This year, such burdens as we haven’t
seen before; such rain that fell to saturate
the earth— but underground, the sound
of currents clamoring to rise, be heard.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Thanksgiving walk
It’s a tradition in our family to go out for a walk after the mid-day meal on Thanksgiving and Christmas, sometimes all together, but more commonly by ourselves or in smaller groups. This might seem strange to those for whom constant family togetherness is mandatory on such occasions, but, well, some of the holiday traditions of other folks seem strange to us, too: lolling around watching other people play sports, for example, or lining up outside stores on Black Friday morning. To each his own. Continue reading “Thanksgiving walk”
Maguindanao Ghazal
Fiat justitia ruat caelum.
(Let justice be done though the heavens fall.)
The bodies are no longer there. They’ve dug them up
and carried them off, exhumed from shallow graves.
They’ve laid them out and counted, set torsos and limbs
aright, sewed shut the seams. The sea cannot be their grave.
Who made the pile of fresh dirt at the woods’ edge?
They gored and slit the very air. Oh most depraved.
Not even the womb was sacred. Not kin, not friend, not
bystander. Not hair, not skin struck by gun barrel or stave.
What are they worth, who are no longer here? Warped leaves
in the canopy condemn the unresolved: they won’t forgive.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Ghazal: Chimerae
First poem, last poem, I told my class tonight. Confession:
I’m always writing that dream book, wandering with its chimeras.
Wind and fog, and then just wind. Silhouettes of goldfinches
indistinguishable from leaves. Then silence like a caesura.
In the Iliad: a thing of immortal make, not human, lion-fronted,
snake behind; goat in the middle, breath from a hot caldera.
Always I’m of more than two minds: heart ravenous as a craw,
mud-burdened as an ox. My real self, vertiginous in the sierras.
It’s late November and the birds come back in droves to Mt. Ampacao.
In darkness, hunters wait: 20 meters of nylon nets strung along the frontera.
From high up, the flush of bonfires must look like dawn; the terraces,
low stone walls against the mountainside, like streaks of dark mascara.
High-pitched cries, vague feathered bodies in the mesh. I’m not there but I
too pan the air: I want what flies, what lifts my pulleys, bones, my aura.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Tezcatlipoca
A small toad carved from obsidian
regards me with what
could pass for a smile:
for I am hunched, torsioned,
oblique as any letter
in the insect alphabet.
Its sightless eyes freeze me
between a tick & a tock.
What will I do for a knife?
The night holds its tongue
like a secret agent.
This is not a blackness that absorbs light
but a blackness that reflects.
If it were water, I would enter it
incrementally, yielding to absence
like a zipper coming apart.
If it were a mirror, I would mount it
on the stump that used to be my left foot,
so as I walked over the earth, my enemies
would see only themselves
& learn to take the blame for
all their ills.
Ice and Gaywings
At qarrtsiluni today we announced the publication of a new collection of poems: Ice and Gaywings by Kenneth Pobo. This might be of interest to Via Negativa readers for several reasons: the book was selected as the winner of our 2011 chapbook contest by VN contributor Luisa Igloria; the cover includes one of my own photos of gaywings (AKA fringed polygala) in bloom; and most importantly, the poems themselves are meditative, understated, urgent, and full of details about the natural world. Though Ken and his partner live in eastern Pennsylvania, they’ve been visiting the Wisconsin north woods for many years, and this collection is a sort of love letter to that part of the world. Let me just quote what Luisa had to say about it:
The experience I value most in reading this collection is the way its language (never romanticized) and tone (never overwrought) allows me to settle with increasing depth into the poems’ rhythms and precise observations — about the natural world, now only partially reclaimable from so many forms of artifice; about the intrusions of contemporary urban life and culture; about histories older than us that haunt and shadow place. And finally, its urgent reminder to listen, look, and learn to dwell again.
