore.

Love to Babies

Nathan Night Rain,

you were an infant with

apple cheeks and patience.

Julie Anna,

you were a witch baby,

wise with foreknowledge.

And Brendan Isaac,

you were king baby

with windmill arms and bicycle legs,

wailing your loud strong music.

As Isaac brought joy

to Abraham and Sarah,

with a handful of weight,

with the heat of new beginning,

with the scent of everything to come,

so have you brought

gift after gift after gift

of Nate asleep on my heart,

warm weight waxing,

innocent of his fierce protector;

of Julie at midnight recalled,

fresh weight needing nothing

but that which was freely given;

of yourself,

urgent and new;

all of you, gift after gift after gift

to a father stirred and grateful

that the elements combined as you.

Walloped lifeside

In which the previously unimaginable 25-syllable (26?) Son-Ku is introduced:

Stupid with desire to be better,
desire to be higher.
Walloped lifeside.
This is good.


WARNING: Do not drive while using this rare poetic form. It may cause drowsiness.

By This Pencil

Homage to W.S. Merwin

Even if it’s junk,

the pencil and the paper

make more of it than writing.

The fingertip feel, inside and out,

the face emerging, sketched and contoured,

the smiles and the guarded thoughts,

all the shaded expression, 

all the passion coming soon,

the forest canopy sprouted,

sudden and slightly scented,

wet as rain, warm as summer’s wind,

dark as night and here, by this pencil.

On Gillian Conoley

Some Gangster Pain


So, I’ve owned this book, or a copy, anyway, Some Gangster Pain, for some time. Gillian Conoley, the poet, has introduced the entire collection with a quote from Pablo Neruda:

“Where bullets fly on the wind,
I am left in envy of the cowboys,
left admiring even the horses.”

and a line from the bible:

“…the glory of his nostrils is terrible.”

Job 39:20

This makes me wish that I could introduce my poem, Ecstasy, with the very same lines.

But it also makes me want to understand the poetry of Gillian Conoley better than I do. Conoley is a tough poet to crack. She uses words for every known purpose and, maybe, has invented a few new uses. She uses words for whispering. For intimating. For caressing. For hammering. For launching projectiles. Conoley uses words to excavate and to bury. Trying to stay on top of one of Conoley’s poems is like putting in a day riding broncs at a rodeo in Texas, the poet’s home state.

Some Gangster Pain starts off manageable, even for those new to rodeo. I can stay on “The Invention of Texas,” easy. It’s good poetry, clear as a bell, with a moral perspective that makes sense to me. But, compared to the rest of Conoley’s poetry, it’s like riding a pony. I don’t get bucked off, and I end the ride feeling like I just met a poem I can’t help liking and don’t mind liking.

But one poem later, I’m getting up on “Patsy Cline," and it’s suddenly obvious how much I have to learn about Conoley’s poetry and how hard I’m going to have to work to learn it.

The first three lines, I’m all there, all present; I’m up on this ride.

“When I’m alone, I like how my nylons
mesh, the rustle I get
just walking.”

For a ‘50s fetishist like me, this is an open invitation. But just a few lines later:

“…Not like she did
in that yellow skirt,
strolling in
so everyone saw.”

Wait. Just wait. If “I” am Patsy Cline, then who is “she?” But if “I” am Gillian Conoley and “she” is Patsy Cline, then do I want you to know so much about me, Gillian.

I like the image: that yellow skirt swinging so that everyone could see (see what?). And it’s not like I have that many unanswered questions…but then you walk in and I know I don’t have any idea who you are or why there’s money falling out of your pants. Yes, there seems to be more than one voice here. I am barely holding on to this bronc, to this sexy, feisty poem

“But I still see
that bar, the lights
strung bare above every man’s back,
the sticky perfume,
her skirt a breeze you could carry.”

and I just plain forget to hold on. I’m flying skirts up, ass over elbows and I hear the next line (and I can hear it still):

“Once I got home…”

So, even though I have no idea who “I” is, I am so enjoying being “I” that I just may go back to the beginning and start reading the poem all over, again.

