"The brittle things of March"

The forecast of bad weather held us back from making a trip to the east today; after last year's hail storm (with larger-than-golf-ball-sized hail), I am more cautious. Nothing much has happened yet, but nonetheless--the day has been good for looking back over some forgotten poems.

A friend recently remarked that it's difficult to understand poetry without knowing the poet; I argued that this is not the case, and that in a good poem, there are many things to grasp hold of, make meaning from.

I first read Joseph Enzweiler's A Curb in Eden almost eight years ago--before I understood the work of a farmer, or began listening to the land in the same way that he does in his poems. Reading the poems now, I know that the wind and the mud aren't abstractions. However, there is still much in this simple poem that is foreign to me--and maybe this very fact is part of the reason for my enjoyment (of any poem).


The Wind

I've been standing here all my life
by the road that day in March
and never knew till now.
Phone lines hold their breath.
Above the neighborhood
a hammer is lifted.
Swifts fall silent in the chimney.
Children on the lawn
are blurred, their faces
delicate as cups.
In the market aisle
a secret waits half-told.
A doorknob turns.
Cars intent on evening
as supper cooks.
Watch hands.
The smell of bread.

As the bus pulls away
in a black roar of diesel,
from its window
you smile at me and wave.
We are fifteen.
My face is cold.
The mud smells warm
with spring and rotten grass.
Four o'clock.
The potholes shiver with rain.

In glass dark and shifting,
clouds rush across your face
like faraway countries
taking you, faster now
until you are dust,
a metal frame of sky.

I never heard the hammer fall,
a garage door shut, the eyes
complete their journeys.
I thought I could always find you there
in the same green coat,
though it's we who are the wind.

I turned home past the locust trees
through the broken gate.
Our steel fence hissed in vines,
sun glazed the pear tree.
The brittle things of March
filled me, and the mud
on my shoes felt light.

That night at supper my family
ate the same in their same chairs.
But for me the fish was beautiful
and sweet  opened with my fork.
They could not see.
I never spoke, though my blood
was curving to the sky.

An experiment in student engagement

I presented an extra credit opportunity to my class today to try to entice their interest in the analysis of poetry. The assignment runs like this: they select from a list of songs that I provide them to prepare a presentation for the class in which they get to play the song and then give an analysis of one verse and chorus using the various poetic elements that we've been discussing in class. This isn't so out of the ordinary, I've heard of other instructors using this method in class, particularly for lower-level courses (mine is a freshman writing course with an emphasis on literature). To make this interesting for myself as well as my students, I've selected songs that I like and I want to hear in class. Here are the songs I've chosen:

"A New England," and "To Have and Have Not" by Billy Bragg,

"Career Opportunities" by the Clash,

"99 Problems" by Jay-Z,

"There is a Light that Never Goes Out" by the Smiths,

"I Hung My Head" by Johnny Cash,

"Don't Worry about the Government" by Talking Heads,

"A Fond Farewell" by Elliott Smith,

"Hang Down Your Head" by Tom Waits,

"She's Lost Control" by Joy Division, and

"Wave of Mutilation" by Pixies.

My criteria for choosing these was that they must have a distinct verse and chorus (to provide structural variation), could not be too repetitive (this alone ruled out much of Joy Division's catalogue and all of the Ramones), could not be too esoteric that the song could not be found free somewhere online, and, if possible, I went for better known songs by the band if it met other requirements. I wanted to include more hip hop, but was a little embarrassed by how dated my collection is, which is odd considering I have no problem at all including Bragg, the Clash, Joy Division, and the Smiths. I've already made a playlist of these songs and find that they hang together quite well.

My goal is that my students will gain an appreciation for the broader applicability of the analytic methods we've been practicing in class and be able to recognize the poetry that surrounds them. Maybe they'll find some new music they like as a bonus.

Sudden, red.

Karina, Jim with his fermented Tennessee Cherry peppers, and Sarah

This past Monday a group of AmeriCorps volunteers and I visited Jim Smith; because it was continuously rainy, we ended up helping Jim take care of things inside the house, rather than helping him on the farm. We readied peppers for the dehydrator and learned about their various flavors and uses.  Jim has had a difficult few years, as he is operating the farm alone. Nevertheless, he keeps going.

