On Contribution to Public Edification

Granite markers chiseled with verse
from Asylum Hill to Westerly Terrace . . .
tribute and inspiration, along the walk

Wallace took daily. A sky filled
with blackbirds and the preamble
to other metaphors. Just a man

with pen and fury racing the dark
corridors behind attorney eyes.
A man with evergreen inclinations,

finished with the dross necessary
to satisfy creditors . . . it was his way
to split from modern demands

and eke intricacies from pedestrian
facades. Here, where traffic continues,
rests a testament torn from volcano.

Boston's New Artery

The serpentine way of asphalt and grass
lures traffic, lures wanderers on foot
through the towers that hide the harbor,
hide the river. Focused on the path,

no one would notice water nudging
the edges anyway. These are not
sailors. They're modern urbanites,
scattered in their missions, disguised

behind earnest demeanors. Their
pleasures wrapped by scarves,
they vent exhaust, and travel on.
Restless as children on a school trip,

they wait at lights only when
they must. Odd exercise
of obligations, a motivation
to drive, to rush to other places.

No one even notices
the newly transplanted trees,
the fountains, all the efforts taken
to make this place of passage
somehow beautiful.

News Overheard in a Taxi

Giddy scientists from MIT, ecstatic

over measurement of a sub-atomic

particle that wouldn't exist were it 

not for their exuberant efforts. 

Imagine the effort to manufacture

something nature sees no future

for . . . all to understand perhaps

how things began: Was it collapse

of things pre-existing things we

can detect that freed 

the initial bang? Scientists

want to know and, honestly, isn't

there some curious malady

that plagues riders in taxis

with the desire for answers?

Though, that this observed

meson oscillates three trillion times

per second, doesn't help define

the swell of anger when the light

goes red . . . as though to spite

our simple desire to get on

with the endless journey home.

Jason Shinder - New Yorker Poem

Here's a poem from The New Yorker, which I think provides an example of Jason's more searing investigation into the heart of matters, in language and structure that's more charged and affecting than most of his pre-disease poems.

On a Wonderful Remembrance of Jason Shinder

I just received the NY Times alert on Poetry, via email, and among the articles and reviews is a beautiful remembrance of Jason Shinder by Melanie Thernstrom.

While I didn't know Jason, a good friend of mine did. 

My friend and I were both taken aback by the power, by the intensity and integrity of the emotions evident in Jason's published poems after he became terminally ill. 

I don't know that Jason found his subject to be death per se . . . so much as his recognition of death coming gave him the power to cut the chains that bound his artistic spirit. 

The poems shared to date have the same intensity as Plath's last works . . . a bare knuckled brawl with the demons and issues that most matter.

I look forward to the final collection that Jason's friends (Sophie Cabot Black, Marie Howe, Lucie Brock-Broido, and Tony Hoagland) are editing. On the one hand, I am sure it will make us wish he'd lived longer, to give us more of these highly charged poems . . . on the other hand, it will be a wonderful testament to a poet who let his gifts soar through the final days he was allowed to experience.

Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah - An Amazing Version

Thanks to my brother, Walter, for finding this and sharing it with me and now you . . . it is an amazing rendition of one of the great pop songs ever written.

Robert Wrigley . . . Talking Sense (To Me)

I remember the first time I read a Robert Wrigley poem. I was amazed to find a poet working with narrative. In almost all of Wrigley's poems something happens. A story's revealed in the context of a poem. 

Not a lot of poets are interested in narrative, it seems to me. The lyric remains predominant. I'm not necessarily bemoaning this, but it's what makes someone capable as Wrigley is with narrative poems that much more intriguing. 

In an interview that Poetry Daily has from Sou'wester on its site, Wrigley also makes a case for the role of the line in poetry. The line often gets ignored. I've heard a number of wise practitioners argue that lines are to be read through, that they are in essence unimportant to the poem.

