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Life Below the Tree Line
Friday, March 06, 2009 IV.3.1. Time passes, two months of the year gone and here's another "Here and Now" for your enjoyment. This week we have these assorted goodies: "The Foot" "Worry" Me "how i was introduced to the life of a layabout latte lizard" Margaret Atwood "Two-Headed Poems" Alice Folkart "We Are National Treasures" John Ashbery "Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse" "You Spoke as a Child" Me "the doubter's prayer" Robert Bonazzi "Cantos of Particles and Waves" Alex Stolis "Lovelines" "You Lose" "Treatment Bound" Shel Silverstein "Tired" "Whatif" Me "in the news today" Ryokan "Winter Night" Thane Zander "Repercussions" Philip Larkin "Sad Steps" "This be the Verse" Me "writing my morning poem at the end of the day" Dan Gioia "Night Watch" "Veteran's Cemetery" Dan Cuddy Dan finds a web-report explaining the similarities between dead mules and investment banking. William Matthews "The Introduction" Me "big news in the astrophysical world" Gary Soto "L.A. Scene at a Restaurant Called 'One'" "The Artist Thinks, 'So This is Me'" Me "hoodat hoosay hoodat" Wowsers - Something that almost looks like a "table of contents" - Going uptown tonight.  My first two poems this week are by Michael Van Walleghen, from his book Blue Tango published by the University of Illinois Press 1989. He has published six books of poetry, including four since Blue Tango. Before retirement he was a Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was the first director of the MFA in Creative Writing program created there in 2003. The Foot I rang his doorbell every day for a month I knocked on his windows I kicked hard at this door with my frozen Redwing boot. It was winter of course A month of deep snow. And I could see from his slurred footprints that he was home. He was there all right reading the paper, watching the tube maybe - the bastard. He owed me five dollars. Christmas was coming up. And I was twelve years old and ordinary paper boy freezing my ass off, trying to collect, that's all. Then the door opens. A hot sour wind, like cabbage boiled in piss, springs up from deep inside somewhere and almost knocks me down. "Here, you want it?" a voice is saying. "Here take it!" And a shower of quarters nickels, dimes goes sailing past me over the porch rail. When I look back, the door is closed again, or rather almost closed. A dirty foot I remember his dirty foot poking out into the snow the filthy yellow thickness' of the toenails, the dead gray, socklike grime that covered it...I never saw his face. I was too young even to imagine it. I just dug up the money I could and ran home to the stoic misery of my own dumb feet thawing in a yellow dishpan. small, snow-white, delicate they hurt for a long time and looked all wrong somehow. My face looked wrong...staring back from the kitchen window where it was night already and the night looked wrong. as if there might be nothing out there, that owed me anything. Worry It was getting late it was time for supper but we had this rat trapped in an oil drum hydrophobic perhaps and there was a hole in the drum. Someone had better do something drop a brake drum on it or better yet, perfect if we could ever lift it one of those fossil-looking prewar transmissions we'd spotted in the weeds... On the other hand, suppose we missed the goddamn thing suppose we only crippled it? We'd have to burn it then or maybe we could drown it if we plugged the hole somehow if we had a hose or something if even now the streetlights might cease their flickering and night not fall not fall upon that fussy, worried knot of small, good children there in the twittering field where the nightmare rats were not afraid of anything and swarmed and swarmed  Here's a little story about my transition to a new way of life. how i was introduced to the life of a layabout latte lizard i came in this morning like i usually do, shivered a bit cause it's coolish outside which is not the normal state of affairs around here, and ordered my medium latte, just as i always do, and sat down to read the Times and write this little morning epistle on the state of my mind this a.m. and the state of my mind this a.m. relates to the latte situation and how i became hostage to the latte-nation twas a day like this, except it was hot not cold and night not morning and i ordered a decaf coffee as i usually did pre-medium latte days and Crystal, the barrista of yore, said, oh my gosh, we're out of decaf and i said oh, double-gosh, i must have my coffee and being it is night i must have decaf lest i not sleep until 2 a.m. of the wee early morning well, she said, demonstrating her secret barrista-wisdom, though i do not have decaf coffee at this juncture of the space-time continuum, i can, most quickly, make you a decaf latte spiffy, i said, embarking on the first latte of my hitherto unwashed in the blood of the latte life and that's the story of that  Here's a piece by Margaret Atwood, from her book Two-Headed Poems published by Simon and Schuster in 1978. Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, feminist and activist. The title poem is an eleven part piece, too long to use in full here. Instead, I've selected three of the pieces that might encourage you to find the full poem somewhere. Two-Headed Poems "Joined Head to Head, and still alive" Advertisement for Siamese Twins, Canadian National Exhibition, c. 1954 - The heads speak sometimes singly, sometimes together, sometimes alternately within a poem. Like all siamese twins, they dream of separation. i Well, we felt we were almost getting somewhere through how that place would differ from where we've always been, we couldn't tell you and then this happened, this joke or major quake, a rift in the earth, now everything in the place is falling south into the dark pit left by cincinnati after it crumbled. this rubble is the future, pieces of bureaucrats, used bumper stickers, public names returnable as bottles. Our fragments made us. What will happen to the children, not to mention the words we've been stockpiling for ten years now, defining them, freezing them, storing them in the cellar. Anyone asked us who we were, we said just look down there. So much for the family business. It was too small anyway to be, as they say, viable. But we weren't expecting this, the death of shoes, fingers dissolving from our hands, atrophy of the tongue, the empty mirror, the sudden change from ice to thin air. ii Those south of us are lavish with their syllables. they scatter, we hoard. Birds eat their words, we eat each other's words, hearts, what's the difference? In hock up to our eyebrows, we're still polite, god knows, to the tourists. We make tea properly and hold the knife the right way. Sneering is good for you when someone else has cornered the tree market. Who was it told us so indelibly, those who take risks have accidents. xi Surely in your language no one can sing, he said, one hand in the small-change pocket. That is a language for ordering the slaughter and gutting of hogs, for counting stacks of cans. Groceries are all you are good for. Leave the soul to us. Eat shit. In these cages, barred crates, feet nailed to the floor, soft funnel down the throat, we are forced with nouns, nouns, till our tongues are sullen and rubbery. We see this language always and merely as a disease of the mouth. Also as the hospital that will cure us, distasteful but necessary.  It is always a treat to have our good friend Alice Folkart join us at "Here and Now." This is one of her newer poems, posted on Blueline's "House of 30" where the Muse stops in every morning for coffee and a danish. (If you're a poet, you might want to join her/us.) We Are National Treasures I am a national treasure and so are you and the turtles in the bay, at break of day that bird that chimes like a clock in dawn dimness, noisy children on the way to school, fooling around, making obscene noises, daring each other to laugh. The world couldn't turn without us to spin it, to chew gum, to take out the trash, cash our checks, drive rusted wrecks through the sweet streets of our burgs and towns, hang nightgowns out to dry, lie in the sunny grass, pass the bottle, take a nip, sip, not gulp, the wine of life.  Now, for two poems by John Ashbery, "America's Greatest Poet," according to Harold Bloom. The poems are from Ashbery's book Where Shall I Wander, published in 2005 by HarperCollins. Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse We were warned about spiders, and the occasional famine. We drove downtown to see our neighbors. None of them were home. We nestled in yards the municipality had created, reminisced about other, different places - but were they? Hadn't we known it all before? In vineyards where the bee's hymn drowns the monotony, we slept for peace, joining in the great run. He came up to me. It was all as it had been, except for the weight of the present, that scuttled the pact we made with heaven. In truth there was no cause for rejoicing, nor need to turn around, either. Were lost just by standing, listening to the hum of wires overhead. We mourned that meritocracy which, wildly vibrant, had kept food on the table and milk in the glass. In skid-row, slapdash style we walked back to the original rock crystal he had become, all concern, all fears for us. We went down gently to the bottom-most step. There you can grieve and breathe, rinse your possessions in the chilly spring. Only beware the bears and wolves that frequent it and the shadow that comes when you expect dawn. You Spoke as a Child We sat together in the long hall. There was something I'd wanted to ask you, a new mood I was after. Something neither posed nor casual. Outside under a slappy sky the leaves were right on. They're our own skeletons. And slack was the tautology report. They don't have bare beds. The children here are as hunted rabbits, and don't think too much about what comes after. A suffocated prince summons the septuor, celestas wax dim and bright in the distance, what was meant to be distance. You spoke out of the margins.  