Year: 2010

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Under the Sky Born After the Rain, by Jorge Teillier

This entry is part 36 of 38 in the series Poetry from the Other Americas

I think Chile in the 20th century produced more great poets per capita than any other country on earth. Jorge Teillier (1935-1996) grew up in the rainy south, and is best known for his poems of nostalgia and melancholy. But perhaps it takes a poet steeped in melancholy to write a convincing poem about happiness. Here’s my attempt to translate “Bajo el cielo nacido tras la lluvia,” the Spanish text of which may be found on his Wikipedia page.

Under the sky born after the rain,
I hear the quiet slap of oars against the water
and I’m thinking: happiness is nothing
but the quiet slap of oars against the water.
Or maybe it’s nothing but the light
on a small boat, appearing and disappearing
on the dark swell of years
slow as a funeral supper.

Or the light of a house discovered behind the hill
when we’d thought nothing remained but to walk and walk.
Or the gulf of silence
between my voice and the voice of someone
revealing to me the true names of things
simply by calling them up: poplars, roofs.
The distance between the clinking of a bell
on a sheep’s neck at dawn
and the thud of a door closing after a party.
The space between the cry of a wounded bird out on the marsh
and the folded wings of a butterfly
just over the crest of a wind-swept ridge.

That was happiness:
drawing random figures in the frost,
fully aware they’d hardly last at all,
breaking off a pine bough on the spur of the moment
to write our names in the damp ground,
catching a piece of thistledown
to try and stop the flight of a whole season.

That’s what happiness was like:
brief as the dream of a felled sweet acacia tree
or the dance of a crazy old woman in front of a broken mirror.
Happy days pass as quickly as the journey
of a star cut loose from the sky, but it doesn’t matter.
We can always reconstruct them from memory,
just as the boy sent out to the courtyard for punishment
collects pebbles to form resplendent armies.
We can always be in the day that’s neither yesterday nor tomorrow,
gazing up at a sky born after the rain
and listening from afar
to a quiet slap of oars against the water.

***

Thanks to everyone who helped out on Facebook with the line about the solterona loca. I’ll have to make a habit of “friend-sourcing” translation problems from now on. Further critiques are of course welcome, too. This was somewhat freer than my usual attempts at translation.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Bear family

Video link.
“Don’t get between the mother and her cubs.” That’s always what people say when they’re trying to scare you about black bears. Well, this morning in the woods above my house, I may not have gotten between them, but I got within 20 feet of them as they played beside one of our moss-covered trails, and I never felt as if I were in the slightest danger. You can see the reaction when the mother finally caught my scent — they were gone. Only afterwards did it occur to me that if she’d decided to charge, I wouldn’t have had any time to react.

Windy days are great for sneaking up on critters that rely more on their noses than their eyes. I wasn’t making any special attempt to walk quietly; the bears were simply making more noise than I was with their rustling around in the leaf duff, and didn’t hear my approach. I had the still camera around my neck and the video camera in my pocket, and I had to make two decisions pretty quickly once I realized a bear family was running towards me: first, do I lose myself in the moment and experience the encounter as deeply as I can, so as to better remember and write about it, or do I try and capture it photographically so I can share the experience with Via Negativa readers? And if the latter, should I take still photos or video?

I am still not sure I made the right decision on either account. I quickly went into a crouch to make myself less visible and prolong the encounter, which I think worked well, but it’s a less than perfect video because I couldn’t keep my eyes on the LCD display — I kept glancing past the camera at the bears. It was fun to see the bear cubs horsing around at such close range, and I regret not keeping the focus on them the whole time. There might have been more cubs up in the woods; we hardly ever see a mother bear with fewer than three cubs. But I suppose this could’ve been a first-year mother. She didn’t seem very big.

The bears ran up over the ridge and I didn’t attempt to follow them, though I did walk as quietly as I could after that. If I’d gone straight back to the house after the encounter, the whole walk wouldn’t have taken more than ten minutes out of my morning: a great reminder of why one should get up from the computer every once in a while. “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door…”

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Exchange

I cough into the night
& a deer snorts in alarm.
I am hungry & dangerous;
small bones & bits of muscle
get stuck in my throat.
My feline love of comfort
may dull my instincts, but
I still read fear as a form of praise.
And I want to tell the deer:
I am the animal who rid
these hills of your original killers.
Shall we resent each other’s part
in the conquest? We share
almost the pact between
a pastoralist & his herd.
The tamed woods are as easy
to walk through as a pasture now;
few thickets remain where a big cat
could lie in ambush.
But a summer night still teems
with things that rasp & tick,
other things that flash at eye-level
& in between, the dark milk of stars.

*

This was an exercise using all the words in the latest prompt from Big Tent Poetry.

(Update) Other responses to the prompt are here

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Five questions

Clare Kines at The House and other Arctic musings tagged me and four others with an interview meme. I think this might be the first time I’ve ever participated in a blog meme. I liked that Clare made up the questions just for us, and I was flattered to be included along with four nature-bloggers I really admire: Debby Kaspari, Seabrooke Leckie, Susannah of Wanderin’ Weeta, and Pohangina Pete.

