Because Lorca was a poet, his country hushed him

 

Posted Jan. 9 on Facebook by the poet. Ninety long years ago,
Lorca was murdered by fascists. His spirit lives on.

Always a good time to read Maya Angelou's Still I Rise

I look to poetry to ease the pain I feel at the ransacking of my country's democratic principles -- and the destruction of our White House. I didn't automatically go to the poets and writers of the 1920s and 1930s, that era of uprisings in the writing world. I didn't go to the 1960s and 1970s, my time as a young man trying to understand why an America I worshipped was murdering people in Southeast Asia in my name. I sometimes send my readers to that past. But I came across Maya Angelou's poem "Still I Rise" on the Poetry Foundation's web site. It speaks to this time, when fascists are in charge of the three branches of our government. I'd say read it and weep, but if you ain't weeping already, I have no words.

But Maya Angelou does:

Still I Rise (excerpt)

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

In the Soup: Retired CSU professor John Calderazzo reads in the library

Poetry books arrived this week. The first was “In the Soup,” the second book of poetry by John Calderazzo. John lives in the foothills outside the tiny town of Bellevue, Colorado just north of Fort Collins and Colorado State University. John taught literary nonfiction during his time in the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at CSU. He was one of my faculty mentors and I enlisted his expertise as a literary fellowship juror during my time at the Wyoming Arts Council. He still writes and teaches in that genre but explores poetry in retirement.

John writes of many topics but travel is a big one. He is a world traveler so writes about trips to Peru and other overseas locations. His U.S.-based poems are set on Flattop Mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park, Elk Mountain in Wyoming, and Santa Cruz Island in California.  He dedicates some to friends and colleagues. “Kraken” is dedicated to Richard Jacobi, whom I knew in Casper, Wyo. John hears from Richard and his wife, retired University of Wyoming professor Vicki Lindner, about recent falls which, at a certain age, leads to complications, something this person of a certain age knows only too well. After watching a video of his Peru nephew’s toddler son falling over as he tried to walk, John  writes: “I sense what’s reaching out for him—gravity, the Kraken,/tentacled monster of the deep—already taking/his measure.”

The natural world has always featured heavily in John’s writing. In “Gathering Voltage,” he’s in the mountains again, this time in a summer lightning storm. He and his brother-in-law crouch as a bolt hits nearby and he feels “the fatal breath of the sky.” On another day, he rides his mountain bike in a storm: “Shivering as I fly, I sense a lightning/bolt moving into position, gathering/voltage, checking its GPS, its terrible/book of names.”

The author is not always in the wilderness. Sometimes, “The Retired Professor Reads in the Library.” He’s researching a travel essay and is in the aisle with his books and “old-time reporter’s notebooks.” He moves aside to let a student pass and wonders if the young man just sees “Him again—the old guy.” Thing is, he’s “as happy as I was at 10, freed from class to roam the school library.” I know the feeling, the old guy with his walker, crowding the aisle, as he reads a book pulled from the shelves but not sitting instead at one of the tables reserved for the elderly. If asked, I might tell you that some of the glory in the library is being there in the crowded aisle with my friends, the books.

"The Darker Moods of My Father" took me back to my own youth in the 1960s and '70s. He contemplates his father's "darker moods" and his rants on Vietnam and antiwar protesters and "priests drunk on holy water." Meanwhile, the writer remembers "this thing/that wanted to cannon me into jungle mud/since I'd turned eighteen." The poem ends with a revelation about his parents, about how his mother cautioned her husband about going too far with his his diatribes and the father looks sheepish, "knowing he'd gone too far, back in those days/when it was still possible to go too far." Suddenly we're back in 2025, when every day is a lesson on going too far.

John’s book is published by Middle Creek Publishing and Audio: The Literature of Human Ecology. A fine-looking book, printed in a large and very readable sans-serif type. The publisher is based in Pueblo Mountain Road in Beulah, Colorado, which is located between Pueblo and the mountains. I mention this because there are many fine small publishers tucked into many small places. My old friend Nancy Curtis runs High Plains Press from her ranch near Glendo, Wyoming, just a few miles off I-25 down a rutted dirt road that can turn into gumbo during a heavy rain. Anhinga Press has two co-directors in Tallahassee but founder Rick Campbell supervises from his windswept outpost on the Gulf of Mexico (MEXICO!).

One more thing. Some small presses receive support through their local and state arts agencies or some get National Endowment for the Arts publishing grants. I should say they used to get grants but not anymore from the battered NEA and not anymore in Florida where the Governor is on a scorched-earth campaign against the arts and the liberal arts education.

A sad state of affairs. My career was based on connecting local arts groups and publishers to government funding which they had to match 1-to-1. Most of the time, the government dollar was matched many times over. The U.S. government is now in the hands of a wrecking crew that wants to demolish poetry and prose, arts and education. They want to destroy everything I hold dear.

John Calderazzo writes about everything I want to preserve and protect.

As Pete Seeger sang: "We're waist deep in the Big Muddy, the Big Fool says to push on"

I've spent a lot of time in the 19-teens and 20s lately. A tumultuous time, even if you concentrate on one summer in America as does Bill Bryson in his nonfiction remembrance of 1927. Much of my time has been spent on America's involvement in World War 1 and the decade that followed. The time of my grandparents, you know, those olden days to me or to them, in many ways, golden days. It's shocking to delve deeply into a short span of history and see how much you don't know, how much I didn't know. 