Wrigley's emphatic: "Either the lines matter or the poem doesn't. More specifically, I can say this: The line must have integrity. It must have a life of its own. The line must say something within and beyond the sentence of which it is or may be a part. The line must be integral, not just another course of bricks, another piece of lapped siding."

I concur. I'm not sure that I practice this very effectively, but I do think that lines are critical elements to a poem's success. 

And from what do effective lines arise? Wrigley offers the following, "First comes music. The sound of things. One word, one sound may bring on another word, and thus a concept, a direction, entirely unforeseen by the poet, who trusts that the ear never lies, that hearing is believing."

I've been considering the idea of the imaginative, the poetic ear that each poet spends such effort to coax and nurture. From this place comes what makes effective poems possibly transcendent: passion. Wrigley speaks to the passion he finds in Plath, which transmutes to energy for the reader . . . which perhaps allows the poem to translate something essential and universal that's buried within each of us.

Application Photo: Snow Plow Driver

Hawking's Paradox

Here's an interesting video on Stephen Hawking, who is kind of the Billy Collins of physicists. Imagine working for three decades to defend a position, when one can't speak, nor at this stage move more than a few muscles in the face. 

Whatever obstacles the rest of us may face in our endeavors must seem inconsequential in comparison. Something I need to recall, when I get testy about the speed bumps on my artistic road.

A Bit of Wisdom from Our Poet Laureate

My brother, Walter, sent me a link to an article on Kay Ryan, from the Christian Science Monitor in 2004. There's much to glean from this brief piece, but the best bit in my opinion is at the end.

Ms. Ryan offers a bit of advice, a bit of perspective, a bit of inspiration, when she observes, "If there is a [literary] game of sorts, you can win by staying home and doing the writing. Good work can make its way in this culture."

Advice I intend to heed on this snowy Sunday.

Memorial Hall in Snow

Tonight I attended the Christmas Revels at the Sanders Theater, located in Harvard's Memorial Hall. It was a quintessential New England winter eve, with nearly a foot of new snow and a biting wind hurrying along flurries and patrons. The exuberance of music and audience participation always tugs my spirits onto a higher plane. I took the photo afterwards, before scurrying through the snow lined paths to find someplace warm to eat. Memorial Hall is a treasure, don't you agree? We've neglected so many others in our haste to update. Directly to the west of Memorial Hall is an example of architecture unlikely to endure: Harvard's Science Center. No photos of that are worth posting. 

And Still It Snows, at 4 AM

Here's where the hours get interesting, 

where they step from the parade 

and scrape a chair over the floor.

They want to rest, the same 

as anyone. They're so weary

from holding the banner 

of appointments, from splicing

forty-three minutes of drama

around Charmin and Toyota's 

year-end Toyotathon. Ignored

as the intricate, tumbling gears

on an escalator, they really get that

everyone's horrified by the blinding

threat of being late.  And aren't hours

as baffled by the express that years

seem to travel on . . . the one that 

not one passenger even recognized?

They cherish this point in the night,

when the snow's still falling through

the parking lot lights, and someone

notices the vitality of their moments.

Every puff the wind takes from 

the rooftops appears cosmic white and able 

to reward this particular hour's

perseverance. And isn't it true

that the ocean has no concept 

that we measure out its coming

and going by the hours, for years

ahead? We demand such precision

to greet the days we presume will arrive.

Though it's only this hour, when the day's

snowstorm has churned on toward 

New Brunswick, that could possibly matter.

  

Nonsense in the Middle of the Night

Tribute to Language's Janitors

Blame the vowels for allowing 

granularity to sweep into 

the consonants' rock utterances. 

Messy as sleet, transient as any 

brief conversation with the acquaintances 

who fritter into the lock box orbits 

of our lives. Lubricants, the ooze 

and squirm, the viscera . . . shadowed 

makers of candles, saved 

for darker nights imagined, when 

the dinner guests have taken their fill 

and wandered back to their own alleys, 

their own small cases choked 

with insomnia's mysteries.