Something, I think it was one of Alice Folkart's poems in "The House of 30," set me to thinking about how desperate people will reach out to things they shun in less desperate times, religion being a good example. Of course, even then they don't reach out without some hesitations, which i thought were kind of funny. the doubter's prayer dear most unlikely heavenly father, god of fear and weak minds, hear my prayer if you exist and actually care about stuff like us, please bring us peace and protect us from harm in the world you may or may not have created your creations, should you willing to accept such responsibility, are in disarray - your stock market, to take just one example, is in deepest doo-doo, as are your banks, your big box retail stores, your automobile manufacturers, your farmers, your ranchers and your purveyors of overpriced goods in upscale niche markets not only that, but your most worthy of all claimed creations, me, is getting old and fat and exceedingly absent-minded it's all in the toilet, as you should very well know if you really are the all-seeing eye your PR flacks proclaim you to be, which, quite frankly, brings into deep doubt your status as a be-all-end-all master builder so just in case you actually are king of all this creation, i would humbly (if reluctantly) pray that you get back on the job and fix this mess your creation has slipped into in your unlikely name i pray you to make it so, just like the Star Trek guy who, i have to say, has a much more likely backstory than your own and who would probably be an acceptable replacement to most of us if you don't demonstrate some all-powerful, celestial Mr. Fix-it skills pretty darn quick it's the least you could do if your really are all you're cracked up to be (but i doubt it)  Here's a piece by Robert Bonazzi, a poet I've never read before. The poem is from his book Maestro of Solitude, published by Wings Press in 2007. Born in 1942 in New York City, Bonazzi has also lived in San Francisco, Mexico City, Florida and several Texas cities, including San Antonio. From 1966 until 2000 he edited and published more than one hundred titles under his Latitudes Press imprint. only the ego is lonely because it has no body or place - Paul Christensen I Alive in perpetual thesis anti-thesis expanding endlessly outside parentheses marking past horizon eternally afloat in a circular wordplay inscribed or a page or merely functional speech led silently to oneself Ergo centric city grand gated prison spreading concentric circles around itself center piece of void mirrored wilderness herded round scenery fallen on deaf fears II Being illuminates becoming why time ticks art curves wave shapes change exists arguing mind over matter mystery Original fragment of unknowable whole infinite source eternal within spirit essence cycle of spring flowering swarming insects take wing over orange grove on palette of shifting colors seen as windy light Freedom true solitude pure exists not except as modal consciousness explicating obscure lowercase depths punctuated space III Self mother of pity self-pity father of ego imperfection of non- violence renders violence anonymous genocide Perfection of non-violence absolute humility facing murderous rapist lost in contemplating my perfect crime IV Be yond senses stars orbit word foreplay no hands counter clockwise Tao was then - Zen is now! (no milk or sugar in the tea)  Here are three pieces by our friend Alex Stolis. My filing system is such that I may have used these before, but, to paraphrase Whitman, I repeat myself? - so I repeat myself. Repeating a good thing is not a bad thing. Lovelines I'm a Sagittarius and enjoy the simple things in life like flowers, bonfires, Chinese art. I'm 5'3", 110lbs, long straight blonde hair. I like to read and listen to music. If you are at all interested send me a message and I'll get back. Box 86345 Tonight, the sky is dressed in black with gold trim; its silk feet bound by crisscross moons it's 2 AM and the crush of water running in the bathtub next door sounds like a Chinese fortune I sit here, think of cutting my teeth on the scar that resembles a bird's feather on your thigh, parallel to the curve of your hip. Instead, I cut my teeth on the round skin of an apple, picture Madam Butterfly covered to her neck, petals and stems floating around her breasts. You Lose back when misery was glamorous the streets were tethers that kept us warm and broken, we were caged with clipped wings and unshorn hair tomorrow, loss will be bundled like straw and left to dry in a crisp November sun but for now, there is no enchantment in remembering: there is no warm skin, no angels, no flights of fancy only the remains of our bones bleached by the cold blame it on rain that can shred a conversation until I love you turns to later baby to not a chance motherfucker Treatment Bound the bartender says it's time to go, winks at me through last call and pretends to pour a long count we're all frightened of winter and its bitter cough, wary of the cold sun she's got nothing, not even god on her side but twenty dollars later she drinks me under the table it arcs a path through this brittle day and we get lost in layers of sin I want to take her home, whisper her name in my sleep but the only sound left is the clink, clink of quarters and dimes against glass waiting for forgiveness to blot out the moon and erase the dirt from our memories she tells me there is nowhere to go but here and we're running, fast as we can  I'm thinkng it might be a good time for some fun with Shel Silverstein. I was first a fan of Silverstein for his cartoons in Playboy, and didn't know him as a writer of children's books not just for children until his publication in 1974 of Where the Sidewalk Ends. The two poems I'm using this week