Number 86: Alberto Rios "Refugio's Hair"

Refugio's Hair

In the old days of our family,
My grandmother was a young woman
Whose hair was as long as the river.
She lived with her sisters on the ranch
La Calera--The Land of the Lime--
And her days were happy.
But her uncle Carlos lived there too,
Carlos whose soul had the edge of a knife.
One day, to teach her to ride a horse,
He made her climb on the fastest one,
Bareback, and sit there
As he held its long face in his arms.
And then he did the unspeakable deed
For which he would always be remembered:
He called for the handsome baby Pirrín
And he placed the child in her arms.
With that picture of a Madonna on horseback
He slapped the shank of the horse's rear leg.
The horse did what a horse must,
Racing full toward the bright horizon.
But first he ran under the álamo trees
To rid his back of this unfair weight:
This woman full of tears
And this baby full of love.
When they reached the trees and went under,
Her hair, which had trailed her,
Equal in its magnificence to the tail of the horse,
That hair rose up and flew into the branches
As if it were a thousand arms,
All of them trying to save her.
The horse ran off and left her,
The baby still in her arms,
The two of them hanging from her hair.
The baby looked only at her
And did not cry, so steady was her cradle.
Her sisters came running to save them.
But the hair would not let go.
From its fear it held on and had to be cut,
All of it, from her head.
From that day on, my grandmother
Wore her hair short like a scream,
But it was long like a river in her sleep.

-- Alberto Rios

Hap Notes: Alberto Rios (born 1952) was born on the border town of Nogales, Arizona. He grew up in a family of mixed cultures, his father was born in Mexico and his mother was born in England. Stories of his youth are filled with the sadness of teachers forbidding him to speak Spanish in the class room and the culture doing its best to wipe the rich (I may say, richer, here) language of his father. When I say "forbidding," by the way, I don't mean they just told him not to do it- they punished him (and other classmates- he says they "swatted" him. Something that is now, I believe, illegal) and shamed them. Welcome to the land of "the free" Alberto, eh? This has been pretty common practice in America and I find it revolting, particularly in town that borders Mexico. These kids are American citizens, not foreign nationals.

Not all of Rios' teachers were state-education-law following drones. He had a teacher in high school who saw his writing (he'd been writing things in secret for years) and encouraged him, opened him up to new poets, gave him a bit of hope. He eventually attended the University of Arizona where he received a degree in English and Psychology. He has been teaching Creative Writing at Arizona State since 1981. He is the author of nine books of poetry. He has also written short stories and a memoir.

The poem is riveting isn't it? His uncle whose soul had the "edge of a knife." What a strange and sadistic trick to play, eh? And doesn't it contrast interestingly with the biblical story of King David's recalcitrant son Absalom whose hair caught in a tree and hung him? Refugio is the name of his Grandmother but, from the spattering of Spanish I know, it is the (male) word for refuge or shelter. Which she certainly was. Oh, an Alamo tree is the Spanish word for Cottonwood tree. Wearing "her hair short like a scream" is so well put- the knife's edge cuts her hair but no one can touch her hair in her dreams. In fact, no one could touch Alberto in his head either as he grew up in a school system that invalidated his rich heritage while he wrote secretly in the back of his notebooks. His books and poems are often full of magic.

This poem of memory, brings up some memories for me, as I think on the young Alberto's plight in school.

When I lived in California, I worked, when I was a retail manager, with a young man whose parents had immigrated from Chile almost fifteen years prior to my meeting him. He was a tough kid, belligerent and hostile and all of seventeen years old. I like belligerent hostile kids, there's some life in 'em. So I took his abusive curt answers to my questions with relative cheerfulness. One day (he was going to walk home late at night by himself after work which I forbid all kids to do- I drove a lot of those kids home each night) I was driving him home and he told me that he could speak very little English and that's why he was often mad and frustrated. I was stunned to find out that he had been passed from class to class (he was a junior in high school) without learning how to write or read well enough to feel comfortable since he'd been in school in America all of his life. He shrugged and said "The teachers don't like us (Spanish speaking kids). They just ignored us." I'd love to tell you that I tutored him and everything worked out fine but while I offered, he was too proud and angry to accept.