I've written one novel based on my grandmother's diary as a nurse in France 1918-1919. It will be published soon by Ridgeway Press in Detroit. I've written another one set in 1922 in Colorado and other sites in the U.S. That one is in final edits. I read memoirs and fiction and poetry of the era. A few decades ago I read John Dos Passos's U.S.A. Trilogy. I dug out the trilogy from my local library. An amazing series, ahead of its time in its combination of fiction and nonfiction. I read many of the WW1 poets, the very angry ones and others. I read about fascism in its many forms, including its roots in Italy's tragedies in The Great War. 

I read plenty of material and saw many movies of those times. As I worked on my novels, I never thought that the war against fascism would come to America. That was a nightmare scenario best left to writers such as Philip K. Dick. 

But here we are, waist deep in The Big Muddy as sang Pete Seeger. The Big Muddy is 2025 America. Wars come home in so many ways. It also may become relevant as Trump sends his masked goons and National Guard soldiers to Memphis on the Mississippi. The fascist strain in American politics has risen again, much as it did prior to World War 2 with America First. I was shocked to learn how Italian fascist pilots vied with budding fascist Lindbergh to fly the Atlantic. They were welcomed as heroes by our homegrown fascists who sometimes battled protesters, communists and others, as they barnstormed the U.S. There were American fascists in 1927 and they are the progenitors of Trump's fascists (his father was one). 

I looked for feisty poets in the Poetry Foundation's category of "Poems of Protest, Resistance, and Empowerment." Subtitle: "Why poetry is necessary and sought after during crises." Some great ones featured. I saw Maya Angelou's "And Still I Rise" and wondered how rabble-rousing it might be. Angelou was heroic in her resistance but also served as U.S. Poet Laureate and President Bill Clinton's inauguration speaker with "On the Pulse of Morning." These roles require a certain amount of diplomacy, a less-radical approach to topics. I worked in the corporate and government worlds so I know a bit about when to hold still and when to push on with my blog. But maybe I don't care anymore.

"And Still I Rise" is fiery and beautiful when read by Ms. Angelou. I urge you to watch her recite it on YouTube. If the link fails, read it on the Poetry Foundation site.

Emily Dickinson could not stop for death but could for poetry

How did the Dominican sisters think I could understand an Emily Dickinson poem, "I could not stop for death?"

Sister Miriam Catherine: What is this poem about Mr. Shay?

16-year-old Me: Death, sister.

Sr. MC: What about death?

Me: She could not stop for it.

Sr. MC: Anything else?

Me: There's a carriage.

Sr. MC: Are you a dunderhead, Mr. Shay?

Me: Yes, Sister. Please don't smite me.

There was no smiting on that day. 

I am now smitten with Ms. Dickinson's poetry. I did not, would not, could not understand its full meaning then. I was a kid. She began writing as a youngster but her lifetime of creativity was enormous and almost unknown at the time of her death.

I turn my attention to the poet who became "The Belle of Amherst" on stage but was anything but. Since her death in 1886, Dickinson's reputation has been battled over by family, friends, and biographers. Lyndall Gordon tried to make sense of it all in his biography, "Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds." And Jerome Charyn writes of Dickinson in his 2010 W.W. Norton historical novel, "The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson." You guess that this is a different kind of look at a literary legend because the cover shows Dickinson's bloomers illuminated by candlelight under her hoop skirt.

I'm only through Charyn's first section but know this is a different look at an American poet who bored high schoolers and even college English majors. 

I now know that I didn't get it when I was young. Why does knowledge come so late in life? 

It's a dangerous time to be woke to literature. Liberal arts majors are being threatened in the U.S., maybe no more so than in Florida where I came of age as a writer. If I can identify a fellowship of dunderheads, it rests in the Florida governor's office. He aims to gut everything I treasure at the University of Florida: The College of Liberal Arts, English majors, arts programs, "wokeness" in general, and the Independent Florida Alligator. As a movie hero of mine once said, "This will not stand, man."

Back to Emily Dickinson. Charyn notes in his intro that he is obsessed with her poetry and has been for decades. His first sentence in the author's note: "She was the first poet I had ever read, and I was hooked and hypnotized from the start, because in her writing she broke every rule."

I returned to her poetry and I know what I was missing. I read and reread "I could not stop for death." I couldn't get enough. I went to the Emily Dickinson Museum web site. I read about her and more of her poetry. 

I laughed when I read this on the museum's online Q&A (thanks AI): 

"Q: Is Amherst close to Boston? A: No, Amherst is not close to Boston. It is located in the western part of Massachusetts, about a 90-minute drive from Boston, which is a significant distance for a quick trip. The two locations are in different regions of the state, with Amherst being further west in Pioneer Valley."

I laughed because when I lived in Boston 1972-73, my woman friend and I hitched regularly to Storrs, Conn., to see friends. The two of us had logged some 7,000 miles the summer of '72 by thumb, ending up in her hometown of Boston. My pal Tommy and I hitched from Boston to Putney, Vt., passing just minutes from Amherst, on our way to get high with friends among the colorful foliage. I spent my career driving Wyoming and Colorado. Significant distance, indeed.

I wish I had gone. I still could. For now, I will finish Charyn's novel and read more Dickinson. I live in memory and imagination. 

Read more about Dickinson's "Secret Life" in upcoming posts.

 

Alfred Joyce Kilmer on "Trees"

I salute the turkey oak tree in my backyard.