are from A Light in the Attic, published in 1981 and given to me as a Christmas present in 1982 by my wife. With these two Silverstein books, as well as a beginning collection of Dr. Seuss, we were primed and ready when our son was born in 1983. Tired I've been working so hard you just wouldn't believe, And I'm tired! There's so little time and so much to achieve, And I'm tired! I've been lying here holding the grass in its place, Pressing a leaf with the side of my face, Tasting the apples to see if they're sweet, Counting the toes on a centipede's feet. I've been memorizing the shape of that cloud, Warning the robins to not chirp so loud, Shooing the butterflies off the tomatoes, Keeping an eye out for floods and tornadoes. I've been supervising the work of the ants And thinking of pruning the cantaloupe plants, Timing the sun to see what time it sets, Calling the fish to swim into my nets, And I've taken twelve thousand and forty-one breaths, And I'm TIRED! Whatif Last night, while I lay thinking here, Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear and pranced and partied all night long And sang that same old Whatif song: Whatif I'm dumb in school? Whatif they've closed the swimming pool? Whatif I get beat up? Whatif there's poison in my cup? Whatif I start to cry? Whatif I get sick and die? Whatif I flunk that test? Whatif green hair grows on my chest? Whatif nobody likes me? Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me? Whatif I don't grown taller? Whatif my head starts getting smaller? Whatif the fish won't bite? Whatif the wind tears up my kite? Whatif they start a war? Whatif my parents get divorced? Whatif the bus is late? Whatif my teeth don't grown in straight? Whatif I tear my pants? Whatif I never learn to dance? Everything seems swell, and then The nighttime Whatifs strike again!  To more or less repeat a line from a TV show I liked last year than this year, "Burn Notice," a newspaper can be a deadly weapon if it falls into the wrong hands. Then there's this thing I did with a newspaper a couple of weeks ago. in the news today we break from our TV Land original drama "Lucy & Ethel's Secret Adventure" for this headline news update shuttle launch postponed againin NASA head goes house-to-house for parking meter change suspect in slayings of 2 cops kills self future potential suicides to be given marksman training so they might better get it right the first time Chicago shooting kills 3 teenagers cure for acne not yet perfected drought to halt water for farms saved for priority uses - spokesman says, no water for swimming pools, no starlets in tiny bikinis - mental health of Hollywood producers on the line Clintons' cat Socks dies at 18 last surviving eyewitness to Monicagate is laid to rest - tell-all memoir due next year holocaust-denier bishop to depart he denies it some convicts to get amnesty human rights advocates decry terms of amnesty - claim kissing the robe of the Great Oz just goes too far boat cuts ice, rescues dolphins boats crew fired by their employer Starkist tuna for missing the dolphins and hitting the ice instead  Ryokan Daigu, who lived in Japan between the mid-18th and mid-19th centuries, was a quiet and eccentric Soto Zen Buddhist monk who lived much of his life as a hermit. Ryokan is remembered, and in many instances revered, for his poetry and calligraphy, which are said to present the essence of Zen life. The poems are from One Robe, One Bowl - The Zen Poetry of Ryokan, translated by John Stevens, and first published in 1977 by Weatherhill. Winter Night Concealed in a dense forest, my hermitage lies far beyond the village river. A thousand peaks, ten thousand mountain streams, yet no sigh of anyone. A long, cold winter's night - slowly a piece of wood burns in the fireplace. Nothing can be heard except the sound of snow striking the window. *** Who can sympathize with my life? My hut lies near the top of a mountain, and the path leading here is covered with weeds. On the fence, a single gourd, From across the river, the sound of logging. Ill, I lie on the pillow and watch the sunrise. A bird cries in the distance - My only consolation. *** The number of days since I left the world and entrusted myself to heaven is long forgotten. Yesterday, sitting peacefully in the green mountains; This morning, playing with the village children. My robe is full of patches and I cannot remember how long I have had the same bowl for begging. On clear nights I walk with my staff and chant poems; Who says many cannot lead such a life? Just follow my example. *** Finishing a day of begging, I return home through the green mountains. The setting sun is hidden behind the western cliffs And the moon shines weakly on the stream below. I stop by a rock and wash my feet. Lighting some incense, I sit peacefully in zazen. Again a one-man brotherhood of monks; Ah...how quickly the stream of time sweeps by.  