One more personal memory: When I lived in Atlanta I worked with some people from Castro's "Mariel Boatlift" do you remember this? People were allowed to leave Cuba in boats and it was alleged that Castro emptied his prisons and let the "undesirables" leave. First off, you could go to prison in Cuba for many different reasons, not just because you were a felon and secondly, it was found later than less than a quarter of the emigres were "undesirables." The people I knew were high school teachers- one taught physics, one taught literature. They had been in America a couple of years when I met them. We had an evening where we traded "traditional" dinner evenings. I made Yankee pot roast with carrots and potatoes with apple pie for dessert. They made Pollo y arros- Chicken with rice (which I have never tasted better or been able to equal.) They served delicious coffee- Cafe' Bustelo with sweetened condensed milk. I'd never tasted any coffee so good (it was 30 some odd years ago- and I had no experience with Hispanic culture at the time- strange place to get it, Atlanta.)

Well, they showed me the coffee can and I started reading the Spanish aloud, trying to discern what the words were. I looked up and there were tears streaming down their faces. Their uncle was there and a brother who had also come from Cuba. They were all weeping. I was startled and stopped. The uncle said, "This is the first time we have heard someone else speak Spanish to us in two years." The side of a coffee can read by a small town midwestern girl who knew no Spanish at the time; even this moved them.

I suppose I should mention that, at the time, these people who could have done such good for Spanish speaking students as teachers, were working maintenance at an apartment complex (as I was) and that's how I met them.

The stories of Rios' school days brought back these memories to me. They needed to be set down just as his grandmother's story needed to be told. Rios has won tons of awards and his books are full of the "magical realism" that he teaches at Arizona State.

Here's a wonderful Rios quote from a Bloomsbury interview:" I want my poems and stories to serve the community in the same manner the baker’s bread does. People eat bakery bread for taste as well as nourishment, and my writing should provide a similar kind of sustenance. The baker’s main ingredient is flour, mine is words, yet both our products are created in large measure to serve others. The ultimate test for me is to offer a poem or story at the metaphoric kitchen table, and have people respond as if I’ve passed them a slice of delicious buttered bread. In that sense, I never think of myself as reading these poems from a lectern, or of teaching them to a captive audience of students. My poems must take care of themselves, and make their own way. I just wish they’d write home more."

You can find more Rios here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/alberto-rios

Number 85: Rabindranath Tagore "Closed Path"

Closed Path

I thought that my voyage had come to its end
at the last limit of my power,
that the path before me was closed,
that provisions were exhausted
and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.

But I find that thy will knows no end in me.
And when old words die out on the tongue,
new melodies break forth from the heart;
and where the old tracks are lost,
new country is revealed with its wonders.

-- Rabindranath Tagore

Hap Notes: Rabindrath Tagore (1861-1941) is probably India's most famous poet in the west, mostly because of his Nobel Prize (the first awarded to a non-European) and the poet William Butler Yeats (whom we will get to later, I promise). Tagore translated his own poems into English as something to do on a sea voyage to England. The poems were seen by his friend, artist Rothenstein, who, in turn showed them to Yeats. Yeats was impressed and the poems were published in 1912. Tagore was 51 years old at the time. This is how the floodgates opened to much of the English speaking world as the amazing words of Indian poetry flowed out. (This is one story of how it happened- there are more but let's stick with this one, for now.)

Tagore had a fascinating life. He was born in Kolkata (once Calcutta) and was born into a wealthy Bengali Brahmin family. He went to England to study law, left with no degree and became a writer of small fame, of stories, songs and plays, in his home town. He, at 51, decided to go back to England to restart his studies (!) and that's when he wrote out the translations that changed his life and the world's perceptions of India. Just look at his eyes. There's a truth in them, isn't there?

Tagore was a brilliant intellect who knew something about post-Newtonian physics and had discussions with Einstein. He traveled the world after his Nobel Prize in 1913 and he started a school and he had political views which I cannot possibly explain because I don't understand Indian politics much better than I understand our own and India is a big country with a lot of political subgroups. Gandhi, I kind of understand. The 1961 census recognized, hold on to your hat-- 1,652 separate languages in India. A full 29 of those languages are each spoken by 1 million or more people. Now throw in the difficulties of politics and translation. Let's back away from this problem politely and get back to the poem, eh?

