Sweet Summer Sights

It's hot here and the humidity has been hovering just below 100%.  At least it's not raining -- all the time. 

Yesterday, I went for a walk at the new 100 Acres Art & Nature Park at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  Two artists are living in a floating island in the lake right now. I'll have to go back again with the intent to bring something to trade and make a visit to the island. You can read about their project "Give and Take" here.

The camera, of course, was present on my walk. It's amazing the things you see when you start looking for them.

When I got home, I spied this beautiful blue creature on my patio table:

And these, that came home from the Farmers' Market:

which reminded me, as plums always do, of the poem "This is Just to Say", by William Carlos Williams. They were so sweet and so cold.

March Haiku

Sun shines on birch branch
Huddled against cold blue sky
Early hopes of Spring

Who Am I? Am I A City?

And the junk stood up into skyscrapers and asked:
Who am I? Am I a city? And if I am what is my name?
And once while the time whistles blew and blew again
The men answered: Long ago we gave you a name,
Long ago we laughed and said: You? Your name is Chicago.
Early the red men gave a name to the river,

the place of the skunk
the river of wild onion smell,
Shee-caw-go

- The Windy City, Carl Sandburg

Love Chicago? Love poetry?
Don't know Chicago? Don't know too much about poetry?

Whatever your answer, you should check out the Poetry Foundation's Chicago Poetry Tour.

This is an amazing feature produced by the Poetry Foundation with several tours of Chicago, featuring poetry from many Chicago poets. You can watch the tours online, with audio recordings of poets reading their works about or inspired by the city. Or, you can download the audio to play as you walk through the city. The site also has downloadable maps. There are 22 tours of downtown Chicago landmarks and surrounding neighborhoods. You can listen to Carl Sandburg reciting The Windy City, or Gwendolen Brooks, reciting her We Real Cool, as well as readings by other poets, writers, and critics. You can navigate to specific poems or poets, rather than navigating via the tour map.

I often think that New York is my favorite city in the world, but if I give it 'Best in World' title, I think it could be exempted from the competition for the Best in US laurels, a title which would then, undoubtedly, go to Chicago.

I'd love to see similar features of other cities, featuring snippets of poetry and prose of and about each city. Hmmm...this has me pondering what I would choose to include if this was done for my hometown. I think that's a future blog post.

Economic Balancing Acts

The theme for the current issue of Qarrtsiluni is Economy. Browsing the site this evening and reading a few of the entries posted thus far this month, was all of a writing prompt I needed. After writing the poem below -- which certainly could benefit from additional revisions at a later date -- I listened to audio clip from 1-Jun, an interview with a Newfoundland resident, which gave me the last line for this poem.

Also linked on ReadWritePoem, prompt #77.

Economic Balancing Acts

Stretch dollars
till the green fades
and the faces blur
and you strain to hear
the clink of coins.

Stretch pot roast:
three lunches, two dinners,
the potatoes thinned to the point
of not remembering the dank,
loamy dirt of their birth.

Cramped in economy
class, with no room
for flailing arms
or growing legs
or new shoots,

You must conserve your movements,
and your thoughts,
and all divinations
for the future of your humanity.
Turbulence will leave your skins bruised.

Conserve your finances.
Conserve your energy.
Conserve your life.
Keep from others what you do not
want loose in the world.

Check your pulse.
Wear a crash helmet.
Catch your breath.
Avoid late blight.
Know your heart's capacity.

Know your heart's capacity.
No bailouts are needed;
only manage your own household.
Memorize all the thresholds of
the many-chambered dwellingplaces:

hidden caves,
deep, ancient crevasses,
undiscovered streams --
so you do not forget
your tuberous roots.

What you give, you'll never miss.

Spring: unfurled, unseen

Spring unfurled unseen.
In times interwoven with rain
the warmth penetrated, luminous
diamond pipes between drops,
soaking into the loam, finding possibilities
archived from the shedding of previous years,
only faint jasmine scents of pleasures
in the gardens of Alhambra.

