Weiser River Pillow Book #6

(Here's the May installement in Eberle's Weiser River Pillow Book series. If you'd like to know more about this work, please check the links here & here. You can find links to all the installments so far—December thru April—on the links under * Eberle's Corner * about halfway down the page.)

FROM ANGUISH TO PIE

Anguish angoisse angular arugula angel ungulate
angle angst agonia origami
Aragon, tarragon, paragon pie.

THE THING ABOUT WITCHES

The thing about witches is that they were independently minded—loners. That’s European witches, anyway. In Brazil and Bolivia they seem more integrated into the social structure. But it strikes me that all the lore about books of spells and other paraphernalia has been added to obscure the important fact that witches had no formulated tradition, that what they did was make up their own rules.

And learn from the land, about plants. But not to come up with poisons or medicines, not just for that, mostly to be connected—to the land, through what is observed and what is taught by the slow process of growth. Last week I told myself that if I felt inclined toward religion what I would do would be to learn one from this land—that ten acres of land with water would provide all you need for a civilization—with its own art forms, religion, values, and sustenance. I went outside and put some dried lavender beneath the metal pig-lady goddess, who lives in a shrine made from part of a tractor.


TOWELS ON THE BATHROOM SHELF

The faded pink one, with holes—for orphan days.
The thick black one that sheds slightly—when the illusion of opulence reveals its flaws.
The deep blue one—perfect, a reward reserved for harmonious days.
Striped ones—always go on the hand towel rack, for unexplained reasons.
The peach one—somewhere between the pink one and the blue one.
Turquoise—you have to be feeling a bit brash for this one.
The ones my companion brought with him to live here—still look exotic and exciting.
My grandmother’s, with rose appliqués—are fading, poignantly—death again.


THE FIRST LADYBUG

The first ladybug seen from beneath the cottonwoods starting to fill the air with cotton somehow makes me want to let the wild roses grow right into the laundry room—prying the siding apart as they have already started to do, and twining into the secret place where the totem umbrella lies month after month, untouched.


THE PARADE OF LEAVES

Cottonwood, willow, currant already jaded, the spiky blackberry and the elegantly down-curving elderberry, those of the serviceberry have serrated edges, those of the chokecherry do not, these are the ones I have come to know and it is strange to think that they unfurled in their stately, hurtling order before I came here to live among them.


THE SUMMER IS FULL OF GHOSTS

The summer is full of ghosts—of longings from other times of warmth and sun—longing built upon longing, in some kind of endless algebraic proof of itself. And yet this place comes closer than any I have known to containing what I love. Still, there are rustlings in the bushes—invisible things on the wing, with sharp beaks and singing.


THINGS THAT LOOK WELL AGAINST GREEN HILLS

Black cattle.

Ploughed fields.

Crayon-colored farm equipment.


THINGS SEEN ON A SHOPPING TRIP TO THE LAND OF THINGS

Garden hoses colored blue and purple instead of green.

A display of beef jerky in the men’s underwear section.

Bubble gum chips sold in miniature milk cartons.


LUCKY STRIKE AT THE DUMP

3 fans, various sizes.

Large iron hook.

Dishwasher part.

Large metal hoop.

Stove part.

Electrical box.

Bucketful of small metal bits.



SOME COLORS AT THE FARMSTEAD

Pumphouse: drifting sea and pink.

Pig-lady shrine: John Deere yellow and green, pomegranate.

Western shop wall: sombrero.



BLOOMING, MAY 22

Honeysuckle, columbine, iris, lilac, wallflower, geranium, phlox, dianthus, syringa.

Edible: watercress, sorrel, chives, cilantro, thyme, oregano.

Theoretically edible: cattails, camas root.


TIME AND TIDE

Charcoal vacuum filters, change twice a year.

Air filters, every three months.

Swamp cooler, clean out in the spring.

Refrigerator, when relatives are coming to visit.

Is it better to clean under the stove burners when the moon is new, do the dust bunnies increase when the moon is on the wane and trailing behind it the glittering flux of the object world—a milk jug emerging in the draw, a beer-bottle cap winking in the corral.


BIG HOT DAY

2 starlings trapped in the chimney—dismantling the stove pipe to let them out.

Cleaning out the swamp cooler pump and pan.

Hanging 2 sheets on the southwestern windows-- from the Hospital Auxiliary Thrift Store—torn, darned, and nibbled. One pale blue, one pale green. They make an underwater light pour across the living room.


THE ORDER OF THINGS

Dandelions.

Peonies after the lilacs, before the hedge roses.

Irises after lilacs.

Elderberries flowering after the currants berry.


TREES AND THEIR BEETLES

The bane of the locusts and their elegant branches, a borer resembling a wasp, cleverly, since that is its great predator. The box elder trees growing around an abandoned homestead I drove past hundreds of times before finally exploring it. The familiar deities of these localities presiding: a toppled refrigerator, large car parts—and swarming cities of box elder beetles.


EARLY MORNING THOUGHTS

Every embarrassing thing you’ve ever done.

Thinking how pleasant it is that two days still remain in the month of May—then remembering how you used to hate the calendar and drew up lunar calendars to follow instead.

Thinking you can give up some high-minded principles that made your first few decades more noble, but uncomfortable.


STRANGE SIGHTS

In the pond, in slow motion, a bullfrog which has its mouth almost entirely around another’s head.

A baby porcupine in the garden, without quills, defenseless.

A wasp wrapped up like a mummy in a black widow’s web.


LATELY WE HAVE ASKED ALOUD

What is the process of galvanizing?