1) You seem to have an intense curiosity of the natural world. How did that curiosity come about?

I was raised on a remote mountaintop farm without television or neighbors. Everyone else in my family was a nature nerd, and I resisted as long as I could, refusing to learn the birds and so forth, but in the end I succumbed, in part because of my interest in poetry (which also began at an early age). You simply can’t write about something unless you know its name. And once you know the name, curiosity takes over and you have to learn more.

2) What would you change about your home, your neighbourhood, your corner of the world? What one thing would you change to make it a better place?

Reintroduce cougars.

3) Describe your most profound encounter in the natural world.

The one I had at dusk two hours ago, listening to two thrushes sing from opposite sides of the yard. That was it for today, at any rate.

I don’t know. I might not use the word “profound” for many if not most direct encounters with charasmatic critters. This photo my Dad took of me chattering my teeth at a porcupine back in the late 90s was the main image on my Geocities website for five years:

me with porcupine (photo by Bruce Bonta)

Though I jokingly refer to the porcupine as one of my totem animals — I share its big teeth, love of trees, preference for dark, cave-like places and penchant for solitude, not to mention at times its prickliness — I don’t regard it as a spirit guide in any meaningful way. I don’t go in for that fake-ass neo-shamanism bullshit.

I am much more interested in trying to relate to animals as persons than as avatars from some spirit world in which I don’t believe. Yes, I’ve had my share of spooky crepuscular encounters with creatures such as gray foxes, screech owls, and coyotes, but it’s the little observations in broad daylight that have given me I think my most durable impressions of non-human nature. For example, when I think of black bears, I think of digging, snuffling, log-ripping, birdsong-listening, mostly amiable, shy folks you’d have a hard time pissing off (and god help you if you did). Come to think of it, on a single morning in June 2009, I had both a spooky dawn encounter and an amusing, broad-daylight encounter with what I presume was the very same bear.

4) If you could have a conversation with any person in history who would it be, and why that person?

I’d like to talk to Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu), the Chinese philosopher from the late Warring States period, describe our own chaotic period and all the profound environmental challenges we face, and ask him what kind of wei wu wei could possibly make a difference now. Also, I’d just like to get drunk with him.

5) What advice would you give to anyone wanting to better experience the natural world?

Learn to find, gather, and prepare some wild foods.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Notes toward a taxonomy of sadness

This entry is part 7 of 37 in the series Bridge to Nowhere: poems at mid-life

A postcard from 1906, written on but never sent

There are as many kinds of sadness as there are things that prompt it, each as exquisitely adapted as a species of ichneumon wasp to its smooth or bristly host. There’s the sadness of 100-year-old postcards that were written on but never sent, the sadness of an alarm clock that was turned off three minutes before it was due to throb, the sadness of countries too small or crowded to accommodate wilderness, the sadness of a pump organ whose church music has long been silenced by mice chewing holes in the bellows, the sadness of open USB ports, the sadness of cities with utterly predictable weather, the sadness of a faded Sears Wishbook catalog kept in lieu of toilet paper in a seldom-used outhouse, the sadness of milk served in the last chipped member of a favorite set of drinking glasses, the sadness of time travel, the sadness of fireflies broadcasting their positions every few seconds in total silence, the sadness of an overcooked vegetable that tastes like rain, the sadness of dust mites whose entire civilization depends on a giant stranger’s poor housekeeping, the sadness of airports that afford no views of the runway, the sadness of pasture roses forced to weather the loving ministrations of those that chew the cud, the sadness of lights designed to illuminate billboards, and the sadness of pulp science fiction magazines from the 1950s that could predict flying cars but not oil spills, let alone this flea market, the world-wide web.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Pileated woodpecker

I shot this video from my front porch on Tuesday morning. Pileateds are common here because we have an old forest with lots of standing dead and dying trees full of their favorite food: carpenter ants. They’re really neat birds, and I end up mentioning them often in The Morning Porch. This video doesn’t capture their oddness in flight, but it does show calling, drumming, and excavating.

For more on their life history, see the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s page. Here’s a selection of Morning Porch entries mentioning pileateds.


Dec 25, 2007
Christmas—the quietest morning of the year. The stream is a full chorus. A pileated woodpecker flaps overhead, cheering itself on.


Jan 27, 2008
Commotion among the pileated woodpeckers: cackling, drumming. One swoops past and lands on the side of a tree with a magician’s flourish.


Feb 26, 2008
It’s snowing. A pileated woodpecker drums twice in Margaret’s yard: a resonant timpanum. Then sleet: rapid brushes on a taut skin.


Oct 1, 2008
A pileated woodpecker hammers on a dead tree, resonant as it never was in life. I watch ground fog form and dissipate into a clear dawn sky.


