National Poetry Month, Day 7: Walt Whitman

Can't go too long into April without dishing out some Whitman...these classic stanzas at that:



Song of Myself I
by Walt Whitman

I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil,
this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and
their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never
forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

National Poetry Month, Day 6: Mary Oliver

So, here's the thing. Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, David Whyte...these were the poets who pulled me into language very young, who said things, specifically about the natural world, that I didn't know you could. They wrote things that at the time made sense to me, and make sense to me still. I don't go to them anymore to inspire me toward the brilliant stanza or the line or even toward poetry in general. BUT they still inspire me toward thoughtfulness and attention and a general kind of spiritual looking-around, a kindness, if you will, toward the world.

I recently participated in a reading in upstate NY. One of the other readers read a poem he'd written that essentially made fun--and fun is an understated adjective in this case--of this kind of poetry, and at Mary Oliver's expense. By "this kind of poetry" I suppose I mean accessible poetry, poetry about the natural world (?), inspirational poetry, poetry that has made its poets successful and well-known, put them on NPR and allowed them to make a living at what they do, poetry that isn't tinged with the kind of snarky cynicism that makes me want to crawl under a rock. As my favorite rocker Eugene Hutz said in an interview last year, "It's too easy to be a cynic. It's too easy to be ironic. It's too easy to be negative...I think that being here on Earth is a gift to make a full use of before whatever the next stage is."

So, with that, I honor Mary Oliver, and all the other poets that don't have to be clever, cryptic, cynical, and ICKY in order to be brilliant:

Cold Poem
by Mary Oliver

Cold now.
Close to the edge. Almost
unbearable. Clouds
bunch up and boil down
from the north of the white bear.
This tree-splitting morning
I dream of his fat tracks,
the lifesaving suet.

I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handfuls of grain.

Maybe what cold is, is the time
we measure the love we have always had, secretly,
for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love
for the warm river of the I, beyond all else; maybe

that is what it means the beauty
of the blue shark cruising toward the tumbling seals.

In the season of snow,
in the immeasurable cold,
we grow cruel but honest; we keep
ourselves alive,
if we can, taking one after another
the necessary bodies of others, the many
crushed red flowers.

National Poetry Month, Day 5: Jane Mead

This woman runs a ranch in Northern California, and I love her poetry. It's often dense, but I like the puzzle of it...the way I have to work to get in there.

The Origin
by Jane Mead

of what happened is not in language—
of this much I am certain.
Six degrees south, six east—

and you have it: the bird
with the blue feathers, the brown bird—
same white breasts, same scaly

ankles. The waves between us—
house light and transform motion
into the harboring of sounds in language.—

Where there is newsprint
the fact of desire is turned from again—
and again. Just the sense

that what remains might well be held up—
later, as an ending.
Twice I have walked through this life—

once for nothing, once
for facts: fairy-shrimp in the vernal pool—
glassy-winged sharp-shooter

on the failing vines. Count me—
among the animals, their small
committed calls.—

Count me among
the living. My greatest desire—
to exist in a physical world.

National Poetry Month, Day 4: Catie Rosemurgy

I read this poem often, and repetitively, because I understand it more each time. It's gorgeous, and written by a woman who I overlapped with at the University of Alabama.











Love, with Trees and Lightning

by Catie Rosemurgy

I've been thinking about what love is for.
Not the dramatic part where he gathers
until he is as purposeful inside her
as an electric storm. Not when he breaks
into a thanks so bright it leaves her split
like a tree. (How we all jolt back, our picnic
ten shades lighter, our hands clapped over awe
that is too big for our mouths, our raw hearts
more tender now that they're a little burned.)

No, not the connecting and charring part.
(After all, nothing we like to call lightning
stays very long among the branches.)
But the two of them, afterwards, tasting
the electricity. Nibbling the charge
on the ions. When her soul has already
risked coming to meet him at the wide open
window of her skin. When what is left
of his body still feels huge, and he sits draped
in his fine, long coat of animal muscles
but uses all this strength to be human
and almost imperceptible. They curl up,
make their bodies the same size, draw promises
in one another's juices. "You," they say.
I love it when they say that.