It's a tough little oak. I was looking out the sliding glass door a few weeks ago and saw its leaves detach in a strong wind. Looked like late September in Wyoming but it was late July in Ormond Station, Florida. The flurry of leaves caused me to call the city arborist and she asked if the leaves were brown on the edges. They were. "Needs water," she said. She was correct. I started hosing it down every day and now the leaves have magically returned. 

The tree is a denizen of the soupy landscape that makes up my neighborhood. We're not in the soup but I can see it from here. I live in the dry section of the wetlands. We are right at the periphery of  the Hull Swamp Conservation Area and the Relay Wildlife Management Area. Wildlife we got. A neighbor spotted a black bear in his backyard. A big ol' Eastern Diamondback was squashed by an F-250 near our PO boxes. We've seen turtles and birds galore. 

We are interlopers here. But, back to the trees.

One of my father's favorite poems was "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer. It's beautiful, really, with memorable opening lines: "I think that I shall never see/A poem as lovely as a tree."

Dad knew the poem by heart. It's easily memorized, rhymed couplets in iambic tetrameter which makes for a memorable beat. Four iambs instead of the usual five in pentameter poems. I point this out because it would have been a great choice of poems to memorize during after-school detention at St. Francis Catholic Grade School in Wichita. If we seventh-graders transgressed enough to get detention, the nuns gave us a choice of poems to memorize. Because all 12- and 13-year-olds have places to go and things to do after school, we chose the shortest and easiest of rhymes. No free verse, thank you. No epics such as "Child Harold's Pilgrimage" or "Howl," although I am pretty sure Ginsberg and the Beats were not on the list of approved Catholic verse.

I once had a choice between "Charge of the Light Brigade" and some silly love poem. I chose the war poem and can still recite most of it. "Trees" was never on the list. Odd thing is, anything by Kilmer would have put me closer to war than Tennyson. He also would have brought me nearer to my Catholic roots had I known about the 1917 collection he edited, "Dreams and Images: An Anthology of Catholic Poets.

But "Trees" lives on in collections. Kilmer converted to Catholicism in 1913 and wrote of his spiritual life. He joined up at 30 to fight in the Great War. Died at 31 at the Second Battle of the Marne. He was leading a patrol into No Man's Land and disappeared in a shellhole. When his troops caught up to him, he was quietly looking over the bombed-out landscape. He didn't respond. They shook him, then looked at his face to see dead eyes and a bullet hole in his forehead. Death by sniper. He's buried in the U.S. cemetery in France across from the farmer's field where he was killed.

He's been called "the last of the Romantic Era poets." His poems are predictable and schmaltzy. They rhyme, for goodness sake. Across the blasted tundra, the British war poets -- Sassoon, Owen, Graves -- were leading the charge into the revved-up post-war realism of the 1920s. You might see Kilmer's poem "Rouge Bouquet" in volumes of war poetry. It's about 21 soldiers of New York's Fighting 69th who were killed by a random German shelling. His legacy lives on in the names of schools, neighborhoods, and a national forest in North Carolina. The Philolexian Society at Columbia University sponsors The Annual Alfred Joyce Kilmer Bad Poetry Contest. Lest you think this is just an Ivy League Putdown, it is taken very seriously on campus. Here's a description from the scribes at Wikipedia (I donated to the cause and got a cool [EDIT] T-shirt):

The Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest has been hosted annually by the Philolexian Society, a literary and debating group at Columbia University, since 1986, drawing crowds of 200–300 students and participants vying for the title of best of the worst. Columbia faculty members serve as judges. The event is usually held in November and is heralded by the appearance of "Bad Poetry in Motion" flyers around campus (satirizing the New York City Subway's "Poetry in Motion" series) featuring some of the best verses of the last 20 years, as well as door-to-door readings in the dorms, usually performed by prospective new members ("phreshlings").

The event is named for "bad" poet (and Philolexian alumnus) Joyce Kilmer. His most famous work, Trees, is read aloud by audience members at the contest's end. In 2012, the Columbia Daily Spectator listed the Kilmer Bad Poetry Contest #1 among its "Best Columbia Arts Traditions".

 As a writer and arts administrator, I commend the Society's efforts to promote poetry and its performance. I can see my father, an army radioman in The Great War Part 2 and accounting graduate of a small Catholic college, standing tall in the auditorium and reciting "Trees" with Ivy League youngsters and aging fans of an almost-forgotten poet. 

"Trees," Joyce Kilmer, those lovely, lovely trees.

We take a Word Back: What to make of make?

In my 5/21 post, I brought up a term: word back. Used in a sentence: "I want my word back." Words in my English language have been stolen by corrupt people with no clue about the word's origins and what it really means. This is a travesty in my book, and I have a really big book on my side: The Oxford English Dictionary or, as we English majors call it, the O.E.D. Many of our public libraries used to have the book splayed open on a stand. Oddball students such as myself could peruse at their leisure, or make a beeline to it during a heated argument over the origin of a word or phrase. Yes, heated arguments about words. How I miss those. And the main reason I went dateless most of my college career.

Today's word is "make." And yes, it's the first word in the acronym MAGA. Those are the four words I will tackle during the next couple weeks. They are real words, not just initials on a red ballcap. 

What are we to make of make? Let the O.E.D. be our guide.

I hate to begin with a downer but, to save time, I must. Make can be a noun. In fact, it is a variant for maggot. Here's an example from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” circa 1604: “Your worme is your onely Emperour for dyet, we fat all creatures els to fat vs, and wee fat our selues for maggots.”

In more modern terms, we have this line by Mae West in 1930's "Constant Sinner:" "The double-crossin' heel! The garbage-can maggot!"

