Today’s Prompt is to make a poem titled “__(Blank)__ Again.” This month, I haven’t worked particularly hard at pushing myself outside my poetic comfort zone. Today, I generated a collection of random words on the internet and told myself I had to use a certain number of them in a poem.
The Plot Oozes Again
Does it matter if these words come from a random spouter of words on the internet, or if they derive from some capricious fountain in my head?
Or perhaps I’ll choose every fifth word from our clumsy correspondence. There, for instance, I had to strew a sneaky adjective among my thoughts. It modifies my meaning, subdues my ideas, and severs my intentions. Perfect poetry, the obfuscation (my word) of sense.
Which of these words are mine? Which are yours? And which, when we consider the luxuriant input of the internet, are the fantastic tickets of the random realm? The plot oozes, the smoggy street is cloistered in cobweb, and something has gone, chortling, off the rails.
Every year at this time, I feel the anxiety and restlessness begin to rise within me, and the cold settles into my bones. Every year, I need to consciously ease my spirit into the season. This year, from the beginning of December until Epiphany, I will set it down here on the blog. May we journey into the darkness with intention and tenderness.
This week in Creative Writing class, students have been presenting poetic forms of their choice, and we’ve been exploring writing in each one. I particularly love working with poetic forms and ideas that fracture meaning by re-arranging words, like in Billy Collins’s joke form, the Paradelle, which uses two repeated lines, and then re-mixes the words in those lines. Abstract poetry, too, often makes use of fractured and oddly mixed words to create a sense of meaning that transcends the direct line of thought. As intentionally goofy as Collins’s form is, it does something sort of exciting to the brain to shift words around and break up their linear meaning.
Habits and rhythms can become ruts. When I have my winter blinders on, trudging through the muck of dark and cold just to get through it, I find that the linear tracks I am making sometimes become deep and worn ruts, making it hard to find meanings in the days and moments other than the ones that make the direct and prosy sentences of my days. I need to rearrange things on the pages of my days, step out of the worn tracks, break the sense of the sentences, shift the meanings. Add a new thing today, even if it’s a new stretch in my yoga routine. Drop another habit, perhaps the quick check of email or FB when I get home from being away.
Here is an attempt at a Paradelle. I’m not sure if it works to put serious thought into a joke form, but it feels satisfying to use the fracturing of the the form to break up the mental trudge:
Walking through the haze of winter days. Walking through the haze of winter days. My feet step in the same weary tracks. My feet step in the same weary tracks. Through the step of haze, the weary feet, my winter tracks in same walking days.
I’ve worn a rut both long and deep. I’ve worn a rut both long and deep. Confined myself to pooling shadows. Confined myself to pooling shadows. To a rut I’ve both shadows confined, pooling deep both worn and long myself.
And made myself a hidden prison. And made myself a hidden prison. Of raw endurance and force of habit. Of raw endurance and force of habit. Force. Prison. Endurance: myself of raw, and made of hidden and a habit.
Winter and a force of endurance, walking in a haze, same feet, shadows: the raw and hidden habit, long and confined, both to step through the weary prison rut worn tracks of my pooling deep, I’ve made days of myself. Myself.
Gratitude List: 1. Long, deep mornings to write 2. Tree-shadows against the sky 3. Hunger that wakes me up 4. The way my students react with a natural aversion to injustice in literature. 5. Twinkling lights
May we walk in Beauty!
“How does a woman know? She listens. She listens in. Like light on waves.” —Margaret Atwood
“Every moment is a gift of life.” —Thich Nhat Hanh
“Only a fool knows everything.” —African proverb
“Note to self: If you want to have loving feelings, do loving things.” —Anne Lamott
Your thoughts, like birds
will flow
across the clear sky
of your mind,
like marks of a scribe
will seep
across the white page
of your dreams,
and meaning will form
from the patterns
that resolve as words
upon the page,
that whirl in the dusk
like a flock of starlings,
separating,
merging,
flowing as one being.
Gratitude List:
1. Pippi the Prius is fixed and out of the shop. It felt sort of like going to pick up a beloved old dog at the vet. There’s something not quite right with the battery. I’m hoping that it’s just because she’s been sitting so much of the time that she’s been getting fixed, and it’ll work itself out. The man at the shop said that it was within 75 cents of being totaled, so they put the detailing stripe on with a decal instead of paint, and gave that to us for free. I am grateful for that quarter we had to spare. And for the crew who fixed her up good as new.
2. Autumn sun, morning and evening, sparkling through the trees, skipping down the fields.
3. Making plans, fortifying, resolving
4. Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus”
5. Finding my way into the new dreams
I have been second-guessing myself a little. I decided to read Redwall to the boys, without remembering how violent it can get. It’s pretty intense stuff for bedtime reading. I love the peaceful realm of Redwall and Mossflower, but the warring bits are intense, and there’s that whole holy defense bit that makes me nervous in its approximation of a just war philosophy. On the other hand, for small children who are trying to learn to face their fears and anxieties, a tiny mouse facing up to a bully of a rat might be a good metaphor. This afternoon, One Small Boy said, “Hey Mom. If a Badguy came into our house, this is what I would do to it.” And he ran forward with a series of karate-like moves. He might bowl a Badguy over with pure cuteness, I’m thinking. Still, I found it interesting that Badguy is “it,” like a monster or a phantom, or a floating anxiety. I think we’ll keep reading the book, remembering to reflect on the way Matthias cares for his friends, on the Abbot’s refusal to mistreat even his enemies, on the way the mice work together.
