Joy Is Such A Human Madness

We are all struggling in this pandemic. Adjusting to new routines, worrying about the health of our friends and family and our communities. The toll this is going to take is hard to really grasp. I am turning to poetry and creative thinkers trying to help make sense of it all. This essay by Ross Gay is heartbreakingly beautiful to me right now. The

The Peace of Wild Things

Soft Targets

Relax

Every day is a new disaster with this regime. I keep calling, fighting, showing up. There is no relaxing. We are going on a vacation soon. But I don't know if I will ever truly rest again. I'm bringing loads of poetry books with me on vacation. Poetry is a short-lived comfort, but I'll take it while I can. 

RELAX

Bad things are going to happen.
Your tomatoes will grow a fungus
and your cat will get run over.
Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream
melting in the car and throw
your blue cashmere sweater in the dryer.
Your husband will sleep
with a girl your daughter’s age, her breasts spilling
out of her blouse. Or your wife
will remember she’s a lesbian
and leave you for the woman next door. The other cat—
the one you never really liked—will contract a disease
that requires you to pry open its feverish mouth
every four hours. Your parents will die.
No matter how many vitamins you take,
how much Pilates, you’ll lose your keys,
your hair, and your memory. If your daughter
doesn’t plug her heart
into every live socket she passes,
you’ll come home to find your son has emptied
the refrigerator, dragged it to the curb,
and called the used appliance store for a pick up—drug money.
The Buddha tells a story of a woman chased by a tiger.
When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine
and climbs half way down. But there’s also a tiger below.
And two mice—one white, one black—scurry out
and begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point
she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice.
She looks up, down, at the mice.
Then she eats the strawberry.
So here’s the view, the breeze, the pulse
in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you’ll get fat,
slip on the bathroom tiles in a foreign hotel
and crack your hip. You’ll be lonely.
Oh, taste how sweet and tart
the red juice is, how the tiny seeds
crunch between your teeth.

--- Ellen Bass

Head, Heart

Head, Heart

Heart weeps.
Head tries to help heart.
Head tells heart how it is, again:
You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But
     even the earth will go, someday.
Heart feels better, then.
But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of
     heart.
Heart is so new to this.
I want them back, says heart.
Head is all heart has.
Help, head. Help heart.

-Lydia Davis

Put On The Sleeves Of Love

Reading

So...I've been pretty sick since the day after Christmas. It isn't exactly how I thought I'd be spending the break. The plan was to catch up on a bunch of social media work (research, writing) for my new job and spend some quality time with the kid. Our quality time has consisted mainly of napping together between trips to the bathroom.

Today, on day four, I realized maybe I should just surrender -- stop trying to work or clean or read between naps. I'm not doing any of them very well right now. I'm embracing reading because my nightstand bends from the backlog and maybe reading will make me happier. That's what the science is saying.

Last night I finally read Ross Gay's, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, which I blogged about in November but just got around to. I don't usually read an entire collection of poems all at once, but this was an exception. It is an exciting book, lyrical and lush, full of sorrow and humor. Besides the exceptional title poem, "Feet" was a standout, as was "Spoon", written for a murdered friend. Gay weaves his appreciation and knowledge of gardening throughout and the language is so satisfying, relateable, yet utterly new. I can't remember enjoying a book of poetry this much in a very long time. I shed a few tears, which sounds a little over-the-top, but the themes were treated so beautifully. (I can't mention Gay without noting his essay, Some Thoughts On Mercy.)

And this brings me to where I am now. Smack dab in the middle of Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me. I didn't purposely choose this book to compliment Gay's, but it does. I devoured the first half this morning and will finish the rest tonight before going to bed. I would have finished it all at once, but the kid was interrupting and the book warrants complete concentration. This hit me squarely.

"The Dream thrives on generalization, on limiting the number of possible questions, on privileging immediate answers. The Dream is the enemy of all art, courageous thinking, and honest writing."

The book is brilliant, difficult, sad, and unnerving and absolutely required, as Toni Morrison said. When I heard the Tamir Rice ruling last night I just sunk. Again. Again. Again.

I don't know if I can read my way out.

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

Gay's latest book of poetry earned him a spot as a National Book Award Finalist.  

Here is the title poem.

I think he is just a fantastic writer.

I became aware of Gay around this time last year. Also, I highly recommend Some Thoughts on Mercy, which was first published in the July 2013 edition of The Sun. It is beautiful. 

Shoe Factory

Shoe Factory is a poem I wrote for the 2006 print edition of 52nd City magazine. It was for the Work issue. I'm posting it now only because I just found a bunch of photos from the factory, circa 1989.