What could a language be without

e, without i . . . without the challenge

to stasis this minority of letters offers?

Nomads on prairies miraged with literature's

hope for permanence, eyes alone holding

the improbable confluence of birds rising

against a stand of golden trees at the base

of mountains backlit by light sifted 

through cloud . . . all that's imagined 

left in the soft hollows everyone carries.

Something simple for a catalyst . . . 

a pocket infused with something 

crystalline, something ephemeral, 

a melee of vowels. Little renegades

always on the way to a rally, to catch

the last act's echoes, to hand 

anyone who pauses a flyer. 

No thought given to the litter 

of the expressionless blank they

guide us from. We never suspect

we may be blind. Witnesses with little

to describe, or convey. To sweep 

the detritus from the halls takes

a good pair of o's bridging a br

with m. Thank you, vowels. 

We almost didn't realize 

the mess you've saved was ours. 

The World Has Gone White Tonight

Snow

The world in this place has gone 

white tonight. The waves 

on the Atlantic have given

themselves to the Arctic pulse 

that's infused our section of coast. 

Crystalline confection, lifted 

on the currents that sort themselves

around the city's towers. Finding

a brick surface, the reticent grass . . .

the frozen breath expanding 

across the lagoon's shallows.    

Even the sky has lost 

its ambition. Let the city sleep

in heaven's pale mystery, quiet 

beneath the gown, until morning.

  

Ah, Art and the City

While in Worcester and then driving back through the dark hinterlands of rural Massachusetts last night with my son, we pondered the allure of city living . . . big city living to be more precise. Worcester doesn't qualify. Boston might not either, if one's a New Yorker. 

What is it about cities that keeps those of us who prefer an urban setting so enthralled? I think Drew captured it pretty succinctly: it's the energy of all those around us. It may be akin to being in a hive, I suppose. 

The rural seems so barren to a city person, and I know that the city can seem so hostile to a rural person. It's curious how we develop our preferences. 

This photo is from the indisputably BIG city of New York . . . the Christo orange flag art event in Central Park. I like that about cities, too . . . their concrete and steel massiveness can be and so often is tempered by the deeply human, by our artistic expressions.

"Here's a Good-Bye Kiss, You Dog" (aka, President GW Bush)

What it's like to be under-reappreciated everywhere one goes. 

Some advice, Mr. President, get used to it. 

Neil Young . . . Keeping Rock and Roll Alive

I shared an inter-generational experience last night with my son and about 10,000 other people who hiked through the biting cold of downtown Worcester to see Neil Young and His Electric Band. It was worth the chattering teeth. 

At 63, Mr. Young seems as enthused (or maybe it's infused) by the music as he's ever been. He performed for two and a quarter hours without a pause, and I do think he'd have gone on for a good while longer if not circumscribed by modern arena-concert decorum. 

There are not many 60+ year old musicians who are appealing to both young and old. I think Neil is the best . . . personal preference, I know, but you have to see the man to understand why I feel this way.

And I urge anyone, who has a chance, to go see Neil Young perform. It will make you feel good. It will make you want to dance. It will make you wonder at what music can do for a roomful of souls. 

Evening Poem

Hey, Here I Am

Someone's smoking on the fire escape,

an act forbidden by condo regs . . . 

so the story slipped beneath the door 

of every unit claims. Justice wants only

an emergency to meander onto 

the building's rusty braces. Who caught

this alleged infidelity? And was there no 

opportunity to identify the one

who trespassed? We've been warned,

and next time monetary damages 

will be assessed. Hallelujah. Rules 

writhe like snakes in the pit of our

disrespect. If I had a laptop, I'd take

this piece of protest out the window. 

Barefoot, so the steel mesh could 

imprint my soles with temporary scars.

Naked maybe, too. Why not stand before

the empty offices of the Hancock Tower,

backlit by my pedestrian living quarters?