(And this, I did. Imagine, if you will, an interlude.
Be mindful that I am half way through the second poem in a book with about 40 poems.)

Ah. That was refreshing. Where were we?

There’s a lot more from the time “I” got home and the end of the poem, but let me jump here to that end. What comes next will in no way spoil the poem for you (I might already have done that). I’m betting, instead, that once you know how it ends, you’ll want to do the hard work of reading the poem yourself. It ends:

“I may be walking backwards onto this plane,
but you’re looking
like some rat-eyed pimp,
some hillside jack on a slide.”

Of course, it ends that way. I always knew there was a guy like you involved. I just didn’t know where in the poem the heel was going to show up, or that the heel would be you. Or, if you prefer, that you would be the heel.

So, without believing for a moment that I actually understand “Patsy Cline,” that’s what I’ve gotten so far out of reading it. If you could have that kind of experience, just for taking a harder look at 33 lines, why would you bother to read anything longer?

On the theory that other doors will open if I read Some Gangster Pain through to the end that’s what I’m going to do.

Remember All the Why

I know that when I go

I’m gone.

I know

all my twisting,

all my writhing,

all these undulations,

are no challenge to that truth.

I’ve reaped a whirlwind of rewards

and broken things

to which I am entitled,

but nothing here has changed.

I stay busy

making plans,

crafting signs,

wrapping little packages,

for you, for all of you behind.

They are explosively designed,

though some, for certain, will be duds.

But some will burst and shower down,

here or where you might have gone,

water to bathe with or to sip,

a bit, perhaps, of fairy dust,

a fleeting clarity or joy.

Remember that we loved

and remember all the why.

Write Whatever

When I sit to write whatever,

I am writing anywhere

but here.

Why not stand, instead,

and walk and run and jump

and get to anywhere that way?

Why not answer yes

when asked or pushed or pulled

or answer no, regardless?

Why not pray for peace and love

and a full-shelved

corner store?

Why not rip off all my clothes,

and softly wait

for anywhere

but here

to come?

Tell Each Other Verse by Verse

When I thought of you standing there,

posed in the doorway, watching the sunrise,

your tank top a window to the long, rolling muscles

of your back, your legs lean,

so astonishingly long

and brown,

I recalled then other places

and other times

that exercised great power over me.

But before I lost myself in memory,

I lingered one more moment,

wondering who would run her hand,

by your leave,

along your hip,

and how you would

tell each other

verse by verse.

Somewhere in the Night

Somewhere in the night

she died, he said.

They would look there

for her, but she wouldn’t want

to be found.

I remember hanging with her

and with others who loved

what she loved.

All the dancing and the doing,

all the more and all together.

But I wouldn’t be one

who went looking.

She wouldn’t want to be found,

having died somewhere

in the night.

She would share

what she saw

and all the others

would bend and whirl

to see what she heard.

When we saw

what she could hear,

we could feel the peace

she felt and the thrills

that ran through her.

I could take you there,

to the place where she died,

but she would wish

not to be found

somewhere in the night.

You are the one to light your new fire

I am not there

to make hurt feelings worse—

I am not there

to fix something broken—

I am not there

to say what should happen—

I am not there

to live in your place—

Instead, I have decided this day

to be on my way—

to wander the earth—

to witness what works—

to send that news back—

to watch for a sign—

to await word of you—

to hear on the wind you are well.

You are the heart song—

the driver, the striver,

the scent in the air,

the dreamer gone dreaming.

You are the one

to choose what will work—

to pick the right path—

to love when you wish—

to embrace whom you will—

to light your new fire.

for Julie

After the Fall

Oh, my sweetheart,

this gut-twisting swamp

of dirt and piss and recrimination,

this dark side of devotion sucked away,

is not what you longed for, imagined

for yourself in the moment before

the crash and the burn.

You offered a gift

unbounded by doubt,

exuberantly generous,

extravagant,

tender.

In return,

the great fall,

spectators aghast

and you, a crumpled heap.