Shoe Factory

I. Delma

Delma tripped right over herself and she fell hard.
She’s a big lady anyways, way over six-foot.
Her glasses went flying and she landed on her back.
There wasn’t nothing on the floor for her to slip on, so I don’t really know why she landed on her back.
But damn if she didn’t. And right away she goes to moaning.
    Oh God it hurts.
    You got my glasses, Annie?
    Just leave me alone…leave me alone.
    Don’t touch my arm…oh, my arm hurts.
    Oh, God…it hurts. 
 I panicked, got my cold wash rag out of my lunch cooler to put to her forehead,
while Paula went running and screaming for the factory nurse.

I didn’t want to make too much of a fuss.
Sometimes when someone falls
they feel so embarrassed,
they go to moaning just to justify the commotion.
Then here comes about a dozen or more people
all millin’ around while Delma turns red
and Barb, the floor boss everyone hates
(but she’s always been real nice to me)
comes over and tells everyone
Get back to work, people!
But it’s break time by now anyway,
so there’s not much she can do to make us mind.
Soon enough Gladys and her blonde beehive are on the scene,
with Beverly and Bernice waddling not far behind.
They got cold packs with them and start asking a bunch of questions
while Delma just moans and tries to tell them where it hurts.

I’m sitting on a glue bucket listening in on all the racket.
It happened by my rougher, and there’s nowhere else to go.
Gladys rushes off for a wheelchair and Delma gets carted out the cafeteria door
where her husband is supposed to pick her up.
Her arm is all swollen up
   like a poison pup,
is what Bernice said.

Delma came back with her arm in a cast.
She tried to work.
As a floor boss, all she does is walk around making sure we’re roughing the shoes right.
But she said her Tylenol made her dizzy, so she’s been gone for almost a month.
Carol Ann says Delma’s bringing a lawsuit against the company.
But they already paid her bills and she got workman’s comp
so I don’t know what all she’s suing for.
Carol Ann says she heard Delma wants me to testify for her because I saw it all.
I don’t know what I could say
except that she fell.

II. Ed & Stacey

Ed wears the same polyester pants to work every day.
When it gets hot he rolls them up,
But goes into the bathroom to do it
because the extra material’s all folded up inside.
He wears long tube socks,
with stripes at the top,
and short brown suede boots.
He’s only about 22. He thinks he’s
real cool.
He drives a rusted-out gold Chrysler
with dice hanging from the rearview mirror
(naturally)
And can’t help but leave the gravel parking lot by peeling out.

Bill and Danny told me one day
Ed went up to the MFA to buy feed
and he was wearing a dress.
    It wasn’t no joke either. That dude is messed up.
Even Ed’s brother, Stacey, says Ed’s got dresses hanging in his closet.
And that’s big news in Jonesburg.

Whenever I have to ask Ed about overstock,
he pretends not to hear, says,
    Do what now, hon?
sort of syrupy and touchy-feely with my arm.
He’s this way with almost everyone.

Ed and his brother Stacey both give me the creepers.
Stacey asks me this same question
every single time
I pass him in the 120-degree warehouse
   Hot enough for ya?
And
every single time
I have to hear his goofy laugh afterwards.
Even after I tell him to shut up,
he laughs.
   Dumb motherfucker.

Rumor’s that Stacey and Ed’s mom and dad are second cousins.
I’m not saying it’s true
but how else can you explain those two?

III. Charlie

Charlie works up in the loft of the warehouse.
It’s the hottest place in the factory.
He wears the same clothes for a week at a time.
Whenever you go upstairs
You know to breathe in hard on the trip up -- 
It’s not just going to be hot at the top,
but smelly too.
I pick my loft orders in the morning,
before it gets bad.

I used to feel sad for Charlie, watching him walking to and from work,
(he lives way outside of town),
But Danny says Charlie blows his whole paycheck on beer
and has a slew of kids at home.
So I don’t feel as sorry for him like I used to.
Bernice told me Charlie’s wife died last summer.
Charlie never called the police or no one.
He waited a couple a days and put her dead body in the car with a blanket over it,
then drove her to Kansas where all her kin were.
Bernice is a lot of things, but she ain’t a liar.

IV. Pauline

My grandma started working at the shoe factory again.
She wants me to go out and eat lunch with her in her hot old car
every day.
She tries to make me eat all the extra food she brings and
every day
she tells me
every thing
she ate the day before because she is
always
on a diet and
never
loses any weight.

One day
Will walked by while we were sitting in her car.
   That damned Indian.
I asked her what’s wrong with Will?
And she goes to telling me this big long story about how Will
was going out with Mary Conrad’s daughter, Brenda
until Ellen, the factory owner’s daughter, started working in the office.
    Well he dropped Brenda just like that.
She snaps her fingers.
   Started shacking up with Ellen.
   That damned fat Indian.
And I want to ask her
   What the hell does being an Indian have to do with it?
    Wasn’t your dad part Indian?
But I know she’d just get mad
and try to make me eat the rest of her grapes.