Here's a recent piece (also from Blueline's "House of 30") by our friend Thane Zander. I like most of what he does and this one is so "Thanish" I couldn't pass it up. Repercussions Immobilized by technologies danged finest, I pierce a rogue nipple (or two) dance an Irish Jig in the manner of insanity, lick my wounds and place an errant computer in a bin that's full to overflowing. Immaculate, the precision required to lick postage stamps, a record player lying defunct thanks to CD's yet the needle scratches a pile of old 78's when the mood for Dicky Valentine and maybe early Frank takes hold of a desire to just cruise into the sunset, with waders on, a fishing pole, and a map marked with an X. Impossible, the ability to scratch your back where that little irritating ache emanates from, the door jamb passes for a lithe finger but still it irritates, just like a politician that stands in front of you and proclaims "every thing is fine" you check your heart monitor for leaks. Indestructible is the passion you display typing poems, your fingers working aged joints like a modern day gladiator, the trunks in the spare room moan holiday, the empty space in your wallet decrying miserliness, your daughter rings to say "hi", you say Hi back arguing with yourself to ask what is wrong, she smiles (you guess) and giggles and chats letting you know you're not yet on the road to grandfatherhood, the grey hairs mounting. Igloo - a place you'd stay if they had power and modems.  Next, I have a couple of short poems from a very small book of poetry by Philip Larkin. The book is High Windows, published by Faber and Faber in 1974. A poet, novelist, and jazz critic, Larkin died in 1985. He spent his working life as a university librarian and was offered the Poet Laureateship at one point, but declined the post. Sad Steps Groping back to bed after a piss I part thick curtains, and am startled by The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness. Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky. There's something laughable about this, The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart (Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below) High and preposterous and separate - Lozenge of Love! Medallion of art! O wolves of memory! Immensements! No, One shivers slightly, looking up there. The hardness and the brightness and the plain Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare Is a reminder of the strength and pain Of being young; that it can't come again, But is for others undiminished somewhere. This Be the Verse They fuck you up, your mum and dad They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn by fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another's throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can. And don't have any kids yourself.  A break in routine led me to this. writing my morning poem at the end of day i usually do my writing in the morning, when the fresh breath of a new day informs my imagination, bringing to early light possibilities lost in the denser parts of day sundays are especially difficult, busier as they are than any other day with activities planned and places to be it's hard to get a morning poem on Sundays This sunday, today, more packed even then usual, preparing for dinner tonight with family we do this often on weekends, will do it again next Sunday, in fact, our son's birthday (26); my birthday (65); our anniversary (32), something simple, family type food, probably an enchilada casserole that everyone likes and that's quick to make and that goes a long way when you're feeding 10 people i enjoy these evenings together - i'm always the oldest, and from my place at the head of the table i can look down on either side and count the changes we've all seen together, especially the kids, the youngest now approaching her 15th birthday, looking forward to her Quinceanera in June almost as much as her parents - D and i are padrinos of the tiara so we will stand with her at the altar through the mass, and will at some appropriate time play our part in the ceremony, and whatever that part is, it will be gladly done, as such things are always gladly done for the happiness to those we love and that is why i often miss my morning poem on Sundays - there are priorities in writing and in life and in the companionship of family and Sundays are the days when life and family assume the first position, and writing, if it's time comes at all, is in the late hours like now, when the fresh breath of morning is long gone, and what i want most is the quiet whisper of sleep  Born in 1950, Dana Gioia is a poet and critic who retired early from his career as a corporate executive at General Foods to write full time. He recently completed nearly five years of service as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States government's arts agency, where he worked to revitalize an organization that had suffered bitter controversies about the nature of grants to artists in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During his tenure, Gioia sought to encourage jazz, which he calls the only uniquely American form of art, to promote reading and performance of William Shakespeare, and increase the number of Americans reading literature. Before taking the NEA post, Gioia was a resident of Santa Rosa, California, and before that, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. The next two poems are from his book, The Gods of Winter, published by Graywolf Press in 1991. Night Watch for my uncle, Theodore Ortiz, U.S.M.M. I think of you standing on the sloping deck as the freighter pulls away from the coast of China, the last lights of Asia disappearing in the fog, and the engine's