The surgeon reminded

of the time a similar sort

of thing happened to Dumpty,

a good egg,

and all the putting together,

the reassembling,

all the muttering and the neighing,

the negativity,

the sense that there would be

no next time. But here you are

between flashbacks, wavering,

feeling not quite ready

for the next pitch and catch.

Good wishes, great advice receding.

Recite your new mantra,

eye on the ball that’s coming.

Solidarity

Thank you, my loves,

for love.

Thank you, my friends,

for friendship.

Thank you, comrades,

for fierceness and music.

Thank you, my heroes,

for courage and dreaming.

Thank you for my full measure

of love and friendship,
music and dreams.

December 14, 2013

This is my first day
outliving my father.
His birth and death,
August 25, 1921 – December 13, 1987.

Twenty-six years to the day after
his birth, my own August 25 came
along. Now, 26 years and a day
after his dying, I am still alive.

Once, I wrote about
setting out to steal
lines of poems from others
with intent to build my own,

never knowing from where or who
the thought had come, but now,
this December 14,
I’d steal or borrow

from the lives of others
to become the man
I think it best I be
and make monument

to the man I yet bring with me.
I would be part Dr. King, Jr.
tracing with my fingertips
the great moral arc under which we live.

Bernie would approve. And agree
I should be part brave Ulysses,
fated to be plaything of the gods,
and part Atticus Finch,

tender-hearted truthspeaker,
part Lord Byron, poet
and wanton and nova and young;
part girl or woman,

Katniss, perhaps, or Anne Frank,

or Ella Fitzgerald with her
very big voice.
I would be part an old gray beard,

a Timuel Black, tested
in struggle and in life,
opening the way
for myself reimagined,

young and anonymous,

a socialist in the 21st century,
dreaming egalitarian dreams.
And in me, also

a bit of Bernie,
but not his hubris or his daring,
none of his wish to be
the starlight in our eyes.

That wish might have been decisive for Bernie,
but it was not the most fundamental feature
of the man. No, I’ll not borrow
his hubris or his daring. I have my own.

I’ll not need his corruptible core,
the fatal flaw that caused him to defend
“Epton, before it’s too late,”
as though it might not message

that Harold Washington, you know,
was black, with all that might mean
to white Chicago voters in 1983.
No, I have my own corruptible core.

I have no need of his.
But this I would take:
access to the inexhaustible
spring of loyalty, of enduring affection,

the pool of love
in which he swam a life.
I remember Bernie was a man who kissed men.
And he was the man who kissed me best.

Joy Harjo writes devastatingly beautiful stuff.

It is life affirming. Aspirational. Mythic.

Who would not want to be a poet if that meant one could write like Joy Harjo? Her book The Woman Who Fell From The Sky begins with a prayer, a tribute to Audre Lorde. I'm going to run the whole thing here, because there's no place I can see to cut it:

Reconciliation  A Prayer

I.
We gather at the shore of all knowledge as peoples who were put here by a god who wanted relatives.

This god was lonely for touch, and imagined herself as a woman, with children to suckle, to sing with–to continue the web of the terrifyingly beautiful cosmos of her womb.

This god became a father who wished for others to walk beside him in the belly of creation.

This god laughed and cried with us as a sister at the sweet tragedy of our predicament–foolish humans–

Or built a fire, as our brother to keep us warm.

This god who grew to love us became our lover, sharing tables of food enough for everyone in this whole world.


II.
Oh sun, moon, stars, our other relatives peering at us from the inside of god's house walk with us as we climb into the next century naked but for the stories we have of each other. Keep us from giving up in this land of nightmares which is also the land of miracles.

We sing our song which we've been promised has no beginning or end.


III.
All acts of kindness are lights in the war for justice.


IV.
We gather up these strands broken from the web of life. They shiver with our love, as we call them the names of our relatives and carry them to our home made of the four directions and sing:

Of the south, where we feasted and were given new clothes.

Of the west, were we gave up the best of us to the stars as food for the battle.