You don't see "make" in there. But, it is a variant which means it's rarely used except by historical fiction writers and time travelers. But the reference comes alive in 2025 because critics poke fun at MAGA followers by calling them MAGATS or MAGHATS or just MAGGOTS. We don't use the term as it's below our station to do so even though it's hilarious. 

Make is usually used as a verb that means to produce. Let's let Merriam-Webster have a crack at this: Make (transitive verb): to bring into being by forming, shaping, or altering material; to lay out and construct, to compose or write.

Back to the O.E.D.: The earliest known use of the word is in the Old English Period pre-1150. It has Germanic roots. It's use in Old English includes references in literature, music, and religion. 

Does the O.E.D. have anything to say about sexual references in popular culture? I didn’t look. But I have some examples. Let's make out (kiss, etc.). “Making Whoopee” (song about kissing etc.), "I want to Make It With You," a popular 1970s song by Bread which is really about sex as in "Love the One You're With" or so says Stephen Stills. Let's make a baby is a line used by married couples in rom-coms. "Wanna make sex?" is not a common term although it has been used in dingy bars at closing time.

"To make" is a very positive act. A maker is one who makes. A Makerspace is a place dedicated to making things usually artwork. My artist daughter visits a local Makerspace. Many public libraries have makerspaces in their children's/teens sections. Many of these libraries are under attack by Trump & Company and local right-wing kooks. Many makerspaces are funded by government grants which are being eliminated by the GOP-controlled Congress.

Makers, themselves, are under attack for being too woke and not appreciating all the MAGA Goodness spread like fairy dust by Donnie and Elon. Arts workers jobs are being eliminated along with budgets for state and local arts agencies as well as the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. To tell an artist he or she can't make any more is absurd. That's like telling us not to breathe. But it will hurt all of us, this pilfering of money for the arts and humanities. 

Merriam-Webster lists these antonyms (opposites): Dismantle, destroy, eradicate, abolish, take apart, etc., etc.

To Make. Think about it.

"Writers Who Play" features words & music & fun March 28 in L.A.

This comes from traveling troubadour and poet Ken Waldman:

In Los Angeles the end of this month, my NOMAD co-editor, Rachel White, and I will be getting our new NOMAD literary journal out in the world, and I'm producing a Friday, March 28, show at the fabulous 1642 Bar at https://www.facebook.com/1642beerandwine/ .

Here's the poster:

The event is being held off-campus you might say from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference at Los Angeles Convention Center this week. Consider it a break from AWP sessions and the magnificent bookfair where you can buy books and have books thrust upon you. Also a good time to schmooze with editors and publishers. I haven't attended AWP in a number of years but it always was fun and where I recruited writers to come to Wyoming. And always brought an extra bag to haul books home.

Irish poet Eavan Boland: "Memory itself has become an emigrant"

The title poem of Eavan Boland's collection "The Lost Land" always moves me. It begins as a confessional with "I have two daughters" but ends with one of the big topics in Irish and Irish-American writing: diaspora. You know the story: the Potato Famine, the rapacious of the English landlords, the sailing away. The Irish, always sailing away and landing on a foreign shore. The last lines always get to me. I send you to the Poetry Foundation web site to read the whole thing and other work by Boland. Go there now. Read an Irish writer today. Happy St. Patrick's Day. 

The Nomad anthology wanders from the western wilds to my fog-wrapped Florida mailbox

The first anthology of The Nomad literary magazine landed in my mailbox yesterday. Unassuming cover with lots of goodies inside. Last summer Ken Waldman, one of the Nomad founders, asked me to send in two pieces of my work, one that I was proud of and had been published and another that I liked and hadn't been published. He tasked me with writing a short essay on my choices. So I sent editor Rachel White one story that had been published several times, "The Problem with Mrs. P," and one I just finished in June, "That Time We Got Married at a Tent Revival." The first story is set in Wyoming and the second in Florida and South Carolina.

I spent 46 years in Wyoming and Colorado, did a lot of my growing up in East Coast Florida and spent my first two years of a not-very-successful university stint in South Carolina. I've also written speculative fiction that takes place off-world and in an Earth future that I imagined. I have returned to Florida which has its own otherworldly aspects. 

I am in such good company with this anthology. My long-time friend Ken Waldman has two poems, one set in the Alaska he calls home and a villanelle set in New Orleans. New Mexico's Lisa D. Chavez includes a poem which turns the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale on its head and a nonce sonnet, the meaning I had to look up. Detroit's M.L. Liebler weighs in with "Flag" which dissects yet "another dark chapter in American history" (the one happening now) and "Decoration Day" about Vietnam.

Wyoming friends still talk about 2002-2003 poetry and music performances featuring M.L. and Country Joe McDonald. Buffalo, Wyoming's David Romtvedt explores "another past life" and a childhood dream in his selections. I was undone by the images in Amy Gerstler's poem "Siren" which opens the anthology. Paul Fericano made me laugh with "Still Life with Mormons in My Living Room." Amy and Paul are from L.A. Paul published some of my prose poems on his Yossarian Universal News Service site (yunews.com). New Zealand's Michael McClane got my attention with the long title and World War 2 theme in "On the Disembarkation of Sergeant Nathan E. Cook in Auckland, 13 June 1942."

That's just the beginning. Lots of great selections. You can get a copy of the book by subscribing to The Nomad. It's $25 for one year and $40 for two. You can also donate to this "non-for-profit labor of love by two writers." New submission guidelines are up for 2025. See the web site for the Bountiful, Utah, mailing address.