I might yell, there is no emergency . . .

beyond my imagination gnawing 

at its leash. Perhaps a neighbor would 

report such vehement maundering. 

Perhaps the gods who manage the ridiculous 

would stop to applaud . . . good work, 

vigilant neighbor . . . to be awake and able

to spy an unclothed vagabond, 

who only wanted someone 

to find him.

Evening Poem

Give It Up

What impetus to read for the blind

motivates this ragtag platoon to gather 

on a rainy night in December? Novelty

perhaps. To enter a soundproof booth

with a book one would never read

and record the author's words 

for an unknown . . . it's motivational

genius. Forget camaraderie. Each 

volunteer's sequestered securely

as a virus carrier. Just read how 

Aaron Burr's sexual escapades 

compromised what genius he was dealt.

The prose sticks in places on the tongue.

Cotton language tinged with sand.

To get through a dozen dense pages

in an hour requires focus. Mark 

the transition point to a new page

on the computer recording, and begin

with a renewed sense of inflection's 

resilient potential. Somewhere 

a listener waits to invite your voice

in for an evening's journey. 

Lunch Poem

Rush Hour

The windows' polished grit tempers 

each rider's reflection. This long missile,

with its stripe of light and faces,

never rising above the tree line and villages

it passes. Graceless hammer, urgent

as compulsion, fired down

dissolution's iron track. Meteor-bright

above the salt marsh, the wheels' 

harsh ratchet like a staccato cough.

Raw whistle that wants to summon 

the dead to witness this cabin of souls

fingering the lies that flesh encourages. 

Work Note

An interesting day . . . the CEO/Chairman and the President of our company both resigned today. I have to say that while not beyond the realm of possibilities I'd considered, I had placed this on or near the same level as the potential for The New Yorker to publish one of my poems. 

Not  a lot to add to this recording of the basic facts. Just think it might be something a year or so from now that I will be curious to recall. 

A Day Off

I took the day off from work today. It's interesting to contemplate life without the rule of necessary labor.

There are so many other pursuits I'd prefer to lasso and wrestle. I guess this is complaining, but it's meant more as affirmation . . . affirmation that what I do for money is not what I do or wish to do, necessarily.

I'm fortunate that the work I have to do for money is not debilitating intellectually or, more importantly, artistically. And it is a veritable comfort to have other work when I am so frequently doubtful about the merits of my artistic efforts.

I've been reading off and on through the day. I went to a bookstore. I haven't written a line of poetry. Nor have I revised anything.

And I did no Christmas shopping.

So it's easy to assess this found day as a squandered day, and probably that's accurate. Though any day has its redemptive aspects. Just being aware and alert is enough perhaps. I've tried to be both of those today.

I'm not sure what to make of the restless ambitions of my ego. I've been very aware of my ego's desires and demands today. It's a beast that can't be satiated, of course, but when it's on the prowl it's hard to deny its power to color a day.

The ambitious ego feels like fighting off a virus. I don't want to succumb. Lots of Vitamin C for the spirit is needed.

It occurs to me that this may just be a variation of the critical function in my being trying to assert itself, at the expense of any creative impulse generating new work.

It's almost as though, when I named the blog-posting software as a sort of muse (in an earlier post), I took its sustenance away. Or, I alerted my critical function to its exclusion from this zone of creativity.

Peculiar what triggers the ego, what stalls the motor of creation. I'll see if I can jumpstart it again before the day ends.

Things Could Always Be Worse (or Better)!

From the last "great" blizzard to hit Boston in early 2005!

Lynda Hull's Collected Poems (Thank You to Mark Doty)

In 2007 I had the good fortune to participate in a workshop led by Mark Doty. Among the poems Mark provided as examples to consider was "Shore Leave" by Lynda Hull, a poet (among so, so many) whose work I did not know. I still recall vividly feeling a surge of amazement as we read through the poem.

