Musette

poem o' the day

I've often reminded myself to "follow the generous impulse"--to give the compliment or the gift or the seat when the impulse arises, rather than letting it pass (as it too often does). It seems to magnify the generosity of the world, or at the least gives it one more form of expression. And it occurs to me that writing these little poems daily is something of the same thing,following the impulse to give form to what's right there, in the ether or heart or scratching at the back of the brain. Anyhow, whether it produces art or anything close, it seems worth it.

Notes on the poem: I was not the only person who noticed the New York Times story yesterday on the vanishing honeybees. I see that it's among the most e-mailed stories today. The National Academy of Sciences report says that bats and hummingbirds, two other important pollinators, are also disappearing. Bees, interestingly, are symbols of the soul. And of course, I've been thinking about them on my own lately. Bees and Emily Dickinson... (The link is wild...)

This is another sijo. A quickie, to revisit later. Or soon.

#28

Gone

She scrapes dried honey from the frames, white boxes that once held bees.
In silent groves the almonds bloom and wait, an empty flowering.
Missing her queens, the beekeeper minds their abandoned hives.

Poem o' the day

Winding down. It's day 27, and if I had not met the sijo, I might've stopped a while back. Or not. It was certainly good to have the form to play with, though. A shape to fill at the end of a long day.

Silence is at a premium lately. I realize how much I value the concentration that comes of it. Work's been noisy, reflecting my mind, no doubt. But I wish everyone would just simmer down, as my father would say. I love that expression: simmer down.

Notes on the poem: Orange beads are falling. It's disconcerting.

#27

The woman they think they'd like to meet

No one wakes, though the orange beads fall from her dress like rain.
Hers is the art of lost things – shed fibers, bits of skin, memory.
They often dream of her, of their own death, but nightly they forget.

Our correspondents

Got this note from Eric, who'd sent yesterday's mystery poem.

     "I came to poetry late, aged twenty-eight. I was writing fiction, and never thought I'd become a poet, or a dramatist - wrote all my plays when I was in my thirties. With poetry, I began by writing four to six a week. My first collection, Accidental Monsters, was completed in six months. So many of my poems were dictated into a tape recorder, while I was lying in bed. For me, poetry has been a different process from fiction, essays and drama. The others must be carefully mapped out, but poetry just comes. The creative process is more passive than most laymen think, even when you are dealing with structure, poetry the most passive of all. I began writing at nineteen, in 1966."

     The mystery poem was, he says, from his new book "Earthworks," which will be published this spring by Six Gallery Press.  He's written 10 books, including five collections of poetry. A mention of Charles Simic brought him here.

Poem o' the day

Last night, our friend TypePad was sleeping when I tried to post, so the poem and I had to go to bed as well. So this is yesterday's entry. Looking forward to a month of woolgathering and revising when March arrives, but we'll see. Maybe I'll still feel compelled to make more daily starts toward poems.

Notes on the poem: Making an effort to absorb the daily news of the war. The "executions" alone--one side beheading, say, the members of the other--number around 20 a day, down from 30. That's cited as the good news in the new security plan.

#26

Another day in the war we made

“Suicide blast kills dozens at university in Baghdad. Wall of fire near gate.”
                  --Los Angeles Times, February 26, 2007

Parts of bodies landing in the street, scarves fluttering in a tree.
Survivors, a line of girls at the gate, mop up blood with their clothes.
A moment before they’d felt safe. It was midterms. They had studied.

2/26/07

Magic

I came home tonight to find a poem, spirited to me by someone I don't know. It's a good one, so I'll post it, at least till the writer, one Eric Basso, tells me not to. And when I find out more about the origins of this piece, I'll post a follow-up. It's hot off the printer, looks like. Meanwhile, I'll just say it was like magic, discovering this in my in-box. Art that moves us finds us. Hallelujah.

Diurnal Insomnia

        the clock was ticking backwards
        on the roof of the pin factory
        and each night the hours passed
        so slowly that the city slept with

        one eye open but still dreams came
        merging their décor with patterns in
        the drapes which framed the window
        at the foot of every quaking bed

        stone gods rose from paralysis
        to a breakfast of bitter tea
        saw haloes pulsing feebly
        around extinguished lamps

        for weeks after we crossed to
        the other side there were blinding
        corridors of white pine and poplar
        as far as the eye could squint