Remembering Paul Fussell’s great book on the Not-So-Great European War of 1914-1918

I subscribe to the New York Times Online. Because I now live in East Coast Florida, I could also have the print copy delivered. But I already get the Daytona Beach News-Journal delivered before dawn (usually) in a plastic bag at the end of my garage. I fetch it in my e-scooter, braving whatever elements might exist including niceness, wind, humidity, and – occasionally – rain. I pick up the paper with my handy grabber and roll back to the house. I read local news, the sports page, some national coverage. I read obits, especially on Sunday when there are pages of them.

But the NYT has the writers and global coverage that I need, now especially, as we try to survive assaults on reality by Trump, Musk, and their GOP bullies. Also, arts reviews, especially of new and some old books. A few months ago, I read about John Dufresne’s new novel, “My Darling Boy.”  It sounded so good and personally relevant that I bought the e-book on Kindle (and wrote my own review here). I read a Style-section article last June by Alyson Krueger about Miranda July and her “rethinking of marriage and family life.” It also took me to a review of her book. I bought and read it and indeed it is a more-than-spicy take on monogamy. I didn’t post a review on my blog but I did come across a finished piece in my blog files which I was too skittish to post.

This morning I read a Feb. 13 “Critic’s Notebook” piece by Dwight Garner about the 50^th anniversary of Paul Fussell’s “The Great War and Modern Memory.” I read the book 40-some years ago and discovered the dirty truth about The Great War of 1914-1918. Fussell explored the war I the trenches through the eyes of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, two combatant-writers who wrote the truth about their war. Garner writes that it changed his view about how nonfiction should be written. It allowed me to find those voices that I barely knew. In high school, the only poem of the era I remember is “Rouge Bouquet” by Joyce Kilmer, poet best known for “Trees.” Kilmer died in combat and is remembered for his formal rhymes and is considered as one of the last poets of the Romantic era. He was swept away by the honesty and rage in works by Sassoon and Owen and other poets of the so-called Lost Generation.

Garner urges readers to return to Fussell’s book to find the real story of this war that is no longer a living memory but lives on in the work of so many powerful writers. My grandfather was a cavalry officer in France and my grandmother a nurse with Maryland 42^nd Field Hospital. The dismounted cavalry officer spent a limited time in the trenches and my grandmother repaired the wounds of tr5ench warfare. Neither recalled for us war’s horror. Neither did my World War 2 vet father, who saw action in France, Belgium, and Germany. They left that up to their children and grandchildren in wars-to-come. Those wars have given us great literature and have very little to do with stopping the slaughter.

For me, I have written two novels about the aftermath of the Great War in the U.S., mainly Colorado. I am publishing them myself. I know nothing of war except what I read and see in movies and what I conjure in my imagination. Draftees of Vietnam have done their best to tell it like it is. We read about the senseless slaughter of what Robert Stone called “a mistake 10,000 miles long.” Maybe we learn and maybe we don’t. But books such as Fussell’s can give us glimpses into humankind’s dirtiest business.

How does the fog come in on the day after Christmas?

The fog comes/on little cat feet

Thought of this Carl Sandburg poem as I sat watching the ocean as fog crept in. Cats weren't on my mind as much as the view from Tom Renick Park in Ormond-by-the-Sea. My visiting daughter stood beside me. Waves rolled through the fog and crunked on the shore. The surf wasn't bad. Rollers breaking outside but you could ride them out of the fog like a vampire surfer. Three young surfers appeared suddenly, boards under arms, walking north on the beach. No wetsuits. Gotta admire those guys. Two days ago there was sun and a bit of wind and all the surfers wore wetsuits. Must be the wind. The fog today traveled on a light north breeze. We were shielded by the adjacent condo high-rise. Still, tiny mist dabs fell on my exposed legs and dotted my windbreaker. I kept expecting a cat to appear but the only sound was traffic along A1A and kids on winter break cavorting in the playground. No way to hear little cat's feet. I imagined it just the same.

The night is rescued by the south wind

August Wind from the South

 

The setting sun turns the sky red the west wind

Pushes smoke from fires in Oregon and California.

Red haze settles over Wyoming mountain valleys and

The smoke burns the eyes catches in the throat.

 

The wind arrives after dark it surprises us all

it flows from the south the monsoonal flow

and its saturated air designed to douse the

fires sweep the sky clean send it all north.

 

Pull back the curtains open the windows wide.

I smell the rain or think I do but there are no clouds

no lightning no rumbles of thunder. The wind from the

deserts of Saguaros and scorpions and sweeps of sand.

 

I turn my chair to the open window tune out the ball

game the cell phone the gurgling kitchen noises.

Tonight it’s just me and the wind over the high prairie.

The high dry prairie. The rare south wind.

Your stories will survive you -- write or record them while you still can

I was thinking about this today as I went through some tests at the local hospital.

I like the idea of a National Service Program for 18-21-year-olds. Not a military draft – that didn’t work so well – but a program that puts youth to work doing good deeds. As a college dropout, I found jobs in hospitals. I was called orderly and not nursing assistant or CAN. I was a guy wearing a white uniform that nurses and patients called on when they needed a strong body to perform various tasks: scoot a patient up in bed or turn a patient so a nurse could get at the malfunctioning part of the body, transport patients to X-rays, take temps and BP and fill water pitchers. 