Of the north, where we cried because we were forsaken by our dreams.

Of the east because returned to us is the spirit of all that we love.

for the Audre Lorde Memorial 1993

As her prayer unfolds, Harjo validates everything about us, even though we might gorge ourselves or give up "the best of us to the stars as food for the battle." I'm not sure that Harjo is really praying that "the spirit of all that we love" be returned to us. It seems to me that she's certain that is exactly what will happen. And she's sharing what she knows with us.

Harjo knows this sort of thing because she's always asking questions and getting answers back from somewhere. "Who invented death and crows and is there anything we can do to calm the noisy clatter of destruction?" she asks.

And, from precisely the somewhere to which I so recently referred, comes the answer:

When I hear crows talking, death is a central topic. Death often occurs in clusters, they say. They watch the effect like a wave that moves out from the center of the question. The magnetic force is attractive and can make you want to fly to the other side of the sky.

In One Hundred Years of Solitude, the gypsy Melquiades writes the history of the Buendia family, from its founder to the last Aureliano; writes in Sanskrit, I think, and then in code, writes relentlessly to chronicle the early history of the Buendias, so that he might catch up to the present and write the Buendias’ history as it unfolds, writes relentlessly so that he might go beyond the present to write the future of the Buendias as he envisions it.

Anyway, the Harjo I’m reading today seems to write our past, present and future in much the same magically competent way. But I can tell you that before this morning, I never appreciated Joy Harjo so much. Today I’m feeling her stuff deeply, not just in my brain, but in my skin and muscle, in my bones.

That sudden difference in my perception has seemed to come to me more often as I’ve begun to assume myself a poet. I was writing poetry for a good while before I experimented with the notion that I was a poet, and calling myself a poet for much longer before I realized how important other poets are to me, how much I like them, how much wisdom and grit and grace they possess, how much I want to be like them.

Maybe I had to call myself a poet before I could see that however great other poets are, they are also mostly people and can be understood on that basis. And so my appreciation has grown and I’ve bought some more poetry books and hopefully a few poets got slightly, very slightly, bigger royalty checks. One must hope.

But hope ain’t enough. Maybe the other lesson here is that the way to support poets is to first teach others to write poetry and find ways to nurture that effort in others until they begin to feel the swelling in their breasts that they, also, are poets and look around to see how many poets there are and get to hobnobbing with them, until all around it gets to feeling like a nation of poets.

Forget, a nation of individualists, forget all the old metaphors, a herd of whatevers, let’s us pass out the paper and pencils and pour or hearts out. Let’s build a nation of poets. Of good old ‘Merican poets. 

We all have a song inside. Poetry is a way to get to that song. The expression of those many songs taking shape as millions of pencilled poems on millions of paper scraps is the path to becoming a nation of poets. Joy Harjo's poetry is constantly uncovering songs and dance and drums and the profound music of silence, both inside and out.

The soundlessness in which they communed is what I imagined when I talked with the sun yesterday. It is the current in the river of your spinal cord that carries memory from sacred places, the sound of a thousand butterflies taking flight in windlessness.

                                 from Harjo's "Wolf Warrior"

Within that song was the beauty of horses. My son's name means lover of horses.

                                 from Harjo's "Sonata for the Invisible"

To seek more magic

“Cast your dancing spell my way,

I promise to go under it,”

the man sang and a friend,

across the room said,

“Those are two of the best lines

I ever heard.” I pretended

to agree, but all the time thinking

I’m not worthy, you’re not,

we’re not worthy.

I ached to throw wide

the doors of perception,

yielded to the tears

of solitude and great notions,

dived so deep,

every breath was fraught,

every way from there was up,

and, he said, as though he knew

what I was thinking,

“That thought should give you courage.”

I cried then, anything but brave,

turned to see my lovely girl nearby,

my fingers slow and tender, a stretch

to reach her, the glow around her

leaking colors I had never seen before,

leaking colors her to me,

and then she was gone,

snake woman shedding her dress,

a relic left behind

and, he said to me, as though he knew

what I was thinking, “What remains of her,

skin and scent and visions,

should give you comfort.”