What I love about this picture is that while the women are working, Jim has opened a large jar of fermenting Tennessee Cherry peppers, and is smelling a spoonful of the spicy brine. It makes me think of a Robert Hass poem from Time and Materials.


The Problem Of Describing Color

If I said--remembering in summer,
The cardinal's sudden smudge of red
In the bare gray winter woods--

If I said, red ribbon on the cocked straw hat
Of the girl with pooched-out lips
Dangling a wiry lapdog
In the painting by Renoir--

If I said fire, if I said blood welling form a cut--

Or flecks of poppy in the tar-grass scented summer air
On a wind-struck hillside outside Fano--

If I said, her one red earring tugging at her silky lobe,

If she tells fortunes with a deck of fallen leaves
Until it comes out right--

Rouged nipple, mouth--

(How could you not love a woman
Who cheats at the Tarot?)

Red, I said. Sudden, red.

Time's Viscid Pawprint

Jars of beans from John Coykendall's visit.

This past week I began the orientation for my new job at Beardlsey Farm. It has been some time since so much was asked from me, in terms of time; not having a steady job this summer has had its drawbacks, but I have been happy to have the time to do anything that I wanted--canning, spending time with farmers, gardening. At this point of transition, I feel uncertain, stretched a little thin. As a result, I've been uneasy, agitated. In this time of change, I want to remind myself to pay attention to the things at hand, the everyday objects, which can be good anchors. In this, I couldn't not be reminded of Robert Pinsky's chapbook First Things to Hand. I'll share this poem with you.

3. Glass

Waterlike, with a little water
Still visible swirled in the bottom:

Earth changed by fire,
Shaped by breath or pressure.

Seemingly solid, a liquid
Sagging over centuries
As in the rippled panes
Of old buildings, Time's
Viscid pawprint.

Nearly invisible.
Tumbler. Distorting,
Breakable--the splinters
Can draw blood.

Craft of the glazier.
Ancestral totem substance:
My one grandfather
Washing store windows
With squeegee and bucket,
The other serving amber
Whiskey and clear gin over the counter,
His son my father
An optician, beveling lenses
On a stone wheel. The water
Dripping to cool the wheel
Fell milky in a pale
Sludge underneath the bench
Into a galvanized bucket
It was my job to empty,
Sloshing the ponderous
Blank mud into the toilet.

Obsidian, uncrystallized silicate.

Unstainable or stained.
Mirror glass, hour glass, dust:
Delicate, durable measure.

This is the season of peaches

This morning, Matt finished reading Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood, and mentioned something about the poems interspersed throughout the novel. This reminded me that I hadn't looked at Atwood's poetry in a long time; however, when I picked up a book of her selected poems from the shelf, I had a hard time finding a poem that resonated with me (which tells me--maybe now is not the time to return to Atwood, but maybe in a couple more years). Instead, I found a poem that was evocative of the season. I may post something by a different poet later, but thought I'd share this poem for now.

Late August

This is the plum season, the nights
blue and distended, the moon
hazed, this is the season of peaches

with their lush lobed bulbs
that glow in the dusk, apples
that drop and rot
sweetly, their brown skins veined as glands

No more the shrill voices
that cried  Need  Need
from the cold pond, bladed
and urgent as new grass

Now it is the crickets
that say  Ripe  Ripe
slurred in the darkness, while the plums

dripping on the lawn outside
our window, burst
with a sound like thick syrup
muffled and slow

The air is still
warm, flesh moves over
flesh, there is no

hurry


-----------------------
On my first read-through, my immediate thought was: "Of course there is need to hurry! Who's going to preserve all those plums and peaches!" This is just indicative of my shift in thinking--I want to preserve everything. But of course, the last line, set apart as it is, indicates the very opposite of what the literal words say. Reading this poem two or three times, I start to notice how insidious the ripeness is, how briefly it lasts. But I'll stop commenting now, and let you read the poem again on your own.