 

Ross Gay Poem

More moments like this poem in the world, please.
To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian 

(Yes, I know this is a pomegranate and not a fig.)

Happy Thanksgiving.

Wrapping The Week

{From Lisa Congdon's beautiful Reconstructionist Series}

Tonight I'm taking part of a Poetry Scores premiere of two new scores of Gertrude Stein's 1913 poem "Yet Dish" -- for 69 women's voices. I'll be one of the 69 readers. The rest of the weekend, I'm cleaning house. Going on vacation sort of wreaks havoc on life. 

• So true. I don't want to hear it.
• Audrey was mesmerized by these kids trying weird foods for the first time.
• Bangs vs. Botox. This isn't my board, but it is my dilemma.
• I love Erykah and Janelle. 

That's all I got today. More on Mother's Day.
xoa

Inferna

Inferna is a poem-cycle by Stefene Russell, a contemporary underworld journey in miniature, told through nine cycles of three poems each and is the first installment of a planned trilogy that will mirror Dante's Divine Comedy.

Stefene and I worked on 52nd City Magazine together and she is part of the annual Kick Ass Awards. She is involved in countless wonderful causes around town. Her heart is huge and her talents are boundless. And if you can't already tell, I think a lot of her.

More on the project at indiegogo.

Calendars

Calendars

Back in the blue chair in front of the green studio
another year has passed, or so they say, but calendars lie.
They're a kind of cosmic business machine like
their cousin clocks but break down at inopportune times.
Fifty years ago I learned to jump off the calendar
but I kept getting drawn back on for reasons
of greed and my imperishable stupidity.
Of late I've escaped those fatal squares
with their razor-sharp numbers for longer and longer.
I had to become the moving water I already am,
falling back into the human shape in order
not to frighten my children, grandchildren, dogs and friends.
Our old cat doesn't care. He laps the water where my face used to be.
- Jim Harrison


Thanks Rebecca!

In a Dark Time: Roethke & Rothko

{Mark Rothko - No. 12 (Black on Dark Sienna on Purple), 1960}

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

-Theodore Roethke

Tiny Books at Vamp and Tramp

Just stumbled upon this Maine book artist, Rebecca Goodale. Her books and illustrations below are beautiful. Vamp and Tramp  has an entire page devoted to miniature books (books not exceeding 3 inches in width or height). I'll be exploring these links over the next several days. I love tiny books. I hadn't heard of Vamp and Tramp. They are out of Birmingham, Alabama and have some amazing fine artist books. Exciting.

Wrapping The Week

What a lovey dovey house this week. My vacation did us all good. Audrey's been very curious about the planets and is doing a good job of memorizing them. We investigated them on the NASA website. This weekend, we plan to do some outdoor exploring. The maples across the street cast the most magnificent warm glow into our living room and I would love nothing more than to cozy up with some book, but the leaves, the leaves. We want to see the leaves. So road tripping, we are.  

Amazon reviews of Women in Binders

Henry Darger

Dream Wedges

A Thousand Mornings with Poet Mary Oliver

Library Love

Thanksgiving Planning

Happy Weekend
xoa

.

Poem for a Sunday Afternoon

Poem for a Sunday Afternoon 

A dull
thud, thud, thud
prevents me from napping.

I go to the window and peek through the blinds.
Below, Gina is crouched in her yard,
pitching green walnuts the size of baseballs into a plastic bin.

Hey batter, batter.
I whisper
to the Cy Young of gardening.

I shuffle back to bed,
but can’t quit thinking of
Gina’s red sweater
and that pile of lime green circles
resting in the bottom of that blue bin.

Monday Mourn

The house looked as sweet as it ever has today. The photographer came to take pictures. We looked at two shitty houses. Realized we are probably going to have to up our budget and decided to put the search on hold until we get back from vacation. In the big scheme of life, none of this is a big deal. Stressful, but not a big deal. A colleague died Saturday morning of a massive heart attack, leaving behind a wife and four kids. Life sometimes really makes no sense at all.

Night is a Cistern

Night is a cistern. Owls sing. Refugees tread meadow roads
with the loud rustling of endless grief.
Who are you, walking in this worried crowd
and who will you become, who will you be
when day returns, and ordinary greetings circle round.
Night is a cistern. The last pairs dance at a country ball.
High waves cry from the sea, the wind rocks pines.
An unknown hand draws the dawn’s first stroke.
Lamps fade, a motor chokes.
Before us, life’s path, and instants of astronomy.

-By Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh

Half Order Fried Rice

My friend Thomas has a new project, Half Order Fried Rice. This is my favorite in the series, so far.


HOFR: Poetic Support Systems from Thomas Crone on Vimeo.

Summer!

Summer Poem: Summer in a Small Town by Tony Hoagland
Summer Outdoor Crafts: See below.

Outdoor Activity Crafts for Preschoolers -- powered by ehow