You can read all the poems at the online version of the book, which has been one of my projects this autumn. I’m kind of pleased with how it turned out. I enjoy the challenge of making online collections of poetry that people will want to browse. Last year, for Clayton Michaels’ Watermark, I hit on the idea of taking the abstract artwork we used for the cover of the paper edition and dividing it up into smaller images, a different one for every poem, with little arrows for navigation icons. It seemed essential to give each poem its own page, so it would room to breathe. This year, however, I started off looking at horizontally scrolling themes, and though I didn’t end up going that route (maybe next year!) it did push my thinking pretty far outside the usual box. I ended up adapting a WordPress theme designed for software documentation, with all the poems on one vertical page which expands or collapses, accordion-style, as the titles are clicked. (I did add permalinks below each poem for those who desire a more pristine reading environment — or just need the link.)
I hope readers don’t find this javascripty behavior too distracting. What I really liked about the design was the way it kept distractions to a minimum. Thanks to this unique arrangement, I was able to dispense with sidebars (or bottom bars) altogether — in WordPress terms, this is a site with zero widgets. I kept the page menu to a bare minimum, and decided not to hack the theme to add chronological posts back in; a static page would do fine for the news section, I thought. Anyway, I won’t bore you with all the details. Suffice it to say I had a lot of fun, even if I did have to re-do much of my work after I was kicked off my former webhost two weeks ago. Go take a look — and settle in with a cup of tea for a nice long read.
Petrichor
(“The word is constructed from Greek, petra, meaning stone + ichor, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology.”)
Let me know if that much-touted prospect of the future
is coming in the shape of a funnel cloud, or if it will be
the whiff of something sour despite the absence of wind—
There’s only the barest motion in the air, and today’s
forecast of rain, gone before mid-afternoon. Indoors,
I’m screwing replacement filters in these plug-in room
fresheners: oils of cinnamon and burnt clove, balsam
spruce. The outlets are low: a small billow of scent
curls around our ankles. A trace of it stays at
my wrists until I wash it off. Remind me again
what you whispered in my ear some time ago. Whoever
writes the history of rain will have to remember
how molecules loosen and bind, how heat creates that
chemical smell: imprint of limbs upon linen,
slight rearrangement and catch in the breath.
Dust and earth seared by lightning.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Poetry publishing and the “culture worker” model
The question of aesthetic value came up. Creeley suggested that value was created in the work, or rather, in the process of making, poesis, and in the community (or “company”) the poet/publisher built around the work (here defined as writing, aesthetics, and publishing). The professor then asked, But how are we to judge whether or not it is any good? To which Creeley responded, Who cares?
Campus Elegy
“If I cried out/ who would hear me up there/ among the angelic orders?” – Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies
We heard the news, we saw on video how
they sat in rows, arms linked, no chorus
sounding anguish from among their ranks.
Or pain, or anger— not that the formality
of silence cannot mean something seethes
beneath the bludgeoned front. Attack the head,
the ribs; pour acids down the throat and
scald the eyes. What civil liberties we take.
A student writes, They’re human too, they hurt
from all this fear. Long days ahead, of vigil;
flushed nights spiked with sudden chill. All’s over-
cast. Phalanx of blue: faces that look, as they
close in, like neighbors’, brothers’, uncles’—
What you see, before the bodies fall to blows.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
A-shantying I did go
Watch on Vimeo – watch on YouTube
Here’s an example of the sort of shenanigans we get up to around here. Well, O.K., this is not perhaps a typical Central Pennsylvania party — but sea-shanty sing-along potlucks are happening twice a year now, thanks to the planning skills and infectious enthusiasm of Steven Sherrill, whom I interviewed for the Woodrat podcast a while back. (And speaking of the podcast, I hope to present a lengthier selection from our sing-along in audio form here at some point.) Songs included in the video, in all or in part: “Haul Away Joe,” “Hanging Johnny,” “Haul on the Bowline,” “South Australia,” and “Wondrous Love” (not a shanty, but it has the same tune as “Captain Kidd,” which we also sang). The somewhat disturbing paintings in the basement are all Steve’s work. The drink of choice was mulled cider spiked with rum.