This poem is so wonderful because of its universality. Whether you are old and thinking that your life's path is coming to a slow halt or you are young and see that some impediment has left you feeling as though some path has been closed off to you, the poem has meaning and gives hope. The world is such a vast and various place that fresh worlds will open for you at every turn. There is never an end to learning, the world is filled with wonders, new horizons beckon you daily.

I must confess that while I deeply enjoy the poetry of India, the more I read about it, the more Hindi I understand, the more background literature I read on it, the less I know. I have several times mentioned the difficulties of translation and one of them is not the language itself, which one can learn, but the upbringing that goes along with the language. For example, if I would say something in a poem about, say, a baseball game or Mt. Rushmore or a Southern Baptist church, you would instantly be flooded with impressions, that we may share, about these things because we grew up in America. Where Tagore's work excels is transcending much of this cultural baggage and gets right to the heart of things.

I adore the work of Harivansh Bachchan, another famous poet. His son, Indian film star Amitabh Bachchan (yeah, I managed to slip him in again), reads and sings some of his work which you can find on YouTube. You'll need to find a good translation to fully appreciate the words but the tune (yes, tune- many poems in India are put to music- think how easy that makes them to memorize!) of his father's classic poem Madhushala (it's too long for us to do here and I wouldn't presume to understand it all) is wonderful. You'll find yourself humming it and long to know the words. That's how learning starts- for the love and interest of something. However, the Bachchans are not Bengali- it's a whole different culture of meaning.

I don't mean to scare you with Indian poetry difficulties, though. Indian poetry is a beautiful lake with enticing colorful flowers around it and spicy sandalwood smokes in the air. Just take a run and jump into the lake and start floating around. It's wonderful and heady stuff. Read a good translation of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita. This Vedic literature will make your understanding deeper and...

"a new country will be revealed with its wonders."

Here's a good Tagore quote: " I say again and again that I am a poet, that I am not a fighter by nature. I would give everything to be one with my surroundings. I love my fellow beings and I prize their love."

and another (they're endless): "Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come."

You can find more Tagore here: poemhunter.com/rabindranath-tagore/poems/

Number 84: Gerald Stern "The Dancing"

The Dancing

In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture
and wrinkled ties and baseball trophies and coffee pots
I have never seen a post-war Philco
with the automatic eye
nor heard Ravel's "Bolero" the way I did
in 1945 in that tiny living room
on Beechwood Boulevard, nor danced as I did
then, my knives all flashing, my hair all streaming,
my mother red with laughter, my father cupping
his left hand under his armpit, doing the dance
of old Ukraine, the sound of his skin half drum,
half fart, the world at last a meadow,
the three of us whirling and singing, the three of us
screaming and falling, as if we were dying,
as if we could never stop--in 1945--
in Pittsburgh, beautiful filthy Pittsburgh, home
of the evil Mellons, 5,000 miles away
from the other dancing--in Poland and Germany--
oh God of mercy, oh wild God.

-- Gerald Stern

Hap Notes: Gerald Stern (born 1925) was born to Eastern European immigrant parents who were Orthodox Jews. He was brought up in a fairly tough neighborhood in Pittsburgh. His much beloved sister, Sylvia, died at nine years old from spinal meningitis. He attended the University of Pittsburgh, was in the Army Air Corps, got his master's degree from Columbia and then spent his life teaching English. He taught at high schools at first then had positions at several different colleges including Temple University, Indiana University in PA, University of Iowa, Sarah Lawrence and Columbia.

His poetry is a sweet and salty mix of American; part big city savvy, part chatty conversational small town guy. In amidst it all is his Jewish upbringing which often makes him play tricks with the time almost like a magical Hasidic Kabbalah master.

In the poem, first we see an old shop (a thrift store? a Salvation Army Store?) filled with odd things: baseball trophies, neckties, broken furniture, coffee pots. They are domestic things that make him think of things he grew up around and he remembers his family's old radio, the Philco with the "automatic eye" like the one in the masthead picture above. He remembers he and his parents dancing in their tiny living room to Ravel's "Bolero." It was 1945 and they would probably have danced to anything, though- it was more than likely VE Day and the war was over-- everybody was dancing.