Would that they could give a solid reason.
Sometimes they even refuse to try. They make jokes
while cinching their laces—"I'll call soon,"
"You are so sweet." The rank sugar of his breath
doesn't summarize the world for her. "Not you," they say.

And nothing bad has happened. They just turn
the doorknob that has been shining in their hands
the whole time, walk out, and continue to die.
Same as the rest of us. So maybe love
is a form of crying. Of finishing
what autumn leaves always start and turning
a brilliant color before we drift down.

Name one living thing that doesn't
somehow bloom. None of them get to choose
the right conditions. Think of fire, of orchids.
She's already up the street when he feels
his body pale, close, and become insufficient.
"If you go," he says out the door, "I go too."

There is no one like him, but she has no hope
of ever proving it. Instead she stays up
pressing old secrets into his skin and asking
if it hurts. He sets her on top of himself
so he can't leave without her and confesses
to feeling as if he almost matters,
as if he no longer disappears
as soon as he connects with something
receptive on the ground. She says she will
split in half for him a million times.
They bring flowers and carpet and children
into the act, stand by one another's side
for years. They refuse to move, ever. They act
as if they've found the only hospitable
spot on earth. I love it when they do that.


Copyright © 2003 Catie Rosemurgy All rights reserved
from River Styx

National Poetry Month, Day 3: Galway Kinnell

It's only the first week and I already missed a day! Oh, the keeping up...

This beautiful poem for Day 3 (yesterday) is a suggestion from my new friend Valerie R:



St. Francis and the Sow
by Galway Kinnell

The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of
the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

National Poetry Month, Day 2: Bruce Smith

This poem was written by a professor who helped guide me through my MFA and is from his book The Other Lover, which was a finalist years back for the National Book Award.

After St. Vincent Millay
by Bruce Smith

When I saw you again, distant, sparrow-boned
under the elegant clothes you wear in your life without me,
I thought, No, No, let her be the one
this time to look up at an oblivious me.
Let her find the edge of the cliff with her foot,
blindfolded. Let her be the one struck by the lightning
of the other so that the heart is jolted
from the ribs and the rest of the body is nothing
but ash. It’s a sad, familiar story
I wish you were telling me with this shabby excuse:
I never loved you anymore
than I hated myself for loving you.

And about that other guy by your side
you left me for. I hope he dies.

National Poetry Month, Day 1: Matthew Dickman

Happy National Poetry Month! I'm going to attempt this again this year, trying, more or less, to post a poem a day. I am in the midst of moving apartments so it maybe be inconsistent at best. But to start the very first day off, I give you this lovely poem, a new favorite (and you can read a great profile about him and identical twin brother in the most recent NYer):




Slow Dance

by Matthew Dickman

More than putting another man on the moon,
more than a New Year's resolution of yogurt and yoga,
we need the opportunity to dance
with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance
between the couch and dining room table, at the end
of the party, while the person we love has gone
to bring the car around
because it's begun to rain and would break their heart
if any part of us got wet. A slow dance
to bring the evening home. Two people
rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant.
A little music. An empty bottle of whiskey.
It's a little like cheating. Your head resting
on his shoulder, your breath moving up his neck.
Your hands along her spine. Her hips
unfolding like a cotton napkin
and you begin to think about
how all the stars in the sky are dead. The my body
is talking to your body slow dance. The Unchained Melody,
Stairway to Heaven, power-chord slow dance. All my life
I've made mistakes. Small
and cruel. I made my plans.
I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine.
The slow dance doesn't care. It's all kindness like children
before they turn three. Like being held in the arms
of my brother. The slow dance of siblings.
Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him,
one of my great loves, he is absolutely human,
and when he turns to dip me
or I step on his foot because we are both leading,
I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer.
The slow dance of what's to come
and the slow dance of insomnia
pouring across the floor like bath water.
When the woman I'm sleeping with
stands naked in the bathroom,
brushing her teeth, the slow dance of ritual is being spit
into the sink. There is no one to save us
because there is no need to be saved.
I've hurt you. I've loved you. I've mowed
the front yard. When the stranger wearing a sheer white dress
covered in a million beads
slinks toward me like an over-sexed chandelier suddenly come to life,
I take her hand in mine. I spin her out
and bring her in. This is the almond grove
in the dark slow dance.
It is what we should be doing right now. Scraping
for joy. The haiku and honey. The orange and orangutan slow dance.


from the book All American Poem published by APR press

apartment hunting

...is a little like internet dating. Sounds good, looks good, there might even be a nice e-mail correspondence beforehand, but then you show up, sit across the table from one another, and have a conversation. Reality. It's not for everyone.