I forgot to listen at night
for the furtive sounds of the shoots
climbing a steady moon-lit path,
past decaying leaves to stand still
at dawn like vampires, lest they be seen.

And what of such duplicity?
What covenant with angels unknown have they made
that keeps secrets disguised by chlorophyll --
their colors so bright, so luminescent
that they hide behind ordinary greens --
so that we can never be
what they have always known?

Can you spare a word?

The following was posted on the Read, Write, Poem site. This is part of an yet-to-be announced "assignment". A writing prompt, I assume.

Poet, Can You Spare a Word (or 50)?

This is part two of Welcome to NaPoWriMo Day! For future use this month (don’t worry, you’ll find out why soon enough), please use the above statement in an email to a poetry pal. Ask someone you know well, or ask someone you barely know (check out our participant page, perhaps, or the sign up list in the intro post here) for a list of 50 words. Feel free to ask for interesting words. Ask for wild words. Ask for mean words. All you really need is a list of 50 words and a poet (or two) willing to provide them. Stay tuned for your 50-word assignment(s)!

Can you provide me with a few words? Leave them in the comments. I'll use them in some way related to the prompt when it is posted and share the results with you. Those of you who have followed me for a while know that I don't follow rules very well, but I'll try to do it without stretching the boundaries into something unrecognizable.

Thanks for your contribution. Think of it as a contribution to National Poetry Month.

Poem here and gone

Here:
Surrounding me, filling me,
a truth found, waiting impatiently,
to be chiseled in stone, written on the heart.
Ego satisfied, sitting back
in awe of the perfect poem.

Gone:
Slipping through my hands
before the pen, leaving only
the forlorn residue of escaped words,
finding the quick path to immortality
somewhere near the horizon line,
filling in between the trees,
expanding around the clouds.

Seen. Unseen.
Forgotten. Felt.
Out of grasp of hand and tongue.

Poem

A guest post, a poem written by my friend David.

A Few Such Nights

Before the moon, a quarter, a smiling Cheshire quarter, rises in the sky to kiss the lower limb of the hickory on the side hill, we are out after dinner. Mid-to-late February, they call it; finally a snap in the cold spell; a foot or more melts at dusk in the high thirties.

We climb the hill, the one under the hickory, shovels put aside for a moment; velvety indigo blue darkening in the west, giving way to the lights around the back porch.

Our sleds sit hard on the sun compressed snow, snow made into balls easily just past the crispy outer shell. He refused gloves as we left the garage, not expecting play.

He grabs my hand to steady himself on the climb. I think of his small, chilled bare hands against my chilled, leather-palmed work glove. I excuse my hand for a moment, remove the glove and take his hand again. I feel my hand warm his, and think I hear an unconscious lift in his voice.

© David J Marsh, 2007

Becoming Human Together

It is an old story
But one that can still be told
About a man who loved
And lost a friend to death
And learned he lacked the power
To bring him back to life.
It is the story of Gilgamesh
And his friend Enkidu.

Gilgamesh was king of Uruk,
A city set between the Tigris
And Euphrates rivers
In ancient Babylonia.
Enkidu was born on the Steppe
Where he grew up among the animals.
Gilgamesh was called a god and man;
Enkidu was an animal and man.
It is the story
Of their becoming human together.
-- Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative
Copyright, 1970, Herbert Mason

What else would the oldest known narrative be about but the full range of emotions: love, hatred, fear, arrogance, joy, determination, survival, friendship, death, grief. These are the emotions that make us human. Gilgamesh is the story of how we experience these emotions.

I knew little about Gilgamesh before I read it this week. I knew that was considered one of the oldest narratives. I knew that it had a story of a great flood in it. When my son went to sell his copy after completing an AP Lit class 2 years ago, I pulled it out of the pile, and promptly forgot about on the shelves. When I opened it recently and read the first lines, I was captivated.