The Mellons, who one often thinks of as the donors of paintings and charity funds, were notorious strike breakers at the beginning of the 1900s and reputedly used machine guns to intimidate the striking workers. There's too much history in that one little phrase in the poem but the Mellons certainly had their evil side with a monopoly on aluminum that they jacked the price up on so high that U.S. Secretary of the Interior in 1941, Henry Ickes said, "If America loses this war it can thank the Aluminum Corporation of America.”

Note also that the objects he mentions at the beginning of the poem sort of put one in mind of things that got piled up or discarded during the war. One can almost see the stuff outside of a bombed building (well, maybe not the baseball trophies per se.) If you want a literal translation of his "knives shining" and his "hair streaming" I can't give you one, I've always thought of it more as figurative symbols of youth's sharpness and wildness.

Stern published his first book of poetry at 48 so while his knives may still be as shining as ever, his hair probably isn't streaming and his adult take on the world is both joyous and cautious. We may get to another of his poems this year, a favorite of mine, "Kissing Stieglitz Good-Bye" which uses photographer Alfred Stieglitz as a basis for some magical reminiscing. Oooh, and there's another great one "Behaving Like a Jew" maybe I'll salt them both in or maybe have a whole Stern week.

Stern has won scads of poetry prizes and grants and awards.

Here's a good Stern quote from a PBS interview: "When I was - I don't know - I always - when I was in high school and in the army and in college, I was always writing poetry, and I thought everybody was writing poetry. I just thought it was a normal activity. I was doing the other things - dating, playing football, drinking beer, et cetera, playing pool, but always I was writing poetry."

and a great one from Rumpus magazine: "The artist looks for a subject. You know, a lot of new poets don’t seem to have a subject. I don’t totally understand that. I did a reading recently at The New School for Best American Poetry; I published a poem there this year. Anyway, there were some very good poets at this reading, but there were also some who seemed more interested in being funny and making cute jokes and writing endlessly about nothing. It was narcissism, indulgence, no social consciousness, no sense of… We’re destroying the earth! We live in a country that’s governed by confusion and lies and that operates through greed and selfishness and cruelty. We’ve killed or forced into exile two million Iraqis. Where is the poetry? What are our important poets doing?"

You can find more Stern here: www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/231

Number 83: Dana Gioia "Sunday Night in Santa Rosa"

Sunday Night in Santa Rosa

The carnival is over. The high tents,

the palaces of light, are folded flat

and trucked away. A three-time loser yanks

the Wheel of Fortune off the wall. Mice

pick through the garbage by the popcorn stand.

A drunken giant falls asleep beside

the juggler, and the Dog-Faced Boy sneaks off

to join the Serpent Lady for the night.

Wind sweeps ticket stubs along the walk.

The Dead Man loads his coffin on a truck.

Off in a trailer by the parking lot

the radio predicts tomorrow's weather

while a clown stares in a dressing mirror,

takes out a box, and peels away his face.

--Dana Gioia

Hap Notes: Dana Gioia (born 1950- and it's pronounced "JOY-A") makes me a little uneasy. I suppose it's because he has the perfect education for corporate America (B.A. from Stanford, M.A. from Harvard, M.B.A. from Stanford) and he worked as Vice-President of Marketing for General Foods from 1977-1992. He quit that job to write poetry full time and was chairman for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) from 2003-2009. He has done worlds of good for poetry when he served at that post. So what makes me uneasy? (Come on, Wallace Stevens was a vice-president for Hartford Insurance wasn't he? What's my problem?) Maybe it's just the contemporary corporate aura that surrounds his work. He's a talented poet and a fair-minded enthusiastic and literate critic. He edited literary magazines. What the hell do I want, eh?

Ah, and my uneasiness also stems from a poetry lover's quandary. Gioia has taken up the daunting (and often thankless) task of editing several poetry anthologies. I don't know how you read an exciting new anthology, but I always look for my familiar favorites to see which poems got selected for the book. I was sort of crestfallen from the lack of favorites in the Gioia edited Twentieth Century American Poetry. Gioia wasn't the only editor and I know the decision making is tough but there are 180 poets in this book so leaving out Kunitz. Koch, Wakoski and Brautigan frosted me a little. If you are a poetry reader, you'll understand my blunt-headed belligerence. Also, I'll point out that Francis Turner Palgrave was a poet (Palgrave's Golden Treasury was first published in 1861) and I had issues (so did Tennyson, who re-edited it 30 years later) with him too. The C. Day Lewis version from 1954 was a blessing. What I'm saying is, there's a danger in expecting too much from an anthology. I found many delights in all these books. Still....