                         --Eric Basso
                        January 23, 2006

poem o' the day

Home late tonight after the once-a-year 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift. But earlier I'd been thinking about how, when the month ends and I have played out my little commitment to writing a poem a day, I might focus slightly differently and write some pieces about the war. Maybe even 30 of them. This war started March 19, 2003, so we're coming up on the 3-year mark. And if you lived in Colorado Springs, my hometown, you'd be surrounded by families who have loved ones in Iraq, or by those who've returned, those who carry the scars. So many scars.
     It's hard to see the human cost mounting. 650,000 dead there. So many, many spirits dead here as well. You can't send armies and endless money to do your killing without feeling the effects. I think the evidence of how we suffer is in how we can talk intimately about celebrities, say, and feel so little--know so little--about what the war is doing to us. Or have no money for the hungry and homeless, but plenty for the machines of death. It only hurts when you think about it.
     This is a quick sijo, but later I hope to build this one. The injured soldier is in the New York Times today, right there on the front page in a Superman T-shirt and a helmet to protect his head. His name is Colin Smith. He was a machine gunner. And just before that, he was a high school kid.

#25

Three years into the war, a boy comes home

He is a boy again, the soldier shot through the skull in Iraq.
"Destroyed the top regions of both frontal lobes," the news report says.
19, smaller now, he leans against his mother, lost. She sees him. 

In praise of...

Ann Hamilton. I continue to look through "Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects," which collects the objects created for various performances and installations. For instance: Awaken, a blanket "Embroidered with the words of Susan Stewart's poem 'Awaken.'" (It's apparently for sale, I see, as I scroll around. Many details about the piece are here.

I happened on conceptual art for the first time as a high school kid in Colorado, hanging out with a slight, outcast boy who was a Yoko Ono fan. He gave me a book showing--or maybe just describing--her work. Lights went on. Soon after I found Charles Simic in the library. They're related in my mind, and at the heart of what I love about poetry (and art). The familiar world made strange, and thus brought closer.

And I am very excited to have just found this: an inventory list from the Medical History Museum. There's an incredible world here. For instance:

                                                      

MHM00083

Compass                                      Marked on lid "POCKET COMPASS; MADE IN ENGLAND", "ESL"

Brief Description Compass with yellow face and brass rim, housed in black bakelite circular container with relief printing on surface. Has screw top lid. History of Object Included in contents of Dr. James Jamieson's medical bag (registration number 74), who practiced in Warnambool and Melbourne, later lecturing in Obstetrics at Melbourne University. He died in 1916. Materials and Finishes Brass, metal (painted), paper (printed) and bakelite.

Poem o' the day

Better today. The workshop was inspiring--good work there, surprising and interesting to me. A long nap later. Someone oughta do a study on naps and the creative process. I slept so deeply I woke not knowing what day it was.

Notes on the poem: No form today. Just precisely what I wanted to write. I may set it up as a prose poem later on, see if there's more, see if it wants a different title.... And oh yes, there's something in here that's a response to lines Julia sent me. Thanks (again), Julia!

#24

Letters home

I can only tell you this much: water in a glass, evaporating, the dust
that gathers at the edges of things. The way every other word is
erased but some meaning comes through from the vowel sounds,
not specific to any language, sung by migrating birds that
carry them like seeds and pollen.

Bitten to the quick. The bruised bed and the ridge, that most
familiar landscape. This is my “poured own the drain after
the party,” my watermark white on wood. I saw the sky
disappear into a building. I spat it out before there was a lettuce
leaf to hide it. The gristle of things. The clean scoop of bone after the marrow.

poem o' the day

Getting a little weary of the late-night writing, fantasizing about how mornings would be better, those golden hours between, say, 3:30 and 4:30 a.m. But that, when I think a moment, *is* late night, the middle of it, to be precise. It's day 23. Faces around me looked tired today, and the world's a mirror...

No real notes on this poem. It feels like something pulled from another way of writing, something from years ago. A sort-of sijo, at least in lines and syllables. I'd like to erase it, but I'll let it be. The one thing I like: the 16-syllable lines.

#23

Last chorus of the drinking song

Once more I throw out the fine crystal, then the amber and garnet.
First I believed the lie of their beauty, then I began to lie.
This ritual of cutting ourselves on the glass -- how it bleeds us.

Perhaps it was inevitable

Here's a little cosmic ripple I like. We started working on sijos in the workshop by looking at info pulled from a web page. I didn't pay much attention to the source, which was a long url in tiny type, but it turned out to be Sijo translations from Larry Gross, who just stopped by to mention Hwang Chin'i, a 16th century poet who appears to be quite the legend--"known for her exceptional beauty and sharp intellect" says the short bio. Sounds like a worthy role model! I'm making my way through more of the sijo pages, which look like a great resource. (Thanks, Larry.)

It also occurs to me that here, in the midst of a huge Korean community, there must be sijo scholars and enthusiasts. I will have to look around. And consult the lovely Chungmi.

Still trying to figure out how to make these things go--and then I'll make them messier. I need to work on the basic mechanics before blowing up the car....