On one level, you can read Gilgamesh as a fairytale, an epic, or a myth. It can be read as a tale of hubris, with a fall and a recognition of one's own mortality told through the story of an arrogant king who meets, fights, and then befriends, his equal, but, in his headstrong desire to be triumphant, brings about his friend's death. It can be considered a story of a journey, with the hero, in typical epic fashion, learning a truth through his quest. Or, one can view it as the timeless and universal story of how grief can change one's life.

After Enkidu's death, Gilgamesh grieves for his friend. He wants to fight the course of fate, to change the outcome of his life so that he may continue to have the presence of his friend. Without it, he is not sure how he can go on.

Reading of Gilgamesh's desolation, I thought of a modern description of grief, Auden's poem, Funeral Blues:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

There were no phones or airplanes in ancient Mesopotamia, but Gilgamesh would have understood that Enkidu was his compass, his "working week and Sunday rest", and like the speaker in Auden's poem, he wanted everything to stop because of his grief. Gilgamesh, experiencing grief for the first time, feels that his sorrow is different from others. "The word Enkidu/Roamed through every thought/Like a hungry animal through empty lairs/In search of food. The only nourishment/He knew was grief, endless in its hidden source/Yet never ending hunger."

Gilgamesh's grief is what keeps him going in his quest to find a way to defeat death and bring his friend back to life. When he finally finds it, he is joyous and refreshed. But when he leaves the plant of eternal life alone for a few minutes, a serpent smells its fragrance and devours it for himself. Gilgamesh knows that this is the end of his quest and is filled with the sorrow of defeat. He returns to Uruk, fearful that people will not remember his friend. Gilgamesh recognizes that his pain is his own. He looks at the city walls and is awed by his people's achievements and he goes on, despite his personal sadness.

Grief is overwhelming, and friendship is personal and intimate. When we first encounter grief we want everything to stop -- clocks, telephones, barking dogs, life -- because everything has changed. We look at the world with different eyes because things are radically and irreversibly changed. And yet, eventually, we go on, somehow.

Love and Sorrow makes us human. Grief is private and universal. It is why the epic of Gilgamesh, written 2150 BCE, is relevant today.

Lost poem of silver and pink

I wander out the window
bored by the conversation on the phone;
Tethered in my cell by debits and credits
that I don't give a damn about.
The sky is lowering,
a silver-gray shadowing
the purples of the wild plums
at the scanty woods' edge.
A hawk flies overhead,
circling a center point
hid in the forest of glass,
the lake a dammed branch of the river
stopped in its tracks.
I do the warrior pose,
a sun salute to the threatening skies,
forgetting to breathe from my soul.
I craft the perfect lyric in my head;
meter and rhyme and imagery to capture
the trees and the skies and the bird.
Then, jolted back to the call,
All is gone in an instant.
I have only the memory
of the beauty of the feeling
I thought I held in my eye.

Later, at home, I look at
the erosion by the mailbox,
the steep drop by the side of the road,
water from the rain dripping slowly
into a deep hole, pooling gently,
flower petals flowing past
to the sewer drain.

April

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

The jonquils scattered throughout my yard started to bloom today. Unfortunately it was too dark to take photos, so here is what's in the vase on the dining room table, purchased and placed there just because it's Spring.

April is National Poetry Month, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. They offer 30 suggestions for how you can participate on their web site. You can receive a Poem-a-day email; today's poem is Secret History, by Charles Simic.

Another way to celebrate is to take up Kate's "modest" poetry challenge: post a commentary about a poem sometime during April. Though some would find Chaucer a worthy poet (as I do), the above poem & this post would not meet the requirements for Kate's challenge; read Kate's post for more details. I intend to participate in this at some other time this month.

Patterns

This is a photo from inside the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. As exquisite as this photo is, it pales in comparison to the real thing. Standing inside the Alhambra, the patterns are almost overwhelming to the eye. And yet, because it is a pattern -- ordered, not chaos -- there is a tranquility to the intricate patterned stone. I think patterns can be beautiful. This is one of the most beautiful patterns that I have seen.

This is another pattern that I find tranquil and mystic; a thing of beauty. Did you think it was a rose window at first? Look at it closely. It is a cross-section of dna.