Oh, let's look at the poem and I'll stop my carping. He's an extraordinary person and part of me wants to find the flaw because I'm a bit of a skeptic.

First off, the poem is a wonderful word picture, isn't it? The cadence is brilliant, too. But, let's look a little deeper at the poem. It's the end of the weekend, the carnival shuts down and now it's time for "civilians" to put on make-up and go to work, isn't it? And it's Sunday night. Could the poet be saying something about the church? Look at the poem again. It's possible. Can you see any analogies to God in three persons here? David and Goliath? The "Dead Man" who is still alive? Could Eve be considered a "Serpent Lady?" Is this the church packing up its "show" for the weekend? Who else could be "taking off their face" on Sunday night? Can you see the meek inheriting the earth in the mice? Do you see a few more apt religious analogies in the "Wheel of Fortune"? And what does that radio signify about whoever is in that trailer who may run the carnival? Just some food for thought. Some more food for thought- is a carnival an inherently bad thing? Maybe, maybe not. "Palaces of light" hardly sounds evil does it?

Gioia is a Catholic and in 2010 he was awarded the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame, an honor given to an American Catholic in recognition of outstanding achievement to the church and society.

Gioia was born in Hawthorne, California so he's a native of the state. He lived in Santa Rosa (which is close to Petaluma, north of San Francisco) for quite a while as an adult. His dad was Italian, his mom was a native Californian of Mexican heritage, so he grew up in a house with three languages. And the Latin of the church, by the by. He likes the poetry of Longfellow (yay!) and he believes that a return to more formalized verse (with rhyme and meter etc.) is needed which strikes me as refreshingly modern, actually. He doesn't need me for a PR agent, he's got his own website with some of his poetry on it and many great critical pieces as well. Visit him here http://www.danagioia.net/

He is also a great proponent of jazz as a unique American art form (Brubeck even put one of his poems to music.) He worked, while with the NEA, to promote the reading of William Shakespeare, literacy in grade school students and pretty much revitalized that much maligned and battered arts organization. Every civilized country in the world understands the value of the arts and acts as patrons to their burgeoning, and also, established artists. Gioia, with his corporate savvy, knew how to talk to congress to get the NEA back on its feet again. Everybody in America owes him a debt of thanks for that.

Perhaps you remember or participated in the program Poetry Out Loud, where students from around the country memorized poems for competition in local, then state, then national levels. Around 320,000 high school students competed in this in 2010, thanks to Gioia's piloting of the program.

Here's a good Gioia quote: "Memorization went out of vogue in English classes, but kids still memorized rock and rap lyrics. The advantages of memorizing great poetry seem pretty obvious. It allows one to master and possess great language expressing powerful emotions, ideas, and situations. Memorizing and reciting also helps develop the student's powers of expression and gives experience in public speaking."

here's another: "The role of culture, however, must go beyond economics. It is not focused on the price of things, but on their value. And, above all, culture should tell us what is beyond price, including what does not belong in the marketplace. A culture should also provide some cogent view of the good life beyond mass accumulation. In this respect, our culture is failing us."

"Art is an irreplaceable way of understanding and expressing the world—equal to but distinct from scientific and conceptual methods. Art addresses us in the fullness of our being—simultaneously speaking to our intellect, emotions, intuition, imagination, memory, and physical senses. There are some truths about life that can be expressed only as stories, or songs, or images."

You can find more Gioia at his website listed above.

Number 82: Kay Ryan "Flamingo Watching"

Flamingo Watching

Wherever the flamingo goes,
she brings a city’s worth
of furbelows. She seems
unnatural by nature—
too vivid and peculiar
a structure to be pretty,
and flexible to the point
of oddity. Perched on
those legs, anything she does
seems like an act. Descending
on her egg or draping her head
along her back, she’s
too exact and sinuous
to convince an audience
she’s serious. The natural elect,
they think, would be less pink,
less able to relax their necks,
less flamboyant in general.
They privately expect that it’s some
poorly jointed bland grey animal
with mitts for hands
whom God protects.