I laugh as if my pots were clean.

Every few months--ever since I discovered Lyn Hejinian's book My Life--I come back to the (prose) poems; and every time, something different catches my eye. Although upon first reading the book, I thought the poems too oblique and impersonal, over time I've learned to follow the associative leaps Hejinian makes. And beneath the veneer of opacity, the poems are personal and sincere, and yet not undemanding of the reader. It's a longer poem, but I thought I'd share it with you nonetheless. I encourage you to read it more than once--and I hope that you can enjoy it. (Oh, and the "line breaks" are in actuality how the lines fit on the book's small pages--I thought I'd replicate the experience for you.)


One begins as a               Back and backward, why,
student but                       wide and wider. Such that
becomes a friend             art is inseparable from the
of clouds                            search for reality. The con-
                                             tinent is greater than the
                                             content. A river nets the
                                             peninsula. The garden
                                             rooster goes through the
goldenrod. I watched a robin worming its way on
the ridge, time on the uneven light ledge. There as
in that's their truck there. Where it rested in the
weather there it rusted. As one would say, my
friends, meaning no possession, and don't harm
my trees. Marigolds, nasturtiums, snapdragons,
sweet William, forget-me-nots, replaced by chard,
tomatoes, lettuce, garlic, peas, beans, carrots, rad-
ishes--but marigolds. The hum hurts. Still, I felt
intuitively that this which was incomprehensible
was expectant, increasing, was good. The greatest
thrill was to be the one to "tell." All rivers' left banks
remind me of Paris, not to see or sit upon but to
hear spoken of. Cheese makes one thirsty but on-
ions make a worse thirst. The Spanish make a little
question frame. In the case, propped on a stand so
as to beckon, was the hairy finger of St. Cecilia, cov-
ered with rings. The old dress is worn out, torn up,
dumped. Erasures could not serve better authen-
ticity. The years pass, years in which, I take it, events
were not lacking. There are more colors in the great
rose window of Chartres than in the rose. Beside a
body, not a piece, of water. Serpentine is fool's jade.
It is on a dressed stone. The previousness of plants
in prior color--no dream can come up to the origi-
nal, which in the common daylight is voluminous.
Yet he insisted that his life had been full of happy
chance, that he was luck's child. As a matter of fact,
quite the obverse. After a 9-to-5 job he got to just go
home. Do you have a compulsion to work and then
did you have a good time. Now it is one o'clock on
the dot, but that is only coincidence and it has a
bad name. Patriots drive larger cars. At the time
the perpetual Latin of love kept things hidden. We
might be late to the movies but always early for the
kids. The women at the parents' meeting must wear
rings, for continuity. More sheep than sleep. Paull
was telling me a plot which involved time travel, I
asked, "How do they go into the future?" and he
answered, "What do you mean?--they wait and the
future comes to them--of course!" so the problem
was going into the past. I think my interests are
much broader than those of people who have been
saying the same thing for eight years, or so he said.
Has the baby enough teeth for an apple. Juggle,
jungle, chuckle. The hummingbird, for all we know,
may be singing all day long. We had been in France
where every word really was a bird, a thing singing.
I laugh as if my pots were clean. The apple in the
pie is the pie. An extremely pleasant and often comic
satisfaction comes from conjunction, the fit, say, of
comprehension in a reader's mind to content in a
writer's work. But not bitter.

So marvelous and dangerous...

Today, I feel untethered; imminence is everywhere. Here is a poem by Lisel Mueller from her collection Alive Together.


Sometimes, When the Light

Sometimes, when the light strikes at odd angles
and pulls you back into childhood

and you are passing a crumbling mansion
completely hidden behind old willows

or an empty convent guarded by hemlocks
and giant firs standing hip to hip,

you know again that behind that wall,
under the uncut hair of the willows

something secret is going on,
so marvelous and dangerous

that if you crawled through and saw,
you would die, or be happy forever.

