This is what I’m taking into my workshop session tomorrow. I was supposed to revise what was selected (out of three I had written) as the first stanza of a poem about Vermeer’s painting and then write three possible second stanzas. I gave it my best shot, but that didn’t work for me. What works for me is this:
Vermeer
I’m getting nowhere with revising and creating the poetry for the workshop session on Thursday. My muse is not even a rope; she’s a thread — a worn thread raveling from the edge of my sleeve of care.
Instead, I
— take my mom out to find a quad-cane that works for her; none of them is the one
— start trying to root two avocado pits
— touch up my hair color, which takes some time because I mix two different colors (it’s that tinkering thing again)
— eat some chocolate
— order a nose aspirator and cheap stethescope for my grandson.
— check my weblog comments
— read my son’s weblog
— read my email and follow a link to here
— finish the fabric book I’m making for my grandson
— cook up a batch of chicken marsala and freeze some for my next Boston trip
— leave the new batch of dishes in the sink for later
— pet my cat
— blog
— ponder some more the woman in the Vermeer painting and come up with this:
She wonders what lie to tell him this time.
A husband returned from trade too soon?
A fretful child awake all night with fevered dreams?
What she can
The dishes are done. The cat litter emptied. Mother has been given her food and her pills. And all the while I’m pondering how I would answer this question that I have asked myself: “Why do you want to write poetry??”
And this is what I have come to realize:
I don’t WANT to write poetry. What I want is, when I feel COMPELLED (read “inspired”) to write a poem, to know how to make it a really good poem , to energize it with the power of language, technique, form.
That’s why I’m in this workshop.
Poet at Work. Blogger at Process.
Last night, I spent three hours in front of my computer screen, wrestling with that damned #3.
In a time of previous struggle, a friend of mine reminded me that “you can’t push a rope.” My muse is as limp as a rope.
It’s Easter Sunday. It’s Spring. When does bliss become burden?
I resurrect an old poem.
Waiting for the Fall
I was never one to yearn for spring,
the sky too full of eager wings,
the air a burden of song.
Even the ground swells, straining
under a yoke of seeds.
I wake with the winds of autumn,
when a cold sun
fades the trees to clarity,
when the line of the sky
cuts clean and sharp
above the leveled land,
when the earth is a slate
set for the poet
This is going to be a long post. If you’re not interested in how a poem gets written, revised, rewritten and “de-scaffolded”, you probably should move on.
I’m struggling to complete an assignment that we in Eamon Grennon’s advanced poetry workshop were given to complete by this Thursday. And I do mean struggling. It’s our second assignment.
Our first assignment was to write three possible first stanzas based on this Vermeer painting. Each stanza had to be 11 lines long, and each line had to have between 9 and thirteen syllables. At the first workshop meeting, each of us 12 “advanced poets” read his/her three versions, and the group, including Grennon, reached a decision about which version was the “best.” Interestingly enough, we all tended to agree.
These are the three I wrote: (Notice that the first version was just something I had to get out of my personal system; the second was based on my doing a little historical research about the era in which the painting was executed; the third was my stretch to come up with a novel angle on the scene.)
#1
You can be sure that picking up a pen,
already dripping virulent ink,
will bring an old woman rapping at the door
armed with a burned pot and dented memory;
or maybe a mad cat clawing at the sleeve
of the rich wrap you threw on against
the chill of an exigent morning held at bay.
You yearn for moments between dawn and day,
for the silence sought by a rhymed mind.
You hunt the lines that pulled your smile from sleep,
and learn to expect interruptions.
#2
How she resents the power of such darkness
You can’t have a war without people getting killed. You kill them. They kill you. But in this modern era of smart bombs that are really not that smart at all, we too often wind up killing our own.
My friend and former therapist, Ed Tick, has a letter to the editor in today’s paper that begins:
David Morris’ March 26 commentary on fratricide summarizes several incidents in both the first and present Iraq wars in which American and coalition ground troops were killed by our own A-10 attack jets. These American deaths due to friendly fire underscore an ignored but persistent problem of modern war.
I have worked with a grunt who was the only survivor when our own forces dropped a bomb on his sleeping squad, a spotter pilot almost shot down by our side, a Gulf War veteran trapped in a firefight in which both the enemy and our own forces tried to destroy him because his tiny position was in the way of their big fight. The pain, outrage and sense of betrayal caused by incidents like these do not disappear over time. These are but a few recent examples from local veterans of a much larger problem endemic to modern warfare.
Ed now works primarily with Veterans who have Post Traumatic Stress. The stories he tells about what this country’s whoring [sic] has put our military men and women through are enough to turn anyone but the most war-mongering into pacifists.
I have never understood why we just don’t send those who want war INTO the war to do the actual fighting. You want it? You should bear the brunt of it.
The audio CD I listened to on my way back and forth to Boston last week was Tom Robbins’ Villa Incognito. I tend not to read too many male writers, but Tom Robbins and Terry Pratchett are the ones I read when I need perspective — the kind of combined comic/ cosmic view of life that is more humanly true than any factual narrative. Robbins, in particular, connects the dots of disparate (human and non-) lives in the same way that my mind tends to — although without his playful literary talents.