drone dissolving in the old monotony of waves slapping up against the hull. Leaning on the rails, looking eastward to American across the empty weeks of ocean, how carefully you must have planned your life, so much of it already wasted on the sea, the vast country of your homelessness. Macao, Vladivostok, Singapore. Dante read by shiplamp on the bridge. The names of fellow sailors lost in war. These memories will die with you, but tonight they rise up burning in your mind. Interweaving like gulls crying in the wake, like currents on a chart, like gulfweed swirling in a star-soaked sea, and interchangeable as all the words for night - la notte, noche, Nacht, nuit, each sound half-foreign, half-American, like America. For now you know that mainland best from dreams. Your dead mother turning toward you slowly, always on the edge of words, yet always silent as the suffering madonna of a shrine. Or your father pounding his fist against the wall. There are so many ways to waste a life. Why choose between these icons of unhappiness, when there is the undisguised illusion of the sea. the comfort of old books and solitude to fill the long night watch, the endless argument of waves? Breathe in the dark and tangible air, for in a few weeks you will be dead, burned beyond recognition, left as a headstone in the unfamiliar earth which no one to ask, neither wife nor children, why your ashes have been buried here and not scattered on the shifting gray Pacific. Veteran's Cemetery the ceremonies of the day have ceased, Abandoned to the ragged crow's parade. The flags unravel in the caterpillar's feast. the wreaths collapse onto the stones they shade. How quietly doves gather by the gate Like souls who have no heaven and no hell. The patient grass reclaims its lost estate Where one stone angel stands as sentinel. The voices whispering in the burning leaves, Faint and inhuman, what can they desire When every season feeds upon the past, And summer's green ignites the autumn’s fire? The afternoon's single thread of light Sewn through the tatters of leafless willow, As one by one the branches fade from sight, And time curls up like paper turning yellow.  Our friend Dan Cuddy sent this to me. I don't know where it originated, but it’s funny. Explaining Investment Banking Young Chuck moved to Texas and bought a donkey from a farmer for $100. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day. The next day the farmer drove up and said, "Sorry Chuck, but I have some bad news. The donkey died." Chuck replied, "Well then, just give me my money back." The farmer said," "Can't do that. I went and spent it already." Chuck said, "OK, then, just bring me the dead donkey." The farmer asked, "What ya gonna do with a dead donkey?" Chuck said, "I'm going to raffle him off." The farmer said, "You can't raffle off a dead donkey!" Chuck said, "Sure I can. Watch me. I just won't tell anybody he's dead." A month later, the farmer met up with Chuck and asked, "What happened with that dead donkey?" Chuck said, "I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars apiece and made a profit of $898.00." The farmer said, "Didn't anyone complain?" Chuck said, "Just the guy who won. So I gave him his two dollars back." Chuck now works for Morgan Stanley.  The next poem is by William Matthews, from his book Blues If You Want, published Houghton Mifflin in 1989. Matthews was born in Ohio, in 1942. He earned a B.A. from Yale and an M.A. from the University of North Carolina. During his lifetime he published eleven books of poetry. He received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Ingram Merrill foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. In 1997 he was awarded the Ruth Lilly Prize. He taught at several schools, including Wells College, Cornell University, the University of Colorado, and the University of Washington. At the time of his death in 1997 he was a professor of English and director of the creative writing program at New York's City College. The Introduction I have a few remarks. He smiled. Restless and unbeguiled, we shifted in our seats, This morning's speaker, he began, and then without warning we were in the midst of a dark essay. His first remarks concerned equality between the speaker and himself - also a biped, an inquiring mind and slow to take offense. A change of venue for each numb buttock in the hall? The menu was all appetizer napped with dust. Award Adam a Ph.D and Eden must have been like this. The naming of the animals was more like registration, even, than like class. Animals frequently cooked with fruit milled on the left, blue animals in the center, and on the right in puffs and blurs like dissipating ground fog, wraiths from each species that would fade into extinction while he spoke. This introduction was no joke, like so much of life. And after all, whom would we meet? A look around the room confirmed that we were us - deft at pretending to be there, bereft because we were. Oh, an artesian joy and other fluids bubbled in us, but we strove to be attentive all the same. From the podium a rumble rose (Ladies) and fell and Gentlemen). Is this the onset of the end? Here comes the speaker, like a comet's tail. It wasn't a bad introduction after all. I think the topic, though I could be wrong, is the afterlife. I hope it doesn't go on long.  