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Posted on by Dave Bonta

Highgate Cemetery


View slideshow on Flickr – view photos individually

I’m still slowly processing photos from last month’s trip. As with the audio podcasts, what took two weeks to record will take at least two months to polish and share. But this is why we travel, isn’t it? And I’ve enjoyed reliving the memories of those few hours in North London’s Highgate Cemetery, a place devoted to memory — and the memory mostly of Victorians and Edwardians, at that. I would have to think the majority of its tenants would be pleased with its Tintern Abbey-esque atmosphere of romantic, ivy-clad ruin. I was certainly charmed myself. Stone angels that probably would’ve struck me as unbearably sentimental when they were new moved me to take photo after photo with their broken limbs and eroded faces. I hate the whole idea of angels, really. But an armless angel fallen face-down in an untended grave is a scene worthy of the cover art for an album by Sepultura or Entombed (bands I happen to like, by the way). So I guess I do have my sentimental side.

Space is of course at a premium in the British Isles; except for Karl Marx and a very few other elite tenants, the dead don’t seem to get any more elbow room than riders on the Tube. The great novelist George Eliot was shoved in there like everyone else, a few yards away from a small new neighborhood of Iraqi and African communists. This chaotic comradeship of the deceased invites alternate histories, the way memories freely associating in the mind find their way into new stories and poems. And the peculiar rituals we engage in to keep memories alive were much in evidence: one grave plot was littered with fresh oranges, another with pieces of dark slate, and still another with rose petals. Note the wash bucket on the recent grave of Iraqi Kurdish poet Buland al-Haidari — no doubt as potent a reference to his life and work as the dolphin figurine on Douglas Adams’ gravestone.

Highgate’s East Cemetery is, as far as I’m concerned, the way a proper cemetery should look. My maternal grandparents, Nanna and Pop-pop, are buried in a cemetery a few miles from here, and I don’t know how typical this is of contemporary American burial grounds, but the management only allows one kind of grave marker: the kind that’s flush with the ground. No plantings or offerings of any kind are permitted; even plastic flowers and grave blankets will be removed immediately. Why? Because such clutter interferes with the central mission of keeping the grass mowed. This is a final resting-place for those who worshipped at the altar of anesthetic cleanliness — which would certainly describe Nanna. She didn’t even like having book shelves in her house, because they were hard to dust! If Nanna knew how much I enjoyed Highgate Cemetery’s rampant ivy and brambles, she would roll over in her grave.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Luisa Igloria on her daily writing practice

Now it’s the turn of Via Negativa’s other regular contributor to hold forth at Marly Youmans’ blog as part of the ongoing House of Words series there. Fortunately, she’s not quite as prolix as I was! Luisa talks about how she got started using entries from The Morning Porch as writing prompts, and gives three examples of how particular entries sparked the poems they did.

For instance, Dave’s TMP observation on January 28 was “The silence of falling snow. When my furnace kicks on, the three deer digging under the wild apple tree startle and run down the slope.” When I read that, the first sentence, “The silence of falling snow” coupled with the image of “the wild apple tree” had a certain beautiful gravity that felt– and sounded– almost biblical. The wild apple tree and the three deer digging also made me think immediately of medieval tapestries, rich with illustrations of plants and animals. From there it was a short leap to recalling stories in bestiaries like the Physiologus. […]

I find Luisa’s fealty to craft and the creative venture endlessly inspiring. Go read.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Woodrat TV: The Book of Ystwyth poetry reading


The Book of Ystwyth: six poets on the art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins (part 1).


The Book of Ystwyth: six poets on the art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins (part 2).


The Book of Ystwyth: six poets on the art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins (part 3).


The Book of Ystwyth: six poets on the art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins (part 4).

In lieu of a podcast this week, here in video form is the full, hour-long poetry reading I flew to Wales to take part in last month. This was a group reading in support of The Book of Ystwyth: six poets on the art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins, whose launch coincided with a 60th birthday retrospective exhibition of, and monograph on, the contemporary Welsh artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins (who I interviewed in the two most recent episodes of the Woodrat podcast). All six of us — three Yanks and three Brits — had written poems in response to his paintings, and The Book of Ystwyth includes a generous selection, illustrated with full-color details of the paintings in question.