Oct 12, 2008
BAM. BAM. BAM. The red crest of a pileated woodpecker flashes into view from the dead side of a maple, sunrise orange on the hill behind.


Nov 14, 2008
Thick fog prolongs the dawn light for hours. A screech owl is answered by a pileated woodpecker, dirge giving way to second-line ululation.


Mar 8, 2009
The distant drumming of a pileated woodpecker is the loudest thing. A faint rustle in the field, the yard, the woods as the rain moves in.


Oct 19, 2009
Heavy frost. In the clear, still air, black birch leaves fall like rain. A pileated woodpecker dives cackling into the treetops.


Oct 31, 2009
Peeled flesh of a black walnut leaks pus onto the sidewalk, more indelible than a blood stain. A woodpecker cackles from a bone-white snag.


Dec 21, 2009
A pileated woodpecker herky-jerks to the top of a tall locust and flies off. My apple core disappears into the white yard without a sound.


Mar 6, 2010
Clear and cold. A silent pileated woodpecker propels itself through the sunlit upper air with great slow strokes of its shining oars.


May 20, 2010
So clear, even the mourning dove sounds joyful. Muffled thuds of a pileated in a dead tree, knocking—as Rumi would say—from the inside.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Surgery of the Absurd

This entry is part 6 of 37 in the series Bridge to Nowhere: poems at mid-life

The clinic wasn’t everything I imagined. The nurse was male & unattractive, the blood & stool samples were anything but fresh, & the surgeon wore coat & tails like an orchestra conductor & bounded from room to room, wielding the scalpel like a baton: one moment kettle drums, the next a tenor clarinet. And we who had thought of our bodies as oases of silence wondered about the anesthesiologist, who’d been missing any trace of an eyebrow. Had he been born that way, incapable of registering surprise? Or perhaps he’d had some facelift of the brow, an elective procedure like the ones we were in for, unsatisfied until we can restore that smoothness of features that once distinguished us, before our parents met, before we descended from our tall trees & joined them down here among these clamorous dead.

Prompted by an email discussion with some blogger friends about an essay by Peter Singer (whom I loathe), “Should This Be the Last Generation?“

Posted on by Dave Bonta

The Crowd

This month we’re soliciting for submissions to the next issue of qarrtsiluni, which Beth and I are editing ourselves — no guest editors this time. The theme is “The Crowd.” If you have poems, prose or artwork that might fit, please see the call for submissions. The deadline is June 30. Here’s our theme description:

The crowd, the flock, the herd, the mob, the swarm, the tribe: we are simultaneously fascinated and repelled by this super-organism, capable at times of great beauty and even wisdom (cf. The Wisdom of Crowds) and at other times of appalling ugliness and violence. Aristotle defined humanity as an animal whose nature it is to live in a polis, but in all ages we seem incapable of deciding whether this is a good or bad thing; one commentator’s inspiring revolutionary struggle is another’s mob rule. For the next issue of qarrtsiluni, we are open to all perspectives, positive and negative, historical and biological, on crowds and other aggregations of social animals. Inspiration can be sought in the ecstasy and fervor of the stadium, the battalion, the game, the march, the final episode, the fad, the stampede — or the collective consciousness in general. With the planet’s burgeoning human population threatening to exceed our ecological carrying capacity, and so many crises now requiring urgent collective action, it seems imperative for artists and writers, so often antisocial ourselves and preoccupied with the struggles of individuals, to turn our attention to sociality in its most vital and basic form.

We decided to eliminate our unreliable online contact form and ask people just to submit by email, and I’ve been intrigued by the variety of salutations people use in their cover letters. First-time submitters tend of course to be more formal. We’ve gotten:

  • Dear Editors,
  • Dear Editor:
  • Hello Editors,
  • hi dear Editor,
  • Hello,
  • Dear Editor,
    Qarrtsiluni,
    online literary magazine.
    Greetings.
  • Dear Beth Adams and Dave Bonta,
  • Dear Beth and Dave,

Repeat submitters, especially those we’ve published in the past, tend to favor “Hi Beth and Dave” or some variation, which mirrors our own preference for “Hi [First Name]” in responding to submissions. We did get one “Hello q crew,” which gave me a chuckle.

It seems I’m far from alone in finding “Dear Mr./Mrs./Ms. _____” stuffy and out-of-date for electronic communications, and I almost never close with “Sincerely,” either (nor do qarrtsiluni contributors). And yet “Dear ____” and “Sincerely” still seem perfectly natural for paper letters. Odd how the physicality of a letter elicits greater formality, as if we were not merely addressing the recipient but also to some extent acknowledging the presence of the paper, too. Or more likely, the artifactual nature of a paper letter triggers expectations and responses from one’s past associations with such artifacts, a sort of muscle memory reinforcing norms of epistolary tradition at odds with the more speech-like ways in which we typically deploy email. It’s interesting to see how these styles mingle in the electronic versions of highly convention-bound communications such as the cover letter for a submission to a magazine.