I pretended to agree,

before I told him

“I have loved you longer than I can count,

but it is time to journey on.”

He looked at me. “May that thought

give you wings,” he said.

We briefly lingered, lips to lips,

before I fell again

beneath that dancing spell

and, remembering the promise

I had made, worthy or not,

left to seek more magic.

A Hammering of Earth (Revised)

and
Something in the heart of a poet

After I first write down a few lines for a poem, I might leave off for a bit, let thoughts percolate or agitate or free associate. But I generally push to complete a draft pretty quickly. And I rarely start another poem before I revise the one I'm working on, get past that first complete draft to a version that feels finished to me.

Once in a great while an unfinished poem I'd forgotten about will somehow resurface and I'll find that I'm interested in working on it again. When that happens, the poem usually gets better.

I've also got a bunch of poems that I've finished more than once. And I say "finished" because with many poems I thought, with something like relief that I was done and then more time of a different sort passed and I rediscovered the poem and it didn't seem finished anymore, so I finished it again. When that happens, I usually feel better about the new effort than I did about the old one.

Proceeding in my usual fashion might suggest that the poems I decide to call finished weren't ever really done. Maybe I'm just in the habit of settling for something that's okay because I'm afraid of how much work it takes to make it better than okay, to make it good. But why?

I do know that when I think about myself as a poet writing poetry, I get this immediate follow-up feeling that maybe that's not who I am and that's not what I'm writing. Maybe I'm just a dumb ass writing drivel.

Maybe what feels profound to me is simply trite. Maybe the serious or playful or loving voice I hear in my head is little more than the babble of my blood rushing by while ego presumes the sound has some universal meaning and the writer has some ability to express it.

But one thing that I rarely do is complete a poem one day and go back to it the very next day. Still, that's what I did today, worked on revising a poem that I finished and posted just yesterday. I did that one thing I almost never do. Decided immediately that what was done wasn't good enough and began to worry it and gnaw it because I had this feeling that it deserved better and that I could make it that way.

So I worked on A Hammering of Earth, the poem I just posted yesterday. Broke it apart some, and added some, and took out some of what struck me today as weaker than it had seemed yesterday. And got all the way to the new end, to the current version and finished-for-now poem. And I think it's better. So I'm going to include the new version in this post.

But I do want to say what I think I may have learned here is this:

Being a poet takes courage. I think the good ones are more consistently brave than I am. But if I really want to be a poet, I'm going to have to learn to be brave, to look at what I've done and say to myself, "you can do better."

Finishing a poem too quickly, getting to the end because it's easy, is probably punching out early, is probably being too eager for the happy hour, pretending the work is done when the drinks are poured. Celebrating too soon is not brave. And probably wouldn't be a common error made by a writer who had the courage of a poet.

Anyway, here's the new version of

A Hammering of Earth

Deep in the grave,

blind in the gloom,

a spasm of wishes,

an eruption of dreams,

a pounding and hammering

and gathering of earth.

Clawing the dirt

in tumult and temper,

a hint of desire,

a longing for more,

a pounding and hammering

and gathering of earth.

In the rough damning circle

he wandered as though

he might blow

the next minute.

Resting, then waxing,

drifting, then winging,

through space hung with shrouds.

Shadow gliding in,

a leopard at night,

she briefly stops by,

a succor of seasons,

a peak and a whisper.

Just so is he rescued,

speeded away,

a new cycle started,

a grandeur of wishing,

a flexing of dreams,

a pounding and hammering

and gathering of earth.

A Hammering of Earth

In the red feeling circle

he wandered as though

he might blow

the next minute.

Resting then waxing,

drifting then winging

through space hung with shrouds.

Shadow gliding in,

a leopard at night,

she briefly stops by,

a succor of seasons,

a peak and a whisper.

Just so is he rescued,

speeded away,

a grandeur of wishing,

a flexing of dreams,

a pounding

and hammering

and gathering

of earth.