Like, just before starting the Robbins’ CD, I had been listening to the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which is located in Botswana. (Actually Betsy Devine gave me a copy of that book last year; I started it and then got sidetracked. So, instead, I decided to listen to it on a CD from my public library as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep.)
In that novel, the main character talks about how much she loves Botswana Blossom Red Tea (which I’d never heard of). When I get to my daugher’s house, tired of driving and ready for a cup of tea, lo’ and behold doesn’t she have a tin of Botswana Blossom Red Tea on her shelf. That’s the kind of dot-connecting coincidence that makes me smile and feel that all’s right with my world. For me, it becomes more than a coincidence; it becomes a synchronicity.
Interspersed all through Villa Incognito are stanzas of a poem. I wish I had a hard copy of the book, because I would love to copy down the whole thing. From here, I found the last part of it:
Just because you’re naked
doesn’t mean you’re sexy.
Just because you’re cynical
doesn’t mean you’re cool.
You may tell the greatest lies
and wear a brilliant disguise
but you can’t escape the eyes
of the one who sees right through you.
In the end what will prevail
is your passion, not your tale,
for love is the Holy Grail,
even in Cognito.
So better listen to me sister,
and pay close attention, mister:
It’s very good to play the game,
amuse the gods, avoid the pain.
But don’t trust fortune; don’t trust fame.
Your real self doesn’t know your name,
and in that we’re all the same.
We’re all incognito
This piece on Villa Incognito from here says it all:
Observe: the first sentence of Villa reads,
SOCIAL Security, that is.
Many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month — and we are being taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the federal government to “put away” for us. As we approach the presidential election, it is as important as it is angering to review some crucial facts about the history of Social Security, which was instituted by FDR (D), and for which the premiums we pay were increased by Ronald Regan (R).
Q: Which party took Social Security from an independent fund and put it the general fund so that Congress could spend it?
A: It was Richard Nixon and the Republican-controlled House and Senate.
Q: Which party put a tax on Social Security?
A: The Republican Party.
Q: Which party increased the tax on Social Security?
A: The Republican Party with Dick Chaney casting the deciding vote.
Q: Which party decided to give money to immigrants?
A: That’s right, immigrants moved into this country and at 65 got SSI Social Security. The Republican party gave that to them although they never paid a dime into it.
Then, after doing all this, the Republicans turn around and tell us that the Democrats want to take our Social Security– and the worst part about it is that so many People believe the Republican lies!
Little picture, big picture. They both suck.
I’m back from three therapeutic days with the cutest little guy in the world, as he lead me around by the hand and names all of the things in his world. Truck. Trash. Plant. Water. Elbow. Cat. Tea. Cup. Handle. Elmo. Tigger…… And, of course, his favorite thing in the world, vacuum cleaner, which, in his language, sounds like “mwaamuu.”
I’m back, in a better frame of mind but not much better frame of reference. I’ve contacted a Home Care agency to set up an evaluation and figure out what we need to make this work. Mom is on her feet, shaky tho’ they might be, able to get dressed and sit at the table and eat. I find that I’m distracted from whatever I’m doing at the time, whether it’s something for her or something for me. My own back is acting up — probably because I really want to “act up” and I can’t. I want to be bitchy and mean and self-centered. But there’s already one too many of those around here.
The Big Bush Picture gets worse and worse as well.
From BuzzFlash.
In his book, “House of Bush, House of Saud,” journalist Craig Unger lays out a compelling case that the Bush family is so inextricably bound up with the Saudi royal family that it could not hold them responsible for the role that many Saudi Arabians played in the 9/11 day of terror.
[snip]
In essence, the Bush Cartel has sold Americans a bill of goods. They have diverted our attention from the major nation state supporting Al-Qaeda because they don’t want to attack their own business partners, including the Saudi who bailed Harken Oil out. He’s the same guy that was deeply involved with BCCI, the corrupt bank that Poppy Bush and many of his cohorts were associated with. There are plenty more like him. Just read Unger’s book.
[snip]
It is hard to put your arms around the gravity of Bush’s betrayal of our nation. Americans just don’t want to believe that anyone sitting in the Oval Office, even if unelected, could be a traitor to the interests of his own country.
But, when it comes to Saudi Arabia, the Bush family’s business interests and personal relationships take precedence over our interests as a nation.
Remember, the Bush Cartel censored 28 pages in Congress’s 9/11 reports. The subject of those 28 pages was reportedly the Saudi financing of terrorist front organizations and “charities.”
Unger, a respected journalist, concludes that Bush must believe that “the billionaire Saudi royals are somehow more worthy of the government’s concern than are the victims of 9/11.”
“As above, so below,”.
Certainly seems so from where I’m sitting, so tired of sucking it up.
I left my mother’s house at 17 never to go back for a good reason.
A naracissist is a narcissist is a narcissist. Right to the end.
She’s finally tossed that back-breaking straw.
How much does one owe the person who gave birth to you and who, over the years, has probably given you somewhere around $150,000 to help you out with various life situations?
I think four years of the full-time and loving caregiving I’ve provided, only to have to endure the kind of emotional abuse only a life-long narcissist knows how to inflict, is enough. My debt to her is paid in full.
Now what?
My brother is coming up tomorrow and I’m heading out to my daughter’s for a few days. After that, who knows what.
Don’t expect anything here for a while.