-- Kay Ryan

Hap Notes: I love Kay Ryan's (born 1945) phrase "unnatural by nature." Ryan was the Poetry Consultant (see? I said it- hate the term but I'll use it instead of laureate if that's what I have to call it) for the U.S. just last year. She was a bit of an outsider poet, no-one was more surprised than she was when she was named laureate. Her several books of verses are certainly worth the position, though. Her poetry is vividly and often eccentrically phrased and is full of surprises (as most good poetry should be.)

One of the reasons I like Ryan is because she went to a "community" or "junior" college and I find them admirable for their abilities to give you the basic requirements for a college degree without the crippling expense. If you're going to have to take English 101, how much better to take it in a small class at a community college than in one of those "teaching theaters" full of a couple hundred students. I always hated those big lecture classes- nobody knows anyone and your papers are graded by grad students you've never met. It's not at all what one hopes college is about.

Ryan was born in San Jose, California and went to Antelope Valley College and later, the University of California in Los Angeles. She lives somewhere in Marin county, just like George Lucas. Her poetry flew under the radar until she was included in a few anthologies in the mid 1990s and, of course, it certainly didn't hurt that Dana Gioia has written several good pieces about her. If there's anyone in this country that you want to impress with your poetry, former chairman-of-the-NEA poet Gioia would be the guy. She worked with community college programs while she was laureate.

Ryan privately published her poetry by subscription and only one of her books had been backed by a New York publishing house. She's an object lesson in writing poetry; write it, publish it and let it go. Her poetry style is refreshing, usually fairly short, remarkably worded observations, as if she's some amalgam of Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore with a bit of Emily Dickenson in the mix. And remember what I always say; poets want to be published- it's hard and competitive and somewhat arbitrary.

A flamingo is an unusual creature, it has that reputation, like the puffin, for its odd and entertaining good looks. There are a great many analogies one could draw from this poem about people, writers, musicians and artists as well as animals. (And as a side note, I've always liked the British "grey" spelling better than the American "gray" spelling- it just seems right.) She has compression, the thing so undervalued in much contemporary poetry. It's a joy to read her thoughtful, densely packed verses with the often delightfully surprising conclusions or observations. She allows you to be a part of the poem as you read through it over and over. Her poems often strike me like some revelatory thing a stranger has said to you during the day- I keep coming back to it and pondering it.

Here's a good Ryan quote from her interview in the Paris Review: " I’d bought a tarot deck—this was the seventies—a standard one with a little accompanying book that explained how to read the cards, lay them out, shuffle them—all those things. But I’m not a student and was totally impatient with learning anything about the cards. I thought they were just interesting to look at. But I did use the book’s shuffling method, which was very elaborate, and in the morning I’d turn one card over and whatever that card was I would write a poem about it. The card might be Love, or it might be Death. My game, or project, was to write as many poems as there were cards in the deck. But since I couldn’t control which cards came up, I’d write some over and over again and some I’d never see. That gave me range. 
I always understood that to write poetry was to be totally exposed."

and another (and apply this to the poem, now): "I’ve always been sickened by the whole discussion of natural tone, natural voice. I think that’s ridiculous. Every tone, every voice is unnatural, and it is natural to be unnatural. So there’s nothing to talk about. It works or it doesn’t work. I don’t think that anybody ought to tolerate the tyranny of the idea of “natural” voice."


You can find a lot more Ryan here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/kay-ryan

Number 81: W.S. Merwin "Small Woman on Swallow Street"

Small Woman on Swallow Street

Four feet up, under the bruise-blue

Fingered hat-felt, the eyes begin. The sly brim

Slips over the sky, street after street, and nobody

Knows, to stop it. It will cover

The whole world, if there is time. Fifty years’

Start in gray the eyes have; you will never

Catch up to where they are, too clever

And always walking, the legs not long but

The boots big with wide smiles of darkness

Going round and round at their tops, climbing.

They are almost to the knees already, where

There should have been ankles to stop them.