In the reading, ably MC’d by Damian Walford Davies, as you’ll see, each poet appears twice, once on either side of a break (which occurs in part 3), so that the first poet is also the last, the second is the penultimate, etc. Here’s a key to who appears in which video:

Catriona Urquhart (read by Clive Hicks-Jenkins and Ian Hamilton): parts 1 and 4
Andrea Selch: 1 and 4
Callum James: 2 and 4
Marly Youmans: 2 and 3
Damian Walford Davies (as reader): 2 and 3
Me: 3

Anita Mills was the camerawoman. I take the blame for the sound and all the editing. The bookstore’s set-up had the podium in shadow, which meant that the camera often focused on better-lit bookshelves behind our heads. In the process of lightening and increasing contrast on the videos, the color turned spotty, whence my decision to make it black and white. I assure viewers who have never been to Wales that it is a fully modern country now, and almost everything is in color all the time.

The Book of YstwythAs for the book: quite apart from its contents, which are of course scintillating, it’s a beautifully designed object with high-quality paper and image reproduction, retailing at a very affordable $15.95/£9.99. It was published in the U.K. by Grey Mare Press in association with Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru/The National Library of Wales, and in the U.S. by Carolina Wren Press. Click on either link to order.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Landscape as Elegy for the Unspent

This entry is part 77 of 92 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2011

In memoriam, Jeffrey H. Richards

The bulbs that wintered in the ground
have ripened their hoard of secrets:
all is color, ruinous color, overpowering
scent. Balm grows in soil that has stained
the gardener’s hands, sweetened the tea
his wife must have brought sometimes
for him to drink. Cerulean, croons the warbler
whose shadow crosses the yard; flame orange,
hibiscus, mauve, lime— And for all this,
nothing is ever spent.* In the cool afternoon
his friends gather in a courtyard
to remember his days. They sing a hymn
about the apple tree in a seed, the flower
in the bud. Between the church and town,
long-legged birds wade in river water. So much
like them, we’ve moved against the current,
shielded our eyes against the sun, straining to read
the letters scripted by some hand on the sides
of boats rocking gently in the pier.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

* from “God’s Grandeur” by G.M. Hopkins

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Proof

This entry is part 76 of 92 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2011

I pull away every now and then,
when the world’s too hot, too bright,
too bitter; too cold, too merciless

in its inconstancy. Too rough, too
callused, too grainy, too stubborn
to answer the hand that pulls

at its ends and begs it heed. See
the ease with which the robin finds
a bright green morsel to spirit

out of the woods? Above the treeline
it flies, little beak a caret marking where
some buoyancy or joy’s gone missing.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Festival of the Trees returns to Via Negativa on July 1

The world’s longest-running — and probably only — blog carnival devoted to all things arboreal, the Festival of the Trees, turns five next month. Its very first edition appeared on July 1, 2006 right here at Via Negativa, so it seemed fitting to bring it back for edition #61. The theme is open, but I’m especially interested in new discoveries about trees and forests, either of a scientific or personal nature.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of a blog carnival, think of it as a homeless links blog which crashes on a different blog-couch every month. Or as my FOTT co-conspirator Jade Blackwater puts it (see What’s a Blog Carnival?):

A blog carnival is a recurring, theme-driven publication which congregates content from many sources in one place online.

A single issue of a blog carnival reads just like a great big blog post filled with links to many other blog posts (or photo galleries, or videos, etc.) that talk about the same subject.

The purpose of a blog carnival is to engage with the world wide community to celebrate subjects of common interest (in our case, trees and forests).

So contributors post material on their own blogs or websites and send the links to the host of the upcoming edition. For FOTT #61, email your article permalinks to me: bontasaurus (at) yahoo (dot) com, and be sure to put “Festival of the Trees” in the subject line so I’ll know it’s not spam. The deadline is June 30.

We have much more information about the Festival at our coordinating site, but I think the easiest way to grasp the concept is to browse some of the past editions, started with the most recent edition at Rubies in Crystal. This was Brenda Clews’ first time hosting, and she did something very ambitious: ask participants “to record an engagement with a tree or trees, preferably in video, but any form. To talk to the trees and bring back what transpired.” The response was impressive, and included 12 videos. (Note that video embedding is really just a fancy form of linking, and is therefore encouraged in blog carnivals.) Check it out.

