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Ignorance
Fitting
Winter has come early, it seems. The ground has frozen solid in the unusually cold weather, and instead of November rains we’re getting snow — or, this afternoon, sleet. Long blue shadows remind us that the sun is as low now as it will be in late January.
But it takes some intermittent thawing — or an admixture of ice — to seal the snow cover to the ground. The first snows still lie lightly on the grass and leaves, and can walk away in the tread of a boot, exposing the year’s unfinished business. I get impatient for the pristine midwinter desert. It’s like starting to explore some wild-looking rock outcroppings in a city park, and finding them in use as shelters for a homeless encampment.
Maybe things are better that way, though, all mixed up and impure. Last week I heard the flute-like calls of tundra swans over the roar of the well driller, and it brought me back to the present, standing on the powerline right-of-way on a cold and overcast morning, feeling suddenly that all the broken pieces fit together just the way they were. Everything belongs! It’s a useful illusion to nurture this time of year when our physical separation from the land is brought into such sharp relief, and the cold — not to mention the currently dire economic news — makes us crave comfort foods and fellowship and sentimentalized family holidays.
What if, instead, we were to take the inhuman harshness as a teacher? What if we were to say no to extra comforts and conveniences, no to the random urge, no to commodification? The mere thought is enough to make me shiver. Somewhere one still needs to hear that primal Yes.
Flagging
I wonder sometimes about the flag people. Not the ones who hang out the American or Confederate flags — though I wonder about them sometimes too — but the ones whose flags signal more personal allegiances: flowers, or songbirds, or autumn leaves. I don’t think they’re making a political statement, though I suppose it’s possible. It’s not a hippie thing. The only statement I think they’re making is, “Yay spring!” or “Yay autumn!” as the case may be.
I can’t see myself ever following suit — it’s not really my style, and besides, if I hung out a flag, it couldn’t not make a statement. I’m the kind of anarchist who would sooner burn a black flag then follow it, so that option’s out. But I think I know what I would put on a flag, should I ever get the urge to drape one off my porch: a dandelion.
Every spring when I was a kid, we gathered dandelion greens from the lawn. For a week or two before the flower stalks appeared, their bitterness was still bearable, even pleasant, as long as they were boiled with bits of bacon and dressed with salt and vinegar. We’d go out picking after a rain so we wouldn’t have to clean them much. It was work to separate out all the tiny blades of grass, but the novelty of gathering food from the lawn never wore off.
Years later, a Swedish naturalist came to visit, a man who specialized in dandelion taxonomy, among other things. Our common birds filled him with delight; he got a look of utter transport every time an American robin sang. And he kept falling to his knees at unexpected junctures, because the dandelions were in bloom. Where we saw constellations of familiar suns, he kept finding brand new genotypes.
Once when I was drunk on dandelion wine at a raucous party in a house where I had lived the year before, a giant of an ex-marine grabbed me by the throat and threw me against the wall. My glasses flew off. All that giddy gold in my veins flash-froze. A friend came over and won my release with a tap on the giant’s shoulder and an ear-splitting grin, but by then I was sober, and the house had ceased to resemble any home I knew.
A few hours later, I ran into some people from the party. Why hadn’t I raised a finger in self-defense, they wanted to know, and all I could say was, it wasn’t in me. I had felt too good; every muscle had been relaxed. When dandelions get good and pollinated, they fall prostrate among the grass: lawnmowers won’t touch them, except on the lowest setting. And by the time they straighten up again, they’re ready for whatever might come their way. Their newly spherical heads have the power to transform blows into catalysts of wonder and delight — not to mention regeneration.
On second thought, who needs a flag? Maybe I should design a personal coat of arms.
Child soldier
The child-soldier never blinks —
he can’t. His eyelids were cut off
three days after his capture
because he refused to open them.
So instead he must weep without ceasing,
which makes his vision blurry.
Those running shapes —
are they men, women, goats?
His comrades put him on point
& he’s learned to spray bullets
at whatever he needs to see.
His face never stops twitching,
even in his sleep. The cloth he pulls
over his eyes trembles all night
like the surface of some teeming pool
on which newly emerged mosquitoes
rest, too light to sink,
feet splayed as if on the skin
of their first blood meal,
waiting for their wings to dry & harden.