So must keep walking all the time, hurry, for

The black sea is down where the toes are

And swallows and swallows all. A big coat

Can help save you. But eyes push you down; never

Meet eyes. There are hands in hands, and love

Follows its furs into shut doors; who

Shall be killed first? Do not look up there:

The wind is blowing the building-tops, and a hand

Is sneaking the whole sky another way, but

It will not escape. Do not look up. God is

On High. He can see you. You will die.

-- W. S. Merwin

Hap Notes: In the past couple of decades, William Stanley Merwin (born 1927) has become more zen-like in his poetry but this isn't one of those. This poem always scares me a bit and I believe it's supposed to. The big dark gaping grins of her boots is a terrifying image as she seems to be swallowed up by her overly large footwear on her small frame.

This woman is being swallowed up by her own darkness. The world, and everything in it, is too big for her. Just don't look up at that wide expanse of sky, at things beyond your hat brim. Keep your head down, wear a big coat for protection, and hurry along. She is over 50, she's not a young woman, but she is determined to keep on moving. She's clever but nervous.

Here's what Robert Bly says about "Small Woman on Swallow Street": " The poem is cunning and strong. The evil in human nature is not related to Adam or Eve, or to theological doctrines, or to something the Greeks might or might not have done, but to kindly members of sewing circles in little towns in Pennsylvania, members of the poet's family, white protestants." It's an interesting interpretation.

Merwin's dad was a minister. He was born in New York and the family moved to Pennsylvania where Merwin grew to love the natural world. The property had a barn and a big yard and he used to talk to a tree out in the back yard when he was a kid. You gotta love a kid who talks to trees and wrote hymns for his father to see.

When my sister was around 9 or 10, my mom dressed her up as a little old lady for Halloween. She had on a long old flowery dress, a big coat, a dark blue hat with powdery pink flowers and she drew lines on her face to simulate wrinkles. The sparkle in her eyes was of a little girl but she actually looked old. She had a cane for walking. She was a little slip of a thing. Seriously, that silly costume on my sister scared the bejesus out of me. It was like looking at fast-forward mortality. I often think of my sister-as-an-old-lady when I read this poem. The story of my sister-as-an-old-lady is a tale of making sure you still have that child inside of you as you age-scary as that may seem to others. The poem is sort of what happens when you don't- when you give the child in you away. You will die anyway, but at least you'll be curious about it and not scared of it. You won't be swallowed up by your own darkness.

Merwin's career has been long and illustrious. He's won two Pulitzers and dozens of prestigious poetry prizes. He was friends with Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, he studied under R.P. Blackmur at Princeton and he knew John Berryman. He was a good friend of James Wright. He has written more than 30 books of poetry and is the 2010-2011 current U.S. Poet Laureate.

Ever since he moved to Hawaii some 30 years ago, his poetry has taken on a certain open- hearted philosophical quality that is often very Zen like. I think his surroundings have something to do with this. He built his home there at the foot of a dormant volcano. He has a large garden there that has become a sanctuary for rare plants. He is a practicing environmentalist.

Here's one of my favorite Merwin quotes: "As soon as I could move a stub of pencil and put words on paper, I wanted to be a poet."

You can find more Merwin (whom we will see later on this year) here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/w-s-merwin

Number 80: Elizabeth Bishop "Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore"

Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore

From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
please come flying.

Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships
are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags
rising and falling like birds all over the harbor.
Enter: two rivers, gracefully bearing
countless little pellucid jellies
in cut-glass epergnes dragging with silver chains.
The flight is safe; the weather is all arranged.
The waves are running in verses this fine morning.
Please come flying.

Come with the pointed toe of each black shoe
trailing a sapphire highlight,
with a black capeful of butterfly wings and bon-mots,
with heaven knows how many angels all riding
on the broad black brim of your hat,
please come flying.

Bearing a musical inaudible abacus,
a slight censorious frown, and blue ribbons,
please come flying.
Facts and skyscrapers glint in the tide; Manhattan
is all awash with morals this fine morning,
so please come flying.

Mounting the sky with natural heroism,
above the accidents, above the malignant movies,
the taxicabs and injustices at large,
while horns are resounding in your beautiful ears
that simultaneously listen to
a soft uninvented music, fit for the musk deer,
please come flying.

