Month: February 2010

Relearning Winter

by Mark Svenvold

Hello Winter, hello flanneled

blanket of clouds, clouds

fueled by more clouds, hello again.

Hello afternoons,

off to the west, that silver

of sunset, rust-colored

and gone too soon.

And night (I admit to a short memory)

you climb back in with chilly fingers

and clocks, and there is no refusal:

ice cracks the water main, the garden hose

stiffens, the bladed leaves of the rhododendron

shine in the fog of a huge moon.

And rain, street lacquer,

oily puddles and spinning rubber,

mist of angels on the head of a pin,

hello,

and snow, upside-down cake of clouds,

white, freon scent, you build

even as you empty the world of texture —

hello to this new relief,

this new solitude now upon us,

upon which we feed.

I love the idea of feeding on solitude, or of being fed by solitude. I feel pretty isolated by winter, mainly because I have a low endurance for cold, and I really don’t want to go out and slip on the sidewalk – like last year, or go out and have to catch some roving Ick and have three weeks of some evil feverish haze — like last year — or otherwise have to admit that it’s cold and I feel helpless against something that seems vast and malicious. (I’m also isolated by the fact that I’m actually slightly insane for anthropomorphizing the weather.) I also don’t want to admit that somehow I’d tricked myself into believing that winter in Scotland was Oh, aye, nae tha bad.

Oh, aye it is. I’m from California, and I freely admit that I AM A WIMP. Winter here is simply hard for me to take, no matter my Pollyanna routine.

…So, I am relearning winter, as I always must, and at this point in the middle, where many of us are giving way to despair (I know some of the parents are, anyway. Will their children ever attend school again???), I am trying to find grace in the solitude, beauty in the cold, and more room on my bed for blankets.

Poetry Friday today is hosted by librarian Jone, head on over and Check It Out.

Earlier this week, poet Lucille Clifton died. The NY Times eulogized her as a poet who (merely?) explored “black lives,” but her work is bigger than that (I mean, seriously. Have you ever read her poem to Lorena Bobbit?) — it is about life – her life, the lives of women, the lives of women of color, the lives of those who suffer and celebrate and soldier on. In honor of all of those — all of us — I share my favorite Clifton poem – which isn’t the one about hips, which people erroneously attribute to Maya Angelou(!!) – and one for the future, both for those friends of mine who are soldiering on. You know who you are.

blessing the boats

by Lucille Clifton

(at St. Mary’s)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

Won’t You Celebrate With Me

won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman…
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my one hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

Watch this recited this aloud. It will give you chills.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Ms. Clifton.

Soldier on, and celebrate, good people.

Poetry Friday is being hosted by Irene Latham.

In this world of people plugged into their iPods, you will be horrified to note that I haven’t had a stereo since we moved into this apartment last May. I have a laptop, on which I can play CD’s, but I don’t often (once you’ve had good speakers and lost them – ugh). I listen to streaming radio sometimes – not often – usually because I have to sing and bop along and can really get nothing else done if I’m listening to music that doesn’t have a set time to begin and end. (I’m very jealous of all the people who can write while listening to music with lyrics. I can’t.) Very, very soon I’m going to have access to my music again, because music is as necessary as circulation and breathing… and, this morning I was listening to some shiny-happy sugary pop music and thinking about music in general.

Okay, so I know I was a really weird child, obviously, as I’ve grown up to be a really weird adult-sized child. But, it warms me that someone else was just as weird, and this poem really struck me. How well I remember lying on the floor, sobbing in bewilderment as I listened to Bach’s Komm, süßer Tod, or Ave Verum Corpus. (You may ask why a child was listening to these things. Because they were on a record that was on… and I stopped playing, and listened.) This is the best reason yet I’ve ever understood why those massive choral anthems struck me so hard — they were a part of something so very, very big, and my smallness, at seven, was not yet large enough to hold it.

My smallness probably will not ever be.

Music

  –by Anne Porter

When I was a child

I once sat sobbing on the floor

Beside my mother’s piano

As she played and sang

For there was in her singing

A shy yet solemn glory

My smallness could not hold

And when I was asked

Why I was crying

I had no words for it

I only shook my head

And went on crying

Why is it that music

At its most beautiful

Opens a wound in us

An ache a desolation

Deep as a homesickness

For some far-off

And half-forgotten country

I’ve never understood

Why this is so

Read the rest of this poem by Anne Porter, here.

I was eager to read more about the poet, and did a bit of digging online. I ran across this Wall Street Journal article from 2006… Anne Porter published her first book of poetry in 1994… when she was eighty-three.

Oh, my dears. We have no excuses not to do what we want to with our lives, do we? Really: no excuses.

Poetry Friday today is at Great Kids Books.