I didn’t get around to making a video in time for Brenda’s edition, I’m sorry to say, but I was so impressed by a poem she reprinted from Dick Jones’ blog, I decided to ask Dick if I could make a video for it. He not only agreed, but recorded a reading for me to incorporate. I’ll be sharing this on Moving Poems next week, but here it is for those who can’t wait. (Note that HD is off by default; click on “HD” in the lower right corner if your internet speed supports it.) To read the text of the poem, refer to Brenda’s post.


Watch at Vimeo.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Morning porch mystery

squirrel window

So yeah, as I was saying, a squirrel’s head suddenly appears over the edge of the porch roof as I’m sitting out drinking my coffee this morning around 7:30. Looks at me for half a minute. Disappears. I hear it skitter off across the roof and around the back of the house.

A little while later, a movement off to my right catches my eye. There’s the squirrel — or maybe another squirrel; I’m not too good at telling them apart — sitting on its haunches on the sidewalk at the edge of the porch, and just as before, it’s staring intently in my direction. Well, they do that sometimes, I say to myself. Except then it trots over, click click click click click, goes right under my plastic stack chair, and stops.

So there I am with my feet propped up on the rail and a squirrel under my chair, and I gotta tell you, I’m starting to get nervous. This isn’t some college campus where squirrels have long ago lost their fear of humans through prolonged exposure to idiots with peanuts. Squirrels are wary creatures on the mountain, and with good reason: sometimes they got shot at. Quite often they get shooed out of birdfeeders by shrieking people brandishing brooms. But this squirrel (a) has exhibited a total lack of fear of me, and (b) is sitting, as I mentioned, directly underneath my butt. I know they say that rodents never get rabies, but I’ve just read a press release from the Pennsylvania Game Commission verifying that an attack beaver in Philadelphia, which bit three people before they blew it away, tested positive for rabies, so all bets are off as far as I’m concerned.

Two minutes go by. I can’t take it anymore. “Hey buddy, watcha doin’ under there?” I say loudly. No response. I stand up, take a long step away from the chair, and look: no squirrel. What the hell?

There are only two other pieces of furniture on the porch, and they flank the chair: my ratty old end-table on the right, and a white wicker settee-type thing on the left. The former provides no cover, and I examine all around the other: nothing. I lift it up and look underneath, even knowing there’s no way the squirrel could’ve gotten under it without making a sound. In fact, the squirrel couldn’t have gone anywhere without making a sound. It’s a wood floor, there’s nothing wrong with my hearing, and besides, I was on high alert. The only possible explanation, my dad agrees when I tell him the story an hour later, is that I have somehow acquired some kind of wormhole or portal to another universe directly under my chair. I mean, I’d be happy to hear alternate explanations, but I’ve been thinking about this all day and I have yet to come up with one.

I don’t expect the world to make sense all the time. I accept that any worldview, no matter how firmly based in science, cannot account for all phenomena, and that deciding what to believe about the way things work comes down to picking the least objectionable mass delusion. But is it too much to ask for a little self-consistency? In my universe, squirrels don’t scamper under one’s plastic stack chair and disappear. It’s simply not done. Maybe in your universe — that’s fine. But mine makes sense… in fact, too much sense sometimes. It has laws of physics in effect. If it didn’t, I probably wouldn’t feel compelled to spend all my time scribbling poetry just to mess with my sense of reality. You know what I mean? Every morning would be an adventure straight out of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. Hell, I might not even have to blog.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Prayer

This entry is part 75 of 92 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2011

If some are born to sweet delight and some
are born to endless night, where is the noon
where they might crisscross paths? A sparrow
tumbles from the eaves and auto-corrects
its flight. O wind, perilous as the pulleys that work
their hidden influence on our journeyings,
be gentle on these frail, tired wings.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Layers

This entry is part 74 of 92 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2011

Sulfur and sweetness, relish and bite:
you know it’s that good when you cry
from pleasure. Light a single votive

as you chop and mince: it helps to muffle
tears. The husk is a paper tunic, a skin
to wear like another language—

like the woman in Oregon who woke
from dental surgery surprised,
speaking with a foreign accent.

It means the house for what we think
we know is made of swirly layers—
see all those rings that fall away

on the cutting block when you
slice crosswise through? I like to think
that everything we’ve touched,

touches back; and vice versa.
See how a bug has left a red
swelling between my knuckles—

I’ll put some salve on it
until it subsides; then finger this
new site of rescue absently for days.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.