Pretty soon they are telling you they don't believe in wireless technology, or sniffing your fleece coat and reporting that if you want to live in their house you'll have to change fabric softeners, and, "I just smoke in my office... I'm sure you can barely tell.." [cough, cough].

Onward...

It seemed beautiful to me

I read this lovely thing about laughter the other night, in Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead. The dying narrator, a minister, is walking by two local mechanics standing outside of their garage:

"There they were, propped against the garage wall in the sunshine, lighting up their cigarettes. They're always so black with grease and so strong with gasoline, I don't know why they don't catch fire themselves. They were passing remarks back and forth the way they do and laughing that wicked way they have. And it seemed beautiful to me. It's an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle with it. I see it in church often enough. So I wonder what it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you're done, like crying in a way I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spent."

More Than Just a Name

Here's a short-list of what I get called at work:
Laura
Laura D
Laura Didyk (my theory about this one is that people like to say my first and last because each name is a perfect trochee, stressed syllable followed by an unstressed...so they go well one right after the other, and it would be the same if one were to add my middle name: Laura Esther Didyk, three trochees, you can say them in succession with no interruption. Try it. It's fun).
LD
Lauralu
L-Dawg
The Enforcer (alas, this is my job)

I like my new job. So far, no one has called me "babe" as almost every other person in my life, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

Brilliant commercial

Windows reply to Apple's commercials. Brilliant advertising--they've stolen the enemy's approach to say "How you like us now?" (Oh, and how can one not laugh and sort of respect Mr. C there at the end... hysterical).

Valentine's Day

I can't believe it's been since Thanksgiving.
I kind of lost my focus, and couldn't figure out what it was I was supposed to be rapping about on here.

I was afraid I'd write something too personal, and either over-expose myself, or offend somebody somewhere.

The whole ambiguous nature of a blog has been evading me.

I don't write about politics. Mostly because I don't know politics enough to write intelligently about it. I don't write about food. Or fashion. Or writing. Or music, per se. I write about what I know best--the complications of the heart--of mine in particular. I know that some of those complications, when examined under just the right circumstances, are incredibly, incredibly funny. I know that I avoided writing about love and romance, dating and desperation, breaking up and breaking down, relationsnhips and relationshits, because I thought people would think it was trivial, trite, not intellectual enough. But I can't run from it anymore.