More news that brought me to this. big news in the astrophysical world big news in the astrophysical world is the massive explosion some 12.2 billion light years from our own little howdydoody home from whence we ofttimes claim a place as big-time-charlies in the heavenly order of things, even though, being only 8 light minutes from our own star we call the sun and 12 light minutes from the furthest named object to circle that sun with us, it is a very small neighborhood we live in, a very small neighborhood where, with all our searching and seeking, we have yet to reach even our own front gate Columbus sailed the ocean blue and thought he had circled the world, such ignorance is to us denied and we are better for it... for it lets us see our true place, tiny bits of carbon base in a vastness we can quantify but not imagine, little carbon dandies important only in our doings with our little carbon fellows frankly, my dear, the rest of all that is doesn't give a damn  Gary Soto is a poet, playwright, essayist, and author of several children's books. Widely anthologized, he has been honored with both the Bess Hokin and Levinson Prizes, as well as the Discovery/The Nation Award, the Andrew Carnegie Award for Excellence in Children’s Video, the Literature Award from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, and an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. He has received several fellowships and was a National Book Award finalist for his book, New and Selected Poems. He divides his time between Berkeley and his hometown of Fresno. The next two poems are from his book, a simple plan, another National Book Award finalist, published Chronicle Books in 2007. L.A. Scene at a Restaurant called "One" "I'm a conceptual artist," he says, and shows me, a violinist, the fingernails of his left hand - Brittle scenes of the Seine river in its four seasons. I'm drinking a California champagne, Little bubbles applauding at the lip of the glass, Not unlike the clamor of my last Beethoven Sonata #@4 - To hid the hundred no-shows, Ten friends in the audience forced up a thousand faces. "They look real," I say, and, sipping, destroy the applause, My Happy Hour pleasure at $8.75 a glass. "You should grow our nails longer," I suggested. "Do scenes of Twain's Mississippi, the Grand Canyon, Or" - sip, sip of champagne - "the four stages Of the Rodney King Riots." He lifts a glass to his face, Rivers of lines around his mouth, The deltas of every piece of gossip he helped spread. "Can't," he answers. “My fingernails chip easily." I tip back my drink, And size up this artist through a light buzz - He needs those fingernails. Needs them to claw his way up. The Artist Thinks, "So This is Me" On a diet, I move the salt shaker like a chess piece, and the pepper follows. Forget eggs, Forget the steak wrapped in butcher paper, And let's not dwell on the Freudian meaning Of half-and-half cream. (We get older. The cornucopia Of spleen, kidney, and liver bruised, Our joints stiff, our lives a glint in the rearview mirror. The hair on your head just that - a hair.) The red-nibbled radish is OK, The glass of water with the milk ring on the bottom, The apple, the pear, the Orange quartered cleanly, And a mob of grapes. I think, My lunch is nothing but a still life! But it's life. When I open the refrigerator, I'm greeted by Mrs. Butterworth and her nemesis, Quaker Oats. The beer looks beer-bellied - why didn't I see that earlier! and the tortillas! I'm sure if you threw one Onto the burner, Jesus' face would appear. Wallace Stevens, poet and insurance salesman, Once rolled his pant legs up and stood on a lapping shore. From that tug of nature, he wrote three books, So moved was he by the little act of slapping sand from his toes. I have no shore, no insurance, no letter that begins, "My Dear Love." In a park I would fall face first into autumn leaves And rub my wounds until those leaves healed me. Then I would go home, my mind big as a canvas. My brushes are stiff, and the first figures just sticks, But I can do a still life - an apple And pear, the grapes in the biggest bowl. In the background, the salt and pepper shakers, their red tops - My yearning, critics would say, to roughhouse with a bloody steak?  Here's a little shiver of a poem I wrote last week to finish off this week's presentation. hoodat hoosay hoodat early to bed last night, barely made it to 8:30 really tired dreams all night woke up from a dream that reminded me of a place and people in my past, fond memories, then realized that i was only dreaming i woke up and all the fond memories from the past were dream memories inside of a dream inside of a dream of waking up seemed so real when i dreamed it, so confusing when i woke up from the waking-up dream it's like the door slam that wakes you up at 2 a.m. and you have to decide whether the door really slammed or did you just dream a slamming door like the voice that seems to come from just beside the bed  Time to mosey off down the trail for another week. As I try to recall the essentials of my 7th grade mosey lessons, you should recall that all the material presented in this blog remains the property of its creators. The blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz. |
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