This was Florida so listening to old folks was also a keen skill. Young folks aren’t so good at listening to old people. Too bad – therein those aging bodies are many great stories. So why not put youngsters to work listening to old people’s stories while they also help them get around. Welcome to the Corps of Willing Listeners! They’d get paid a decent wage to push wheelchairs and hear stories. 

If they want to write some of those stories down and turn them into novels, so much the better. Maybe some of them can be made into memoirs for the family, something to remember grandpa by when you see that old face in a photo but can’t really place him. “That was grandpa: he was wounded at the Battle of the Bulge.” “There’s grandma: she raised 10 kids in a house without running water and an outhouse out back.” “There’s Uncle Jack – he was funny when he had a few drinks.” And so on.

Young people are energetic and smart and impatient. Old people tend to be tired and smart and patient and sometimes impatient because they know they are on the downward slide to the grave. I am 72 and that’s my reality. I love a good story but I can tell when the listener isn’t listening. Today a tech in his 20s took me to X-ray and took pictures of my chest. He saw my High Plains Arboretum vest and we talked gardening while the machines hummed. We talked about the difficulties of raising plants and veggies in our climate. I could tell he's had mixed results and I suggested he drop by the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens and ask some questions of the horticulturalists. 

Writing skills are a key element in storytelling. It's good to be able to tell a story on a blog or written on paper or told in a podcast or any of the myriad other ways we relate info. I have some writing skills so I can tell stories to those people in the future who see my e-photo online and wonder about me. Who is it? Why is he in the photo? What did he do for a living? Was he nice? Did he love someone and did someone love him? How did his kids turn out? I’ll leave behind some stories to inspire or bore to tears but I won’t care, will I? I will be stardust. I hope a few of my stories survive.

Poets give voice to the voiceless gunned down in their schools

 

Reposted from a friend's Facebook page. Introduced me to a U.S. poet with Front Range connections whose work I didn't know. It brilliantly says what I am finding so hard to put into words. Thanks to Matt Hohner who has an MFA from Naropa University in Boulder. A friendly nod to Sam Hamill who published so much wonderful work at Copper Canyon Press during his time on the planet. He also initiated Poets Against the War to protest the 2003 Iraq War. 

The day after St. Patrick's Day 2022

I don't have a hangover, that's the main thing. Many prior St. Patrick's Day holidays involved drinking and then hangovers. Some stray guilt feelings. Calling in sick to work.

But not this time. I attended a family-style party last night. Wife stayed home with a sick daughter. We recited Irish poems. Remembered trips to Ireland -- friendly people but kissing the Blarney Stone is a rather disgusting ritual. Devoured Irish Stew and a delicious Guinness chocolate cake built to look like a pint on an Irish pub bar. I drank one Irish Ale made in Kansas City. Stayed away from the Writers' Tears Irish whiskey as I have enough of my own. We sang along to "Zombie" by the Cranberries and remembered Dolores O'Riordan who died too young.

Calm as these things go. Someone asked if they celebrated St. Patrick's Day in Ireland. Apparently, it's a religious holiday there. They ratchet up the festivities for American tourists. The Irish seem bemused by American spectacle. I've never been to Ireland so haven't had the chance to embarrass myself in person. But apparently the American idea of drinking green beer and singing fake Irish songs is not appreciated. U.S. tourist money is. 

I've blogged before about my mixed views on the holiday. Read those here and here and here. My grandfather from Roscommon Martin Hett (no, not O'Hett or McHett) never returned to the old sod. As a teen, I was pontificating about the legendary cruelty of the Brits to the Irish and my grandfather interrupted. "The English treated me better that the Irish ever did." That shocked me due to the fact that I was 16 and knew everything there was to know about the world. Grandpa went on to explain that his evil stepmother kicked him out of the house at 12. He made his way to England and worked in the coalfields until he saved enough money to sail to the U.S. at a 15-year-old. He worked hard in America and ended up in Denver where my mother was born and later, me. He liked being an American more than he liked being Irish. 

What, exactly, is an Irish-American? There is no easy explanation. We come in all shapes and sizes and all political persuasions including Trumpian which is disgusting -- recall how many wackos with Irish surnames served Herr Trump -- Flynn, Bannon, McCarthy, etc. Most of us mark St. Patrick's Day in some fashion. Corned beef and cabbage is a family favorite not always enjoyed by everyone in the family. My mother didn't like it probably because she ate a lot of it growing up. When she had food, which wasn't always the case during the Great Depression. One Christmas, she woke up to an orange in her stocking. That was the only present. I'm not sure if this is true because the Irish embellish almost everything.

I like to think that my proclivity for storytelling was passed on to me by my Irish ancestors. None of my immediate family are writers. Readers, yes. Writers, no. No aunts and uncles or cousins are writers. I am probably the only English major they know. We are known for our cutting humor, which seems to be an Irish trait. And my siblings and I all look Irish and our DNA attests to it. My red hair and freckles earned me lots of ridicule and a few fights. "Red on the head/like the dick on my dog." That's one taunt I remember. Red, Freckle Face, Rusty. They're all good. Shows some creativity. I don't think I sustained any permanent damage growing up white and freckled in America. 

As we read poetry at last night's party, I noticed it was rather light-hearted. I wanted to read something by Eavaan Boland ("The Lost Land") or Yeats ("The Second Coming") but never got the chance. Good Irish writing seems to balance the horrible and the humorous. Roddy Doyle is a great example. So is Flann O'Brien, whose satiric novel "The Poor Mouth" is one of my favorites. Flannery O'Connor too, who combined Irish-American wit with Southern Gothic grotesque to create her unique style.