Tonight, on my friend Kate's couch, she hit me on the arm and said "You never write on your blog anymore." She told me she checks it every week. Which made me feel kind of loved, and then guilty (in a loving way), and then we went and saw He's Just Not That Into You--yup, on this day, the 14th of February, and I had a crapload of popcorn and most of a divine brownie (made by aforementioned friend) and am now quite the wired creature. I'm also now a first-class passenger on the will-the-whole-marriage-thing-ever-happen-the-way-I've-always-imagined-it-happening-will-it-feel-how-I've-always-imagined-it-feeling-with-that-guy-(who-will-it-be?)I've-always-imagined-it-happening-with-or-is-it-all-just-broken-hearts-on-the-wind-and-should-I-even-focus-on-those-fantasies-at-all-and-instead-put-my-whole-self-into-my-job-and-writing-my-book-which-is-problematic-since-my-book-is-about-all-the-relationships-and-men-and-dating-and-absurdity-of-trying-to-have-relationships-with-people-who-are-incapable-of-relationships-(including-myself)-and being-single-for-years-and-internet-dating-and-regular-dating-and-falling-halfway-for-inappropriate-people-like-a-celibate-monk-an-only-recently-clean-crack-addict-the-ultra-promiscuous-bass-player-of-a-band-I-adore-and-because-my-book-is-about-this-journey-and-these-men-and-the-fantasy-of-finding-true-love-at-last-and-how-it's-driven-me-more-than-any-other-force-in-my-life-and-it-makes-it-difficult-to-shift-my-focus-to-anything-else-this-exploratory-surgery-of-my-past-for-true-love-and-true-connection-and-true-marriage-makes-it-almost-impossible-to-recalibrate-my-attention-elsewhere-in-order-for-it-to-happen-on-its-own-while-I'm-turned-in-an-entirely-other-direction-(happen-in-a-way-I-couldn't-have-predicted-and-won't-be-able-to-account-for-because-this-is-how-they-all-say-it-happens-when-you-don't-want-it-to-and-aren't-looking-for-it-or-thinking-about-it-or-hoping-for-it-to-be-so-it-happens-when-you-are-trying-to-decide-if-you-should-spend-an-extra-$1.25-for-an-organic-avocado-given-that-it-will-taste-better-based-solely-on-the-fact-that-you-know-it's-organic-or-it-happens-when-you-haven't-showered-and-are-in-your-sweats-shopping-for-screws-at-Home-Depot)-so-the-book-which-is-what-I-want-to-focus-on-because-it's-my-work-and-makes-me-feel-happy-and-purposeful-makes-it-simultaneously-challening-because-when-I-am-in-the-book-it-is-all-I-am-thinking-about-that-and-the-relationship-I-am-currently-in-which-is-a-good-relationship-(not-average-good-but-good-to-the-bone-good-at-its-heart)-a-decent-hot-chemistry-filled-thing-between-two-people-a-relationship-however-that-includes-a-hard-fact-that-cannot-be-overlooked-the-fact-that-between-those-two-people-also-lies-2,000-miles-two-time-zones-is-conducted-with-2-cell-phones-4-e-mail-accounts-two-of-which-include-video-chat-and-FaceBook-but-does-not-include-the-multitude-of-text-messages-pinged-back-and-forth-not-to-mention-that-it's-unclear-if-any-of-these-numeric-facts-will-change-ever-or-soon-or-even-later-when-or-if-the-2,000-miles-will-be-traversed-by-one-party-or-the-other-who-will-throw-in-the-bedspread-first-or-pack-up-their-car-and-just-decide-THIS-IS-GOING-TO-HAPPEN-if-either-of-us-will-do-any-of-it train.

It's a bumpy trainride, but on it I'm eating a box of exquisite chocolates the bf got me for valentine's day (and he's wished me many happy valentines), plus I had a good hair day, and a cup of really amazing coffee this morning at a basement-cafe and spent the whole day with a dear friend who likes to talk as much as I do and in that way satisfied me to my very soul and the sky was open and blue all day and the clouds were Laura-loves-these-kinds-of-clouds clouds--and all of this on my train, which is running through my life, on its way into my unknown future. I never had my own train before. And I kind of like it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Near and far, in cold weather and warm, meat-eating and no, may your inner pilgrim be transported, or at least enjoy a day off from pilgriming.



And for the realistic pilgrim in all of us, here's a beautiful poem of thanks by W. S. Merwin.

"Thanks"
W.S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are
saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

Rated G for "Gruesome" and "Gawd"

Oh
my
god.

This is almost beautiful, the comedic synchronization.

You can't make this stuff up.

Listen to the question the interviewer asks at about 1:15, and what's going on in the background.



And then there's the part where the turkey is fighting for its life and the dude holding it, chewing his cud, is apologizing. For what? Killing the turkey? Digging Sarah P. into an even deeper hole of mud?

Thank god that yes, we did.

Mis-Fortune

Oh my, it's been a long time since I've been here.

And I can't think of a better way to return than to share the following clip of Elna Baker, which I cannot get enough of. You can find her at her website--www.elnabaker.com. [For some reason, this clip can take awhile to load. I'd led it load first, then watch, otherwise it'll drive you crazy. It's worth the wait.]

My first....

orchid! It's wee, but it's beautiful. And smells heavenly just for my birthday... Nice work, boyfriend!

Post Road #16 on web (sort of)

So they don't have a link to my piece, but they do excerpt the beginning.

5 Friends

Hilarious and moving and send it to people.

The great schlep

If you don't have an aversion to Sarah Silverman, check it out.

He Could Be a Cup

An interview with Miranda July's book, No One Belongs Here More Than You. Click here.