For whom the grim museums will behave
like courteous male bower-birds,
for whom the agreeable lions lie in wait
on the steps of the Public Library,
eager to rise and follow through the doors
up into the reading rooms,
please come flying.
We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping,
or play at a game of constantly being wrong
with a priceless set of vocabularies,
or we can bravely deplore, but please
please come flying.

With dynasties of negative constructions
darkening and dying around you,
with grammar that suddenly turns and shines
like flocks of sandpipers flying,
please come flying.

Come like a light in the white mackerel sky,
come like a daytime comet
with a long unnebulous train of words,
from Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.

--Elizabeth Bishop

Hap Notes: Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) and Moore (1887-1972) were friends and Moore served as a mentor for the young Bishop, being 24 years older. They met when Bishop was in her early 20s and Moore in her late 40s and Bishop often mentions the generational differences in the their lives. They maintained their friendship for more than 35 years, often corresponding in letters (you know, those old fashioned, hand-written missive sent through the post office. A dying art, the letter.) [Breaking off briefly to say that one hopes our correspondences will not be reduced to reproduced "tweets" on our phones. Was watching the ESPN coverage of the Carmelo Anthony (and the Knicks got Billups, too!) trade and they had graphics displaying the tweets. (!?)]

It's obvious from the poem that Bishop loved Moore and maybe even received a bit of motherly warmth from this, which she surely could have used since Bishop's own mother was in a mental institution the whole time she was growing up. Of course, Moore was a formal woman (one part of the generational differences) and Bishop never even called her "Marianne" for two years of the friendship, calling her "Miss Moore" until Moore invited the younger poet to use her first name.

Moore and Bishop's poetry have one vital thing in common in that they are both detailed observers of the things and life around them. Bishop called Moore "the world's greatest living observer" and carefully composed letters writing little observances and anecdotes to her. Moore was a good reader, a wise adviser and an honest critic and helper with Bishop's poetry.

Bishop met her through a librarian friend at Vassar. Moore and Bishop set up a time to talk. Here's Bishop describing the event.

"I was very frightened, but I put on my new spring suit and took the train to New York. I had never seen a picture of Miss Moore: all I knew was that she had red hair and usually wore a wide-brimmed hat. I expected the hair to be bright red and for her to be tall and intimidating. I was right on time, even a bit early, but she was there before me (no matter how early one arrived, Marianne was always there first) and, I saw at once, not very tall and not in the least bit intimidating. She was forty-seven, an age that seemed old to me then, and her hair was mixed with white to a faint rust pink, and her rust-pink eyebrows were frosted with white. The large black flat hat was as I’d expected it to be. She wore a blue tweed suit that day and, as she usually did then, a man’s “polo shirt,” as they were called, with a black bow at the neck. The effect was quaint, vaguely Bryn Mawr 1909, but stylish at the same time. I sat down and she began to talk."


and later in the meeting:

"Happily ignorant of the poor Vassar girls before me who hadn’t passed muster, I began to feel less nervous and even spoke some myself. I had what may have been an inspiration, I don’t know—at any rate, I attribute my great good fortune in having known Marianne as a friend in part to it. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was making a spring visit to New York and I asked Miss Moore (we called each other “Miss” for over two years) if she would care to go to the circus with me the Saturday after next. I didn’t know that she always went to the circus, wouldn’t have missed it for anything, and when she accepted, I went back to Poughkeepsie in the grimy day coach extremely happy."

I love the idea of Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop at the circus together. Makes me feel as happy as the flying poet descriptions in the poem. The illustration is an epergne, if you didn't know what it was (and why should you?).

Moore, in her letters to Bishop, seems a bit cooler and less emotive than Bishop in her letters but the younger poet wisely understood that this was generational. Moore was raised in a time of more formal manners, where personal remarks were kept to a minimum and cordial relationships were not casual. Readers older than 40 may recall older teachers or relatives who were like this. Their every thought was not expressed, nor did they think it proper that it should be. Moore was anxious to help Bishop and wrote to her many times telling her this. Remember how I said yesterday that Moore spoke in complete sentences? That's how educated people generally spoke (and still speak sometimes.)

Bishop says, "She must have been one of the world’s greatest talkers: entertaining, enlightening, fascinating, and memorable; her talk, like her poetry, was quite different from anyone else’s in the world."

If you want to review what we've discussed about Bishop go here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/number-34-elizabeth-bishop-filling.html