I find the similarities in the patterns, the starbursts and curlicues, between these two fascinating. Stone carvers at the Alhambra in 12th century Spain, and glass makers in 13th century France creating rose windows used similar patterns. While the Gothic window builders may have been influenced by the Islamic architecture at Alhambra, neither would have known of the similar shapes in nature in the double-helix.

I suppose it has something to do with mathematics and pi, though I don't know enough about it to know what. I wonder though, if we don't find beauty in shapes that are replicated in nature, even if we are unaware of them, because it is something innate, in our dna, so to speak.

Here is a poem about patterns of a different type, patterns of evil and death that overshadow the beauty of patterns in the world.

Patterns, by Amy Lowell

I walk down the garden-paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jeweled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden-paths.

My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the splashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover.
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon--
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
"Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se'nnight."
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
"Any answer, Madam," said my footman.
"No," I told him.
"See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer."
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, "It shall be as you have said."
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

-- Amy Lowell

In a Bee-Loud Glade

The problem with living in the city, amongst all of the hectic busy-ness of contemporary life, is that we do not live in a bee-loud glade.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
 
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Hear here:  Yeats' own recording of his poem.

Take a minute, take an hour:  Hear the song in your deep heart's 
core and you'll understand that there is no reason for a in-depth 
reading of Yeats' poem

I thought of this driving to work this morning:

SONNET 73
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

I know that it is a metaphor and has meaning beyond the literal, but passing by trees that a week ago had many leaves just starting to turn, and noticing that I didn't see many birds, I couldn't help but think of the lines:

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

This is one of the first Shakespearean sonnets I remember reading. I think I was in 8th or 9th grade. I can't imagine that I had a clue about its meaning. I recently bought Bill Bryson's Shakespeare: The World as Stage. Though it is short, I haven't had time to begin reading it yet.

The cold weather has arrived prompting me to find my hat & gloves at the back of the closet. There's not a spot on my driveway not covered with leaves. Family plans for Thanksgiving have been set. The sandhill crane count this week at their Northern Indiana stopover is >9000. The furnace has been turned on. Yes, it's definitely Fall.

A bit on poetry

I received an ARC of Adrienne Rich's new book of poetry, Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth in the mail yesterday. (ARC courtesy of LibraryThing). At the end of a long day, it was a welcomed delivery sitting amongst mailings for local elections and housewares sales. I immediately ripped open the package so I could hold the book in my hands.

It is a slim volume, containing only 30 poems. I flipped through the book quickly, not intending to read it before dinner, picking up scattered images here and there. Later in the evening, I returned to read more concentratedly. It struck me how odd it is that 30 poems sparsely covering a mere 100-odd pages can be so dense. How reading poetry can bend your mind at sharp right angles that sometimes poke, sometimes tingle your synapses.

I have to sample poems slowly. I'll revisit this book several times over the next few weeks. Gradually, more and more of the images will settle in my thoughts and I'll begin to make sense of these poems. I'll read most of them a few times, some of them many times. There may be one or two that I won't be able to put out of my mind for days. Eventually, through reading, the poems will reveal themselves to me. Or will force me to recognize something about the world and myself that I didn't perceive previously.

That's how I've thought about reading poetry for years. So I had to smile when I read this quote in the preface to Rich's book:

Poetry isn't easy to come by. You have to write it like you owe a debt to the world. In that way poetry is how the world comes to be in you. -- Alan Davies

It's like that for the poetry reader as well. Reading poetry is how the world comes to be in you.

I'll likely write more about this volume later. Or maybe I'll post something about my favorite poem by Adrienne Rich: Storm Warnings, which I first read in college many years ago. But, for now I'll leave you with two snippets from Rich's work:

From Storm Warnings

Weather abroad
And weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction.

and these lines from the poem Calibrations contained in Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth,

A poem with calipers to hold a heart
so it will want to go on beating

A poem with calipers to hold a heart. Isn't that a beautiful image?