Gratitude List: 1. Cool breeze
2. Constructing meaning
3. Reading with the boys
4. Getting to be the scholar
5. Zinnias
I am in the midst of trying to bring to birth a poem that I think might be titled “The Shaman’s Lexicon.” Perhaps I need to write my own “Ars Poetica,” my own “Responsibility.” Getting caught up in the whirlwind of a compelling poetic idea reminds me again that despite the thought-provoking analysis of even the most careful critics, when it comes down to it, writing poetry is an art, and that like a visual artist, a poet is often following the trail of an obsessive idea. The process is less about seeking meaning, perhaps, and more about relieving the curiosity of what lies beyond the next turning.
Gratitude List: 1. A Christmas Carol. Joss discovered Grandma Kreider’s unabridged copy with gorgeous illustrations and asked Jon to read it to him. They spent hours with it, Jon explaining some of the denser bits and skipping some of the longer bits of of description, and finally made it through. Joss was engrossed. I’ll admit to openly weeping when the Spirit of Christmas Future showed Scrooge the Cratchit house after the death of Tiny Tim. I hope we can make that a tradition. Now I am going to try to finish The Best Christmas Pageant Ever with them today.
2. Dawn in the hollow, sun shining on frost. The chickens used to get me up and out to see it every day. Now, most days, I am on the road before the dawn spreads her rosy fingers over the sky, and I have bequeathed the chickens to friend who will be a less distracted caretaker. So I am grateful this morning for the wee sleekit mousie who needed repatriation in the upper fields.
3. Advice Rebound: I told a friend the other day, in that advice-giving tone that I can’t seem to make myself stop using: “You need to take a break, carve out time just for yourself.” I could feel those words bouncing back on me as I said them.
4. Dreams. I am gleaning my dreams for the messages of the year, here in the bowl of Twelvenight.
5. The murmurings and mutterings of the children playing together in the background.
There needs to be a word for that moment
when a particular slant of light
hits a golden butterfly wing just so
as it flutters through the hollow.
***
The feathers. I am still finding at least one a day. Yesterday there were five. Two days ago, I found one at school, on the sidewalk between the parking lot and my classroom building. One day, before I’d left the house, Alicia brought me three she’d found. As I was pitching my tent at Nancy’s house last weekend, I found a feather. Right there. Last year, it lasted about a month or six weeks, a feather a day, beginning in late July.
We construct the meaning of our lives, I think. I like to keep lots of meanings in my pockets, and take them out to look at, like bright stones. All these feathers! It means that I am favored by birds. Or it’s a message not to fear the fledging, the flight I am about to take. Or it’s a reminder to rest in the grace of air and light. Or it means that bird-life in the hollow is healthy and vibrant. Or it means that there is an owl who chooses my poplar tree for her feasting. Perhaps it means that something in me is more observant in August, more apt to notice the tiny feathers in my path. I don’t need to choose one meaning, to sort out the spiritual from the scientific, to hold one above another as the “right” and proper meaning. I’ll hold them all, let all those pieces weave themselves into the narrative of my life. Life’s too full of possibilities to narrow it down to one thing.
Gratitude List: 1. The August slant of light
2. Tiger swallowtails
3. Wild geese in flight: You do not have to be good.
4. The mysterious promise of another day
5. Baby snuggle time
<Prompt 21: Write a Secret Message Poem> It’s a little late, and I am a little tired, so this one is a little easy, I believe. Reply to this post if you want me to crack the code for you.
You know what I mean. You
are waiting for the answer, but
a different question wants asking. The
gift of the moment is the task you set,
The answer will come at the moment the
Universe deems you ready. This
has its requirements: patience, a heart
given the urge to open, and a mind tuned
to curiosity. You may discover the question
itself is the answer you seek.
Gratitude List: 1. That Gratitude Lost was simply a typo, easily deleted.
2. Two snails to befriend the fish. The boys call them Cleaner One and Cleaner Two, though Joss first called them Basil and Wheatgrass for the plants that grow at the top of the tank, and I prefer those names. How can it be so entertaining to watch snails? It is.
3. The meaning behind the meaning.
4. No bad news.
5. Big wide circles of prayer.
I have been thinking about how I make meaning as I speak. As I am talking, I come to know what I mean. I might have ideas and thoughts in my head, but the nuance and subtleties of language shift and tweak the essence of a thought. It grows or shrinks as I speak it. Sometimes in conversation I find myself saying a thing, only to realize that it’s not exactly what I meant, so I need to re-phrase and re-re-phrase it. I love conversations where people work at that process together. Sometimes I am left confused when I assume that someone will be joining me in that conversational work, and then they don’t really get it.
I think that’s why I like poetry. Using words so intentionally, packing so much meaning into each word, means that the landscape of meaning shifts and twists with each reading, sometimes becoming clearer and more defined, and other times deconstructing and separating out into many threads.
Gratitude List: 1. The wonderful owl kites that Suzy Hamme gave the kids. Ellis ran around the farm for hours today with an owl flapping behind him. What magic you gave us, my friend!
2. Picnic at Sam Lewis State Park, flying kites, rolling down the hill, climbing the rocks, playing on the playground, pretending to be astronauts and aliens.
3. Planting a garden with the kids (which was mostly me planting and them sort of diddling, but still, it was a fun project.
4. The way the sun rays sparkled through the cloud just before sunset.
5. Dreams that bring comfort.
Mockingbird Chronicles 