Go read an Irish writer today. You will probably be glad you did, although it's hard to say.  

Reading Kooser during a short trip to Nebraska

My two sisters and brother-in-law from Florida had never been to Nebraska. To remedy this, I drove I-80 into Neb ("It looks a lot like Wyoming") and pulled off at the first exit. Next to the sign for Bushnell (No Services!), with farm equipment clattering down the road, prairie grass waving in the hot wind, I read them Ted Kooser. Seemed like the right thing to do. We then drove back to WYO and ate cabbage burgers at Sadie's Cafe in Pine Bluffs. A fine day.

Read Kooser's "So This is Nebraska"

Every poetry book tells a story don't it

Chris and Annie decided to round-up boxes of books in the basement and bring them upstairs to me. Disability prevents me from diving into the dungeon's stacks but my wife and daughter are only too happy to do the work if I promise to get rid of books, some of which have been sitting in the basement for more than a decade. I have a keeper box and a give-away box which will go to Phoenix Books or the Laramie County Public Library store. I get a smaller box for the keepers in an effort to fool me into thinking it's a good idea to get rid of books when actually I believe the opposite. But we are downsizing, fixing up our house and cleaning the cobwebby places with an idea to sell and move in 2022. Over the years, I have moved many heavy boxes of books. I'm retired so I have some incentive to divest.

My wife, daughter, and sons all are readers. My grown children live in an e-world but they still read physical books. They know it pains me to decide what stays ands what goes. They also know that they will inherit my library and we all know that I should be the ones making the decisions. Before passing from prostate cancer, my father split up his presidential library into five sections, one for each of his sons. I got Reagan (very funny, Dad) but also Jefferson, Grant, and Kennedy. I will ask my two remaining brothers if they want them. If not, to my son will go the spoils.

I have seen wonderful personal libraries left behind when a dedicated reader dies suddenly. Cancer killed a CSU creative writing professor and friend a few years ago. His will sent his Vietnam War books to the CSU library's special collection on the war. Thousands of others remained. I was among his associates who were allowed to pick through the books. I could have filled boxes but I chose three volumes that I now will put in the keeper box..  

Every book tells a story. I met and worked with many of the authors after I switched careers in 1988. after stints as a sports reporter, weekly newspaper editor, and corporate writer, I went back to school in the CSU MFA program. As a teaching assistant, I got involved with the visiting writers program and eventually the CSU Fine Arts Series. I met many writers in my roles with the Wyoming Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and on planning committees for book festivals in Casper, Cheyenne, and Denver. 

I have signed books by Ethridge Knight and Gwendolyn Brooks. In 1990, I was only vaguely aware of Brooks and knew nothing about Knight. An ex-con who got hooked on drugs after being dosed with morphine for wounds in the Korean War, Knight wanted to speak to prisoners so I accompanied him to the county jail. He recited his poems filled with African-American vernacular, prisons slang, and voices of the streets. I heard a different poetry that day. Like rap and spoken word, it had its own rhythms. The inmates, many of them Black and Latino, paid attention, chatted with Knight when the performance was over. 

Knight spoke as a member of the Black Arts Movement. He found his voice based on his own experiences but also influenced by Brooks, Sonia Sanchez and other African-American voices of the 1950s and 60s. You could hear similar rhythms in Brooks' poetry. A prime example is her oft-anthologized poem "We real cool." You can hear Knight's influence in rap and hip hop and slam poetry.  You can hear it in groups such as San Diego's Taco Shop Poets and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in NYC. 

I have a signed copy of Knight's "Poems from Prison," published by Broadside Press the day he was released from prison. It's a keeper, as is Brooks' "The Near-Johannesburg Boy and Other Poems." Brooks won a Pulitzer for an earlier book, "Annie Allen."

I'm keeping Ernesto Cardenal's "With Walker in Nicaragua." Cardenal's life as interesting as his poetry. A priest de-priested by the Vatican when he got too close to the Sandinistas and liberation theology, his role was restored by Pope Francis in 2017. William Walker was a freebooter from Tennessee who conquered Nicaragua and served as its president prior to the U.S. Civil War. He legalized slavery and made English the official language in an effort to link Central America and Cuba with the South's slave states. Imagine if he had succeeded -- our country's politics would be even weirder than it is now. The book from Wesleyan University Press is bilingual with wonderful translations by Jonathan Cohen. 

"The Country Between Us" by Carolyn Forche goes in the keeper box. It includes the "The Colonel," her amazing remembrance poem of a dinner with an officer in El Salvador's death squads. Forche was a finalist in this year's Pulitzer poetry category. 

It breaks my heart when I place a pile of slim poetry books in the giveaway box. Nobody will value them like me. They may sit on the library store's shelves until its next clearance sale. Even then, they may remain unclaimed. Poetry is endangered. Much still is published but a lot of it is online and available only as e-books. The Death of Poetry has been foretold many times. Still, it persists.

Next up: What do I do with all of these novels, story collections, and memoirs? 

In Trump Sonnets, poet Ken Waldman tracks how America lost its mind

I just received a copy of Ken Waldman's "Trump Sonnets, Volume 8: The Final Four Months."

This is good news/good news. Another book of Trump sonnets to read. And, as the title says, "final" four months of the Trump scourge. A traumatic four months. A traumatic four years. Poet M.L. Liebler, who published the book at his Ridgeway Press in Michigan, writes in the foreword:

Ken has successfully brought form to the most unformable and unformidable, mean-spirited, fly-by-the-seat-of-his pants scoundrel who did his damndest to take this country down.