Reflection

I am as if
a shimmer in a lake,
rippling away from the edges;
gently, quietly,
in concentric circles.
Sunlight fading the arcs
when the wind highlights
those at the far reaches.

Few notice.
Do they think the water is like glass?
Only see their own reflections?
Too busy to hear the silence,
to not plumb the depths?
Deep down in the murky bottom
is where I howl and cry.

There, only the occasional
sound wave clouds the
view to the surface:
cool green tunnels running
to a distant yellow sky
beyond leafy shores.

Poetry Map

Poets.org has added a new feature to their website. Now there is a National Poetry Map. Click on the state you are interesting in and you'll be redirected to a page containing information on writers from that state and samples of their work. Additionally, there is local information such as conferences, festivals, readings and nearby bookstores. When I came across this link today, I visited several states and found interesting information. A nice place to spend a few hours on the net.

On the Indiana site, one of the featured poets is Ethridge Knight. His poem Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane is a poem that I first read about 25 years ago. I re-read it this evening; it is still just as powerful. You can read it here.

Batter a paradox

A few weeks ago, I came across a quote from John Donne, and had to look up the source. In doing so, I took the time to read through The Holy Sonnets, a collection of 17 sonnets Donne wrote in his later life, after the death of his beloved wife. Of these 17, I had previously only been familiar with two of them: Sonnet X, Death, be not proud and Sonnet XIV, Batter my heart, three-person'd God.

Holy Sonnet XIV is a poem that vexes me. And, yet, it is a poem that I love. It is fitting to have these contrary reactions to Holy Sonnet 14, given that the poem's beauty and truthfulness lies in understanding the paradoxes in Donne's sonnet.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

The images of violence in this poem are overwhelming. The speaker asks his loving God to set aside his gentle, healing ways ("for you/As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;) replacing them with force. The speaker compares himself to a town in battle that will lose to the enemy; the speaker traitorously abandoning his threshold despite reason. (Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,/But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.) Lastly, Donne compares the speaker to an unfaithful bride, loving God, but betrothed to his enemy. (Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,) To be released from this agony, the speaker asks God to batter him, imprison him as his only salvation. And this is where the poem gets really tricky, or perhaps even icky: the speaker asks to be ravished -- the Elizabethan word meaning rape -- in order to be purified, to be defiled in order to be made chaste.

To my modern sensibilities, this conceit is wrong. A God of love and mercy should not be compared with acts of violence, especially rape, a violent act of power and control. To suggest it seems not just inappropriate, but sacrilegious. It is so contrary to what I hold as true, that it is jarring, shocking, even revolting.

And yet...maybe that is exactly Donne's point. By using such brutal and shocking metaphors he makes the point that the easier way is that of the world -- the earthly, and the carnal. In our imperfections we choose things of this world, rather than those of a heavenly one in the guise of freedom. I believe that the spiritual path is one to be found here, not only in some dreamy, cloud like conceit of a heavenly afterlife, but it is only found by abandoning the trappings of this world that likewise enslave us. The speaker in Donne's poem knows which master he should serve, but begs to be bullied into servitude to the more difficult path. As Bob Dylan once penned, (in what had to be one of his worst songwriting phases), "...It may be the devil or it may be the Lord/But you're gonna have to serve somebody".

And so, I love Donne's poem for the form, the meter, the lyrical way the words play in my head and on my ear, (go read the poem aloud, immersing yourself in its language) and even for its ultimate meaning, but the explicitly violent images distress me. My feelings a paradox, just like Donne's poem.

I prefer the prayer/poem of Rabi'ah al-Adawiyya (an 8th century woman from Basra, Persia) which presents the same paradox. While her images are not of battery, rape and sexual torture, they are no less frightning:

Oh God, If I worship Thee for fear of Hell,
Burn me in Hell.
If I worship Thee for in hopes of Paradise,
Exclude me from it.
But, if I worship Thee for Thy own sake,
Do not keep Thy Everlasting Beauty from me.