One of my favorite poems by Mark Doty is "White Kimono" from Sweet Machine. I never knew who the Lynda in this poem was, and so I was fascinated to learn more about her relationship and friendship with Mark.

Having introduced her in the workshop, Mark went on to explain that Lynda's poetry (which had fallen out of print) had recently been reissued as the first in a series from Graywolf Press for which he is the Series Editor. I went directly to Amherst Books and purchased my copy, which has been more or less continuously in my backpack ever since.

I tend with music and poetry to listen and read things I enjoy over and over and over. Beck's Sea Change and Pearl Jam's Riot Act . . . Source by Mark Doty and since last year Lynda Hull's Collected Poems. While I don't encourage such obsessive rereading and listening, I do encourage poetry lovers to get a copy of Lynda's (and Mark's) poems.

To get a sense of the work, the American Academy of Poets site has a representative selection of Lynda Hull's poems. Among the seven featured here, personal favorites are "Fiat Lux," "Lost Fugue for Chet" and "Ornithology." Really, though, it's hard to pick favorites . . . every poem has wonderful language, emotional intensity, crazy inventiveness, and passages of lyrical nirvana.

One poem from the Collected Poems which I've not found online but which is also among my favorites follows:

Abacus

No grand drama, only Chinatown's incendiary glow,
me returning to the old delinquent thrill of us

passing through this jimmied door, the herbalist's
shop gone broke & latticed with accordion grille.

Are these faces of ours oddly gentled, First Husband,
as evening's verge spills over bad-news gang-boys

filling vestibules with their bored sangfroid, over
old women smoothing newsprint sheets for carp steamed

to feathers of flesh? Two doors down, the gold-toothed
Cantonese lifts her tray of pastries streaming

red characters for sweet lotus, bitter melon, those
for fortune, grief, for marriage & rupture.

In my wallet, the torn wedding picture sleeps---
your brilliantine & sharkskin, my black-brimmed hat,

a cluster of glass cherries. Too young. Words roil
to calligraphy above us, cold as the dawn

your second wife wakes to, day-old rice then scorched
fluorescence through sweatshops, through bobbins

& treadles, the 6 cent piecework. When it's time,
we'll exchange a formal kiss in the whorling updraft

of burnt matches & apothecary labels, gang graffiti
slashed upon the walls. Why return to this empty shop

where I'd meet you sometimes after-hours over poker,
men chanting numbers in a sinuous grammar of 40-watt light

& smoke? Not much here now, a few drafty rooms, broken
drams of pungent White Flower Oil you'd rub my feet with,

bruised from dancing six sets a night between the star acts.
Not much, but what I choose to shape sleepless nights

far from here, when I'm diaphonous, engulfed again
by Chinatown's iron lintels, the hiss & spill of neon fog,

heliotrope & jade unrolled against the pavement I'd walk
in filmy stockings, the impossible platform shoes. As if

I might find her here again, my lost incarnation fallen
from the opulent emptiness of nightclubs, those

restaurants tuxedoed in their hunger. No one could
translate such precise Esperanto. And so we linger

tiny, surviving protagonists briefly safe here
from the crowd's ruthless press, a fanfare

of taxis polishing the avenues. Whenever next
I meet you, I'll meet you here in the harsh

auroral radiance of the squad car's liquid lights.
Things have never been so essential. I have seen

businesses fold & open like paper lilies, & men
leave for Hong Kong, then return to lie down

again in crowded rooms, the way each of us
lies down with a lacquered maze of corridors

& places where those once loved unbearably wear
strangers' faces. You run your hand through the hair

you've dyed black to hide the gray & out
on the street, sweet-faced vandals arabesque

caught in a rain of trinkets, green cards, the lucky
one-eyed jacks. Beneath my fingers, the twisted

braille fo hearts & knives incised upon
the counter works its spell until the herbalist

takes up his abacus once more to commence
the sum of unguents, of healing roots,

a measure of time, a calculation beyond all worth.