Inaugural poet: people’s choice winners
The votes are in, and we have a clear winner. “It’s late but everything comes next” garnered 16 of the 165 votes cast, for 9.7 percent of the total. The author is Naomi Shihab Nye, and the line comes from her poem “Jerusalem,” in Red Suitcase. As the following video also demonstrates, Naomi Shihab Nye’s poems are full of just the sort of advice an incoming president might find useful.
A president-elect who’s also an international celebrity might benefit from the reality-check provided by Nye’s poem “Famous,” which begins:
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
Read the whole poem here. Also worth checking out is an interview with Nye at Pif magazine, conducted by Rachel Barenblat of Velveteen Rabbi fame. And in another, more recent interview at Foreign Policy in Focus, the Palestinian-American poet had some specific advice for the incoming president regarding Israel/Palestine:
Melissa Tuckey: You wrote in an email that Barack Obama needs to evolve in his positions on Israel/Palestine. What course of action would you recommend for the future president (be he Obama or McCain)?
Naomi Shihab Nye: Balance. Respect for all human beings. All stories. All pain. Recognition of what the Palestinian people have been through in the last 60-plus years. Honest recognition that the violence has hardly been a one-way street.
Melissa Tuckey: Do you believe peace is possible? What are your hopes for Israel and for Palestine? Do you support one state in Israel/ Palestine or two?
Naomi Shihab Nye: Yes, I believe peace is possible. As my father kept saying toward the end of his life, people will have to become exhausted enough with fighting to embrace peace. From what I hear, many, on both “sides” have been exhausted enough to try something better for quite a long time. My hopes are for a one-state cooperative solution (because the territory is simply so small) in which Palestinian and Israeli citizens may share their strengths and resources in mutual respect. I don’t see, at this point, how a two-state solution could work as well. The wall must go down. Don’t bring it to Texas, either, we have enough problems with our own stupid wall!
“Jerusalem” is too long to quote in its entirety, but it ends:
There’s a place in my brain
Where hate won’t grow.
I touch its riddle: wind, and seeds.
Something pokes us as we sleep.It’s late but everything comes next.
Runners-up
Six other quotes garnered 12 or more votes each.
- “When the wind is right you can hear, even at this distance, the crying of those who have fallen and are unable to rise.” (14 votes)
—Louis Jenkins, “Somersault” (from No Boundaries: Prose Poems by 24 American Poets) - “Acknowledge that you are mute
without expecting the reward of speech
for your honesty.” (12 votes)
—Irene McKinney, “Losing Purpose” (The Girl With The Stone In Her Lap) - “come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.” (12 votes)
—Lucille Clifton, untitled (The Book of Light) - “Does love move mountains? No, but something does,
and never as we wish…” (12 votes)
—Alicia Suskin Ostriker, “After the Reunion” (The Crack in Everything) - “No sign of safety
in the darkness coming on,
no direction but hickory and oak,
the unsliced bread,
and all the zones of terror and love.” (12 votes)
—Harry Humes, “Safety Zone” (Winter Weeds) - “Water
drips till it sculpts a cup
into a slab of stone.” (12 votes)
—Yusef Komunyakaa, “Rhythm Method” (Thieves of Paradise)
Minor-party candidates
- “Take
your time. Take mine
too. Get into some trouble
I’ll have to account for.” (8 votes)
—Tess Gallagher, “Instructions to the Double” (Instructions to the Double) - “Still
there is a population
that likes mistakes and
indecision, guarding
atavisms and anatomical
sports, the hips of snakes,
the wings of the horse.” (8 votes)
—Kay Ryan, “Les Natures Profondement Bonnes Sont Toujours Indecises” (Flamingo Watching) - “Trapped in one idea, you can’t have your feelings,
feelings are always about more than one thing.” (8 votes)
—Adrienne Rich, from “Contradictions: Tracking Poems,” #13 (Your Native Land, Your Life) - “Salmon lie at rest in the riffles,
their sea-silver changing,
as they ascend to the
cold, still water of stars.” (7 votes)
—John Haines, “Doors that Open” (Where the Twilight Never Ends) - [Removed at author’s request] (7 votes)
—Bill Knott, “Minor Poem” (found online) - “we must learn to suckle life not
bombs and rhetoric
rising up in redwhiteandblue patriotism” (7 votes)
—Sonia Sanchez, “Reflections After the June 12th March for Disarmament” (homegirls and handgrenades) - “If you’re gonna bet on cards, Ben says,
You might as well play harmonica.” (6 votes)