Homesickness one way, wanderlust the other

Here's a poem by Galway Kinnell from his book Imperfect Thirst; it's from the section "Sheffield Ghazals." I remember reading this poem three years ago and becoming instantly implicated in its language--it's what a good poem does to a person, makes complicity. Kinnell does not adhere to the ghazal form strictly, but uses it as a sort of guide; this is especially evident in the maqta, where he names himself--partially to claim credit for the work, but also to deeper involve himself in the poem's events.

Driving West

A tractor-trailer carrying two dozen crushed automobiles overtakes a tractor-trailer carrying a dozen new.
Oil is a form of waiting.
The internal combustion engine converts the stasis of millennia into motion.
Cars howl on rain-wetted roads.
Airplanes rise through the downpour and throw us through the blue sky.
The idea of the airplane subverts earthly life.
Computers can deliver nuclear explosions to precisely anywhere on earth.
A lightning bolt is made entirely of error.
Erratic Mercurys and errant Cavaliers wander the highways.
The girl puts her head on a boy's shoulder; they are driving west.
The windshield wipers wipe, homesickness one way, wanderlust the other, back and forth.
This happened to your father and to you, Galway--sick to stay, longing to come up against the ends of
           the earth, and climb over.

Where can we build/ the house of spring

It's just the second week of May, but it seems like the seasons have sped up--it's already quite hot out. As my friend Katie said, "Sweat begins [now] and doesn't end until October." And I, at a later point, replied that I feel like I haven't been hardened off properly, and can't get used to the heat if it comes on so suddenly. Even if it doesn't feel like it, here's a poem by Laura Kasischke for

The Second Week of May

What will we buy with Judas's money?
Who will live in Hitler's house? What

shall we do with this veil stolen

from the murdered bride, this
blanket lifted from the sleeping child?

I will buy candy, says the sweetheart.
I will grow here, the primrose sings.

The lightness of silk in the perfumed breeze, soft
as cashmere, pale pink.

Where can we build
the house of spring,

the one built
on a clear conscience, the one
in which no innocent

civilian has ever been killed?
Yes. Imagine.
Every day
a clean kitchen, every night a Puritan's pillow.

But it's May, and the lilac
whispers to the wisteria,
Whose shadow shall I wear
this year to prom? Whose

white scarf sewn from a virgin's last breath is this?


(From Gardening in the Dark)

The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart

Today was mostly sunny, and then the late afternoon and evening unexpectedly turned into thunderstorms and rain. Thinking about the sunshine, I decided that this poem by Richard Siken, from his book Crush, would be appropriate.


Visible World

      Sunlight pouring across your skin, your shadow
                                                                          flat on the wall.
               The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs.
You had not expected this,
                       the bedroom gone white, the astronomical light
                                                            pummeling you in a stream of fists.
       You raised your hand to your face as if
                       to hide it, the pink fingers gone gold as the light
streamed straight to the bone,
        as if you were the small room closed in glass
                                                    with every speck of dust illuminated.
        The light is no mystery,
the mystery is that there is something to keep the light
                                                                                 from passing through.

How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed

I've been thinking about posting some more poetry, and simply couldn't help myself with this one. I've always been rather neutral towards Robert Frost, and now, suddenly, I can't stop reading his poems--especially those that are new to me.


Putting in the Seed

You come to fetch me from my work tonight
When supper's on the table, and we'll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea),
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

(1916)

It's that time here in Knoxville; even though the official Last Frost date is about a week off, I don't think we'll have another frost before then. Plant those beans!

Robert Frost Poem

Every now and then, I am reminded of the name of this blog, and the fact that more often than not, I write about food, but not literature or philosophy. And although Matt engages with philosophy more often than I, I still read and teach a course on writing about literature. I'm not making any promises, but I'd like to post about literature more often.

I taught this poem a few weeks ago, and had forgotten about how complex it is. Now that I'm grading student essays on poetry, I thought I'd revisit it and share it with you.


The Silken Tent

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when a sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To everything on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.


My students often miss the comparison that begins the poem, and so I spend a couple minutes at the beginning of class explaining how it works. I also like this poem because it reminds me that summer is on its way, and soon.