Contemplations on Generative Processes and Blogging's Role

I've been considering the generative process today. What allows us to create new work? What limits us? What process enables new work to be good work? And what is good work?

Good work, I suppose, is work that others find value in. It can also be subjective, and in my case (as well as many other artists') that's the more relevant criteria . . . since no one else is reading our work. This is not to say that the work created isn't always created with the expectation that someone will read it, and, therefore, it's important to make work that others may value, too. 

(By the way, I really love a good cup of coffee . . . and by some magical confluence my coffee maker has brewed some really fine coffee this afternoon. I should probably stop writing and go sit on the couch and enjoy sipping.)

Lately (over the past month since I embarked on blogging), I've been using the blog posting software as an odd sort of muse. It has encouraged me to "free write" . . . which I define as composing with limited pause for editorial decisions. 

I like to think that I've earned some ability to skydive like this through years and years of labor. I have toiled over, revised and rewritten, and discarded so much. It's exhilarating to just dive out of the imagination's warm fuselage and see what comes out before I hit the ground. 

I'm sure the thrills accompanying such a method of composition will be replaced in time with sheepish regrets and some embarrassment over having posted such rough work in a public place. But, for now, I have to say that it's liberating. 

I'm falling through some familiar landscapes, but I'm also finding myself turned upside down and thrown into cloud banks and electrical storms that I'd consciously steer clear of if I took the time to compose in my accustomed approach. 

What will come of all this? Some work. Whether that work has value, it's difficult to say. Though, if you don't produce work that feels innovative and charged, there's not much chance of actually accomplishing writing a poem with those characteristics.

So, I'm going with this theory, for now. Blogger has given me a means to let the imagination rip. I am going to take that chance!

Wonderful Winter

This image is from a few Decembers back. Just enough snow to transform the landscape of the Fens, and the good fortune for the skies to clear enough at sunset to give the whole scene a glow that's best described just by looking . . . so I'll be quiet now.

Urgency's Commando

Get Up

My modest passions need a switch,
a roughing red welt on the backs
of legs. They need to get bold
and bad, outsized as a solar flare,
            urgent as a wish transmuted
to a porcupine's embrace. It's hell

to stuff resolve in the coarse sack
of routine . . . the billeted effort threatens
to splinter the door that pretends
to define unity's dimensions.
            Isn't it a crass version of divinity
that rewards temerity? The fire's breath

at an ear lobe focuses the broad spectrum
of distractions . . . to find a point, to slide
the length of a sword's steel ruin
            and forage like a tornado through
my life's neighborhood. All my opening wounds
healed through the intoxicating axe-swing,
through the dodge-game on the expressway,
through a star's sizzling pop on the optic nerve
unveiled. Fantastic resolution . . . not one more
            corseted night for remorse to claim.

Loyal Fellow

Continuing to share my series of night images, and, specifically, store window images . . . this sweet and hopeful fellow "lives" in a shop on Charles Street. Charles is the boundary between Beacon Hill and the Flat of the Hill here in Boston. It's also home to a series of intriguing antique shops-- worth a visit, even if it's after shopping hours.

In Response to the Dire Warnings of Global Calamity

Mantra for Plenty

Say the world won't end.  Believe it. 

Say it again . . . the world won't end. 

Every door must not shut. The simple task 

of fixing a lunch, smiling at the good luck 

to find the elevator waiting 

at your floor . . . any bland act 

should be carried like myrrh. 

The old superstitions already howl 

off the presses . . . don't let them find 

a furrow to poison. Minister 

to many . . . give a singular dose

of the world won't end. Brave 

the walk along the river in old shoes.

Cross miles with the company

of a good bicycle thrashing 

your legs. What we do is what

we must. The world will not end. 

The honest intent to carry another

from the cold 

toward the small fire in the stove, 

where your neighbors stand,

will be enough. Something intrinsic

and easy. It's enough

to ensure the world will not end.