—Tom Montag, untitled (The Big Book of Ben Zen) - “There is nothing one man will not do to another.” (5 votes)
—Carolyn Forché, “The Visitor” (The Country Between Us) - “The thing you have to remember
about hot water cornbread
is to wait for the burning
so you know when to flip it, and then again
so you know when it’s crusty and done.” (4 votes)
—Patricia Smith, “When the Burning Begins” (Teahouse of the Almighty) - “America needs a beating.” (3 votes)
—Gary Soto, “Our Days” (Who Will Know Us?) - “Cigarettes are the only way
to make bleakness nutritional, or at least useful,
something to do while feeling terrified.” (3 votes)
—B. H. Fairchild, “Cigarettes” (The Art of the Lathe) - “Great are the Hittites.” (3 votes)
—Charles Simic, “Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites” (Dismantling the Silence) - “If you laid out all the limbs from the Civil War hospital
in Washington they would encircle the White House seven times.” (3 votes)
—Jim Harrison, from “Ghazals,” XXXIX (The Shape of the Journey)
There were also three write-in candidates which garnered one vote apiece, though none appear to be from only one was from a living American poet.
Thanks to everyone for voting, and don’t forget to support poets by buying their works.
Inaugural poet try-outs
UPDATE: I’ll continue to count votes up through midnight tonight, Nov. 12, EST. If you have alternate quotes to suggest, you’re free to use the comments, but they won’t be included in the vote tally unless you use the “Other” option in the poll, because I’m way too lazy to figure percentages myself. And of course if you’ve already voted and are curious to see how your choices are faring, click on “View Results” at the bottom of the poll. You may have to refresh the page first.
The blogosphere is abuzz with ideas about which poet Obama should invite to read at the inauguration. He is, however, a rare example of a politician who actually reads poetry for pleasure, so I imagine he doesn’t really need any help from us. But I thought it might be fun to hold some try-outs in any case. The following poll (which subscribers can only see by clicking through to the post, or by going to the page on PollDaddy) consists of randomly ordered pieces of advice from 20 different, living American poets. (At least, I think they’re all living. If not, we may have to summon Nancy Reagan.) You can vote for more than one quote, but please select only your favorites. Tomorrow or the next day I’ll count up the votes and reveal the authors.
Haircut
It was a strange morning, one that began with a standard-issue gray sky and birdcalls I couldn’t quite place: a flock of pine siskins moving through the yard, gleaning seeds from the dried goldenrod heads. I had stayed up much too late the night before, watching television images shrunk to a few hundred pixels wide on my computer screen, sitting alone in a dark house and watching the faces of strangers wild with joy or stricken with disbelief. Now I felt a little giddy myself. What had I been dreaming in the intervening few hours? All I could remember were clods of dirt being shaken loose from large rootballs, black fists turning into bouquets of extended fingers, enough tubers to keep us fed for a long cold season.
Was it my imagination, or had the oaks almost all turned brown overnight? Leaves cascaded from their crowns, filling the newly open understorey with motion. A kind of transhumance, I thought, relishing the cognate with humus, which they’d eventually become. Deciduous trees are such masters of renunciation, of yearly sacrifice. If only we could practice the same kind of doing-without! Imagine what that might do for household and national economies, to keep ourselves firmly within such limits. But could we tolerate the kind of suspended animation trees go into each winter? Can we make ourselves as still and stubborn, as smooth and inscrutable, as seemingly inert yet full of vitality as an acorn?
Yes, I think we can. Hell, some of us have been living in a state of suspended animation ever since 2000, when the news media bought into the idea that truth is completely relative, and which year was the last of the millennium could best be decided in the court of public opinion. It felt as if we had entered a fully postmodern, alternate reality in which spin and ignorance triumphed. In that election, a great, if flawed, founding document of the country I live in was grossly violated for the first of what turned out to be many times. Less than a year later, when national disaster struck, we were told that heroism and sacrifice were the special privilege of those in uniform. We were told that anyone who wasn’t with us was against us. We were told to go shopping.
