from emily and i

Though I have my long-standing ritual of sending out verse on the summer and winter solstices, only once have I sent out something on thanksgiving.  It happened to be the November following 9/11, something that seemed particularly relevant to what we were all feeling then.  It’s not the same now, of course, but I happened to look at the poem again this morning at o’dark thirty.　

Ms Dickinson, in her little upstairs room, dressed in white, writing and hiding poems, seems to know a lot about the journeys we all take through our lives. The writing is very immediate, and the stutter-step rhythm and near-rhymes make it for me, almost contemporary, though it retains a particular daguerreotype glow.

 

 

 

We grow accustomed to the Dark -

When Light is put away -

As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp

To witness her Goodbye -

　

A Moment – We uncertain step

For newness of the night -

Then – fit our Vision to the Dark -

And meet the Road – erect -

　

And so of larger – Darkenesses -

Those Evenings of the Brain -

When not a Moon disclose a sign -

Or Star – come out – within -

　

The Bravest – grope a little -

And sometimes hit a Tree

Directly in the Forehead -

But as they learn to see -

　

Either the darkness alters -

Or something in the sight

Adjusts itself to Midnight -

And Life steps almost straight.

on strange beauty and joy

“I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!” – Louise Bogan

close encounters with the third grade

i find myself shocked by all the defense of roman polanski all focusing on his stature as an artist and some of the horrible parts of his life (the holocaust, the manson family murder of his wife, sharon tate).  but none of that negates the truth of the actual incident, that he drugged and raped a 13 year old girl.  yeah, it may have happened over 30 years ago, yeah the victim may say she doesn’t want any publicity.  doesn’t negate the facts. 

and of course, one of his defenders is woody allen, who married the daughter of his long time partner, certainly an act of moral incest.   why would whoopi goldberg say it was “not rape-rape”?  is statuatory rape any better?  if you read the below  hard-hitting article in salon dot com, below it was, it seems clearly and unequivocaly the rape of a child.  we can defend polanski’s movies without defending this act.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/09/28/polanski_arrest/

“’round, ’round, get around, i get around”

heard this on the radio and flashed back to high school days, riding around the western suburbs of portland, oregon, with my bud john woodson.  i remember songs like this on the a.m.  radio, not picking up chicks, and driving into gas stations and buying 50 cents worth of gas (which back then was about a gallon and a half)

riding the dutch mountains

the bride and i have, for several years, been great fans of the tour de france.  it’s one of three so-called ‘grand tours’, the others being the giro d’italia, and the vuelta a espana.  all are three weeks long, and all have an overall winner (the GC, or general classifications), the best sprinter (sometimes called the ‘points’ competition), the best young rider, the best climber (also called king of the mountains).   the mountain stages can be truly brutal  – sometimes 6-8,000 feet, a 7-8% grade.

here’s the point of all this.  we’re watching the vuelta, which spent its first four days in the netherlands, a bit of germany and belgium.  the other day, the days racing was so flat, that the winner of the king of the mountains points for the day only had to climb a hill 30 feet high……thirty feet. 

on the passing of ted kennedy

imagine being the youngest son of a family destined for greatness, with the eldest dying in the war, and two brothers assassinated within five years.  how hard that must have been.  for all that he might not have been as talented as john and bobby, and for all the excessives of his youth, ted kennedy became a great senator, a towering figure, and a committed friend to health care, education, and all those who needed a hand.   ‘for all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.’

deletion

looking for an address in my electronic contact list, and ran into the name of a colleague who recently passed away.  i could do nothing but delete the name, but said a little prayer first.  still, a little spooky

rachel maddow on the arts

Political commentator Rachel Maddow recently spoke on the arts at Jacobs Pillow:

Sometimes we choose to serve our country in uniform, in war,  Sometimes in elected office. And those are the ways of serving our country that I think we are trained to easily call heroic. It’s also a service to your country, I think, to teach poetry in the prisons, to be an incredibly dedicated student of dance, to fight for funding music and arts education in the schools.

 A country without an expectation of minimal artistic literacy, without a basic structure by which the artists among us can be awakened and given the choice of following their talents and a way to get to be great at what they do, is a country that is not actually as a great as it could be.  And a country without the capacity to nurture artistic greatness is not being a great country.   It is a service to our country, and sometimes it is heroic service to our country, to fight for the United States of America to have the capacity to nurture artistic greatness.

 Not just in wartime but especially in wartime, and not just in hard economic times but especially in hard economic times, the arts get dismissed as ’sissy.’ Dance gets dismissed as craft, creativity gets dismissed as inessential, to the detriment of our country.   And so when we fight for dance, when we buy art that’s made by living American artists, when we say that even when you cut education to the bone, you do not cut arts and music education, because arts and music education IS bone, it is structural, is it essential; you are, in [Jacob's Pillow founder] Ted Shawn’s words, you are preserving the way of life that we are supposedly fighting for and it’s worth being proud of.

poem of the day – penguins…..

Penguins

     
They’ve been handing out pamphlets in Leicester Square 
(for ‘Leicester’ read ‘Worcester’) 
ever since our latest victory 
(for ‘victory’ read ‘disaster’)

and all the penguins in Worcester Square 
(for ‘penguins’ read ‘pigeons’) 
have, like dodos, forgotten how to fly 
(for ‘fly’ read ‘do long division’)

and are flocking around the annoyed Admiral 
(read ‘Trafalgar’ for ‘Worcester’) 
like a mob of highly incensed cassowaries 
(for ‘cassowaries’ read ‘roosters’).

Meanwhile, in the bay, the pilot boats 
(for ‘pilot’ read ‘pirate’) 
lull, bob and circle in the lazy tide 
(for ‘circle’ read ‘gyrate.’)

And you, according to recent reports 
(for ‘Trafalgar’ read ‘Red’) 
may or may not have been recently seen 
(for ‘pamphlets’ read ‘bread’)

in the presence of a certain shadowy figure 
(for ‘figure’ read ‘redhead’) 
who’s been well known to hatch a few plots of her own 
(and for ‘presence’ read ‘bed’)

like a dame straight out of Raymond Chandler.
(But for ‘Chandler’ read ‘Carver’).
Meanwhile, those penguins are mobbing Red Square 
(but for ‘Red’ read ‘Harvard’)

and have rearranged so as to form 
(for ‘rearranged’ read ‘reappeared’) 
a message visible from the sky 
(and for ‘meanwhile,’ read ‘as we feared.’)

And don’t you think, comrade (for ‘comrade’ read ‘friend’) 
(and for ‘Harvard’ read ‘Tiananmen’) 
that all plots, all poems, all struggles must end?
(And for ‘end’—if you would—read, ‘begin again.‘)
Troy Jollimore
Pleiades

song of the month

Check out ‘Home’, a really cool song from the debut CD of a LA band called Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. Jangly blend of folk-rock, country, indie, bits of Sergio Leone, a pocket polyphonic spree with trumgets.  A lovely, messy. joyous love song.