Waldman takes us through the final four months through sonnets in the POV of Americans: a dog walker in Brooklyn, a prison guard in Lexington, Kentucky, and a house painter in Hilo, Hawaii. Closer to home are the words of a baker in Cheyenne and a locksmith in Casper. The baker rhapsodizes about the two Q Girls who are "both up for war against Democrats." The locksmith is more thoughtful. He (I think it's a he) says that a civil war may be on the horizon but is wary of "citizens desperate or angry enough" to assassinate a Supreme Court elder or "wayward" senator. There is also an architect in Fort Collins who blasts the "toxic idiocy" of those who believe that Trump won the election. The Brooklyn dog walker sums it up this way: "Put them behind bars -- him, Jared, the kids. Or send them to Mars."

We hear many voices. I've been reading the selections in a more lighthearted mood than I did the first seven "Trump Sonnets." That is because T has disappeared from public view and is no longer on Twitter to rattle my world. He also is gone from the White House which he treated like his own Scarface villa (he already has one of those in Mar-a-Lago).

As evident during Waldman's 35-year career as an itinerant poet and fiddler, he has a keen wit and is always busy creating. He's published 19 poetry and prose books and nine CDs that "mix Appalachian-style string band music with original poetry." As a touring artist whose home base is in Alaska, most of his gigs since March 2020 were cancelled or postponed. He's been featured at the Dodge Poetry Festival in New Jersey, the Woodford Folk Festival in Queensland, Australia, and the Word of South Festival this weekend in Tallahassee, Fla. He's also conducted residencies in more than 200 schools, including ones in Casper and Cheyenne. He's also served as a judge for Wyoming Arts Council literary fellowships.

Front Range dwellers can see him on stage on May 22, 7 p.m., at the Lakewood Cultural Center in Lakewood, Colo. He will appear with Willi Carlisle and special guests Ben Guzman and Colin Gould. Tickets are $27 and you can get them here. 

I will file volume eight with Waldman's one through seven in my presidential library. My grandkids, if I ever have any, might like to read them and see how America lost its mind in the 21st century. 

You can't actually buy the book until September 1. Get more info at the Trump Sonnets site or Waldman's home page. The book will be distributed by nonprofit literary book distributor Small Press Distribution at orders@spdbooks.org. 

A poem a day keeps the nighttime devils at bay

Every night before sleep, I call up the Poetry Foundation page and read the poem of the day. It's an eclectic mix, featuring classical bards and contemporary voices. In the last week, I've read work by Grace Paley, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Amy Lowell. Lowell's "Lilacs" was featured the other night. I read it twice, not to make me tired but to fix the look and scent of lilacs in my mind so my dreams are more lilacs and less horror story. 

Dream experts say that we can do this, fashion our dreams before sleep. I'm only partially successful at this. Maybe it's a holdover from the bedtime prayer that my parents taught me. Here it is:

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

If I should die before I wake

I pray the Lord my soul to take

The key element is "if I should die." This is not a comforting thought for a six-year-old. I say my prayer and settle in for a quiet night of hellfire and brimstone. It lingers there among the more positive terms such as sleep and soul and Lord. My late brother Dan often complained about his insomnia. I never thought to bring up the horrible prayer that we recited every night. The current version of the same prayer goes like this:

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

May angels watch me through the night

And wake me with the morning light

Much more comforting to have angels watch me in the night. Most angels then were beautiful winged creatures bathed in heavenly light. So preferable to horned devils rising from the fiery pit. Our choice was clear: angel or devil. If we chose devilish behavior, we could confess the transgression in confession, say a bunch of prayers, and start over again. That was the wonderful thing about the American Catholicism of my youth -- a promise of better days ahead. If I disobeyed my parents or conjured unclean thoughts, I could spill it to the priest, a shadowy figure behind an obscuring curtain, the kind CNN reporters use when interviewing whistle-blowers or mobsters. Once released, I could say my penance and flee to play baseball with my friends or to sin again -- my choice. 

Lowell's "Lilacs" is a beautiful poem, one that the nuns may have made me read, although Sister Theresa was more likely to assign us rhyming couplets. A description of "Lilacs" called it a patriotic poem. Lowell was a Boston Brahmin, a New Englander to the core and related to Harvard presidents and famous scientists. She may have had to say the same bedtime prayer as I did. That prayer comes from The New England Primer, the first reading text in the American colonies. It was published by printer Benjamin Harris who so hated and feared Catholics that he fled to the Americas during the brief reign of James II. Quoted on Wikipedia, New Hampshire senator and former college English prof  David H. Watters says that the primer was "built on rote memorization, the Puritans' distrust of uncontrolled speech, and their preoccupation with childhood depravity." No wonder it's still sold online as a text for Evangelical homeschoolers. The primer was based on The Protestant Tutor and taught Puritan children their ABCs: 

In Adam's fall/We sinned all (with drawing of Eve being tempted by big snake and then, presumably, tempting Adam)

My Book and Heart/Shall never part (with drawing of Bible with heart on cover)

Job feels the rod/And blesses God (with drawing of Job plagued by boils and pustules)

My parents were diehard Catholics born in the 1920s teaching their 20th-century children a 17th-century Puritan prayer. This 21st century lapsed Catholic enjoys the irony. Meanwhile, I'll skip the praying and keep reading Heid E. Erdrich, Abigail Chabitnoy, Marilyn Chin, W.B. Yeats, Yusef Komunyakaa and many others. 

Now I lay me down to sleep...