For far too long, Americans have been getting the sorts of presidents we love to hate: narrow selfish preening ignorant bullies. Sons of privilege with smirks on their faces — the kind we seem to elect to almost every office, starting with Class President in Junior High, perhaps because we feel that doing so will make them like us and treat us as equals. But not this time. This time, we’ve elected the weird kid: by his own admission, an outsider as a teenager, one with a funny foreign name and background, the wrong color skin, and bookwormy ways. Like “A Boy Named Sue,” he had to get tough or die — but unlike the protagonist of that song, he learned, he said, that sometimes the toughest thing to do was walk away from a fight, to meet an insult not with the outraged honor of a fragile ego but with implacable calm. And the kids who worked the hardest to elect him? Their energy and lack of cynicism fill me with hope. And not coincidentally, I think, a new and more vigilant, grassroots news media has arisen online. Maybe now we can begin to face some of the hard truths that Americans from all parts of the political spectrum have always been loath to admit.
The sky cleared late in the morning, the temperature climbed past 60 degrees, and the air filled with insects: gnats, wasps, ladybugs, honeybees. I went for a walk, trying to get used to the sensation of air flowing over my scalp. That feeling of a literal weight having been lifted. That newfound sense of vulnerability. The uncanniness of change.
[Edited 11/6/08, after I got a little more sleep]
Election Day haiku
I went in the booth
to be alone with you lot,
my fellow citizens.
Feel free to leave your own Election Day haiku (or American sentence) in the comments.
Begins with B
I’m lying half-awake, thinking for some reason about the letter D. Does the bulge face right or left? Since it’s the first letter of my own name, you’d think I could remember, but after weighing both options, my sleep-fogged brain decides that a left-facing D looks much more natural. Facing right is what Bs do… right?
*
In video after video I see faces tense with hatred, spitting all the insults that polite society still permits: Socialist. Communist. Terrorist. Muslim. A man going into a rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania holds up a monkey doll with an Obama sticker wrapped around its head like a minimal turban. It’s Curious George — a strange mascot for those whose native openness to new and different things was stifled, I imagine, decades before. “Gonna bring Obama in with me today so he can hear some TRUTH,” says the man, his swagger, his accent, and the slightly adenoidal quality of his speech familiar to me since childhood.
*
Big bulge, little bulge. We belly up the bar in real America. What’s on tap? Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Michelob. Is that a can of Guinness down there? I ask. I’ll have that. Conversation falls silent. What’s that taste like, anyway? asks the female bartender, seeing what the men don’t: that I’m perfectly harmless. Well, I don’t know — it tastes like beer, I say, tilting the glass to slow the foaming black waterfall. The way beer was meant to taste, before someone decided it would be cheaper to sell flavored water. Someone says something in a low voice at the end of the bar which provokes a chorus of guffaws. Bitter, I say, as I swagger over to a stool at the other end of the bar. Smooth and bitter.
*
The American people are angry, the candidate says hopefully. And in truth, his opponent’s unflappable demeanor is really beginning to annoy him. The familiar knot forms in his belly and begins to burn. He rolls his eyes and grimaces. People are angry, he says again, his voice trembling with conviction. Well, that’s certainly true of the people he’s been meeting lately, those idiots from small towns who love their guns way too much and pray to a God who looks like an older version of themselves — a Great White Father. His opponent continues to spout his idealistic claptrap in calm, methodical tones. He blinks furiously. The American people are angry, yes, but don’t call them bitter. Bitterness is for losers, for people who have no way to strike back.
*
The campaign worker travels all the way from Texas to volunteer in Western Pennsylvania, where people share her outrage at abortion and the homosexual agenda. Somewhere in downtown Pittsburgh, let’s say, a couple of black teenagers spot the McCain/Palin bumper sticker and begin to point and laugh and make rude comments. Her windows are rolled up and her doors are locked, but she’s pretty sure she hears the word Bitch. At the next light she pulls down the sun visor, flips open the mirror, and can barely recognize her face, pinched, livid. Why are black men always so… angry? She pulls into a parking spot beside an all-night automatic teller. Must… sleep… soon… she thinks. She watches in horrified fascination as the point of a fingernail file approaches her cheek.