Musing about Museums...and a poem inspired by an artistic muse

A few days ago Bloglily wrote a wonderful travelogue about the Getty Museum. I commented on her blog that I felt like I had visited two museums that day -- her virtual tour of the Getty and my in-person tour of an Cezanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant Guard exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. (see here for info on the exhibit).

I agree with BL that museums can be tiring. I love going to museums, but I've learned that I enjoy them more if I go with the intent of only seeing a few things. That is why I only saw the exhibit at the AIC, although I have to admit that had the Chagall windows, one of my favorites at the AIC, been in place, I would have had to sit for a few minutes in front of them. They are in storage now during renovations and won't be back for several more months. It is jarring walking by where they have been for years and not seeing them.


When looking at the permanent collection in a museum, I like to let the art just wash over me. You can't do that with too many works; it causes one to shut down in a defensive move against emotional overload. But, when I go to an exhibit, I like to listen to the audio presentation and read the exhibit notes. I find the background information interesting. I like to understand the curator's point of view, to learn what informs the exhibit, what are the unifying forces in the collection, whether it be a certain theme, a particular artistic movement, a cultural or political movement. I was a little disappointed in the audio tour for this particular exhibit. I felt that it was really dumbed down and did little to indicate why these particular works were illustrative of Vollard's choices and subsequent influence on the modern art world. Why did he choose to promote certain artists? Were his choices based on his taste or was he just pragmatic? For the works that he chose not to represent, but were later considered masterpieces, why did he not choose them initially? The exhibit didn't explore these questions to my satisfaction and I thought that the audio tour made the assumption that the listener only wanted sound bits, not additional information. Nevertheless, I did enjoy looking at some of the amazing works of art in the exhibit. To think that one man was lucky enough to have had all of those works pass through his hands is amazing. I wish I could have understood more though about his choices.


One of the topics in the exhibit was Vollard's commissioning of lithographs and illustrated manuscripts. I could spend time walking through an exhibit focused on just these items. One of the series of lithographs that caught my attention and held me entranced for several minutes was by Maurice Denis. Called Amour, it is a series of lithographs that Denis considered a visual love poem. The lithographs were beautiful, but I was also captivated by the titles of each piece. I thought they made a poem themselves. The image at the top of this post is one of the lithographs, the one below was the cover for the series. What follows is a poem I wrote based on the titles. It wasn't my intent when I started, but I think that the speaker in my poem has a more cynical attitude than the attitude Denis portrayed in his visual poem.



L'Amour
We all know the allegory
of easy attitudes,
chaste as morning bouquets
with the scent of tears like dewdrops,
with a faith in mysteries of knights
who do not die on crusades
in the twilight of soft old paintings.
She was morning beautiful,
more beautiful than dreams,
a caress of her hands languorous
gestures touching your soul.

Her hands, reaching across the table
holding an empty tea cup of love.
Too soon life becomes precious.
Too late we discover the many bouquets
of tears have chased the liquid-silver light,
sitting on a pale silver sofa,
a painted dream of floral chintz against wallpaper
and slanting walls of fading night.

We are too restrained once we learn
the heart beats too fast towards the end of day.



If you're interested, here are the titles of the works in Denis' series: Allegory; Attitudes are easy, and chaste; The morning bouquet, tears; It was a religious mystery; The knight did not die on the crusades; Twilights have the softness of old paintings; She was more beautiful than dreams; And it is the caress of her hands; Our souls, with languorous gestures; On the pale silver sofa; Life becomes precious, retrained; But it is the heart which beats too fast.

Saturday After 5 Days Gone

Saturday After 5 Days Gone

Blue bird on silvery black wing flies.
An aging sunbeam, having left
home just short light years ago,
strains to curve around the horizon
to glow through iced windows,
would-be enticement for any sleepy cat.
Red berries hang on cold brown bark.
White snow drifts slowly off the trees
onto the frozen ground, hiding
the secrets of spring of which
only the winter thrushes can sing.
Ice shifts, roof creaks. I move
deeper under the blankets soft,
to hear my lover's rhythmic breath,
to be near his beating heart
warming my soul.