Why bush league?

Why the card in the carding of wool?

There it sits, the Oxford English Dictionary, but sometimes we love a mystery.

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets - 5/21

A Few More Fold-Out Postcard Sonnets were written over a bit less than three months in 1996; the date on each poem indicates when it was written. I remember them as being pretty spontaneous overall. As I mentioned earlier this month, I'll post these sonnets here on the dates they were written as a sort of 13 year anniversary.

I’m sure I envisioned more than seventeen sonnets, which is an odd number to end on, literally & otherwise, but in August I hit a wall. The poem dated 8/1 was the last thing wrote until writing “She Sells Seashells” in 2002; I then “put down the pen” again (only figuratively—I’ve pretty much only written on a computer keyboard for a number of years) until the spring of 2008.

The summer of 96 was significant to me both because I was nearing my 40th birthday in September (I think decade birthdays tend to be times of reflection), & also because I traveled from San Francisco back to Charlottesville, VA in July. I believe the 7/18 & 7/23 sonnets both were written on that trip. Since my time in Charlottesville (from 84-89) had been filled with all sorts of psychic commotion, the trip was a bit of a pilgrimage. Of course, the past—as always—had slipped away from any sort of tangibility into memory, where it’s both lost & ever present….

Some people assumed at the time the sonnets were being written that the character “Marlowe” was literally intended to be Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe character. Though I am a big Chandler fan & read him a lot around this time, this was at most a piece of the puzzle. I liked the name in general, & I also had the (reputedly) dissolute Elizabethan poet in mind along with the fictional LA detective. There also are both autobiographical & imagined details contained in the character quite separate from either of those two figures.

One final note—just because I liked the way it looked, I abbreviated state names in these poems: VT=Vermont, VA=Virginia, etc. When I gave readings I would say the state name, not the abbreviation. It seems a little confusing when used for Vermont because I don’t believe town names are ever mentioned alongside the abbreviation. I still keep this quirk up, along with my passion for dashes as sole punctuation & a few spellings that I like but some may or may not find like a tic; same goes for me & ampersands!

The streets referred to are in San Francisco, mostly either in the Mission or the Western Addition (or betwixt & between the two)— the places I loved to hang out & live in those days.

The first sonnet was dated 5/21. Here it is:

5/21


A badminton net in a VT backyard afflicted with a
Rosicrucian sunset & an outbreak of communist mosquitos
buzzing a Manachevitz buzz in Mr Marlowe’s a-
symmetrical ears— & a transistor radio

perched in a scotch pine sporting superfluous
shades & crooning Blue Bayou— which is likewise
superfluous— as Baltimore Orioles
swooping into the hedge to roost make Marlowe think

Descartes was right for no particular reason
except he’s cadaverous drunk & shouldn’t be lounging
in the tattered green & white lawn chair after all

his eyes floating westward plasmic inside a spectacular
bronze Chevy Malibu 15 miles east of Needles
where shuttlecocks & fortune cookies are likewise dissolving

© John Hayes 1996-2009

The Sonnet – A Study in Poetic Form #2

A couple of weeks ago, I recorded some observations, opinions, etc. about the Italian, or Petrarchan, sonnet form, particularly noting how its chief characteristic seems to be the division between octave (first eight lines) & sestet (final six lines), with a “turn” occurring at the point between lines eight & nine. As a writer, I find the Italian form the best to work with, & a number of English language writers—from Thomas Wyatt & John Milton to John Berryman & Adrienne Rich—have put this elegant & flexible form to use.

However, when English language poetry readers think “sonnet,” they are quite apt to think of William Shakespeare, & Shakespeare, as well as other renowned English language poets (including John Donne & Sir Edmund Spencer) used a quite different form. There is some variation between the “Shakespearean” sonnet & the “Spencerian” sonnet (tho to my mind there are more similarities than differences); as promised I’ll look at the “Shakespearean” form here.

If the Italian sonnet divides most clearly into two parts, the Shakespearean sonnet divides most clearly into four. These four parts are the three quatrains (typically with alternating rhymes: ABAB; CDCD; EFEF) & a couplet (GG). Of course, there is also a two-part structure comprising the combined quatrains set against the couplet (even as there is also a four part structure to the Italian sonnet: two quatrains making up the octave, & two tercets making up the sestet).

But I like to think first of the English sonnet’s quatrains as separate but unified entities, giving a prismatic view of the poem’s theme or “argument” (the latter term being particularly applicable to the English sonnet form as practiced by Shakespeare & Donne). So in Shakespeare’s well-known Sonnet 30 (given below), you can see the argument advancing in distinct “When,” “Then,” “Then” segments, each a separate quatrain. It’s important, I think, when contrasting the movement in the English & Italian sonnets to note that the rhyme scheme in the former tends to divide the quatrains (because each quatrain has two unique rhyming sounds) while the rhyme schemes in an Italian sonnet tend to unify the octave within itself (because the two quatrains have linked rhyming sounds) & the sestet also with itself, again because the rhymes within that section are linked. Of course the concluding couplet of the English sonnet also is made distinct because this again typically uses unique rhyming sounds.

Now—because the sonnet itself is worth a myriad of my words, here’s Sonnet 30:

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.

William Shakespeare

It’s interesting, I think, to look at the opening phrases of the quatrains in a few other well-known Shakespearean sonnets to get a further sense of the prismatic effect:

Sonnet 18
“Shall I compare thee…
Sometimes too hot the eye…
But thy eternal summer…”

Sonnet 73
“That time of year…
In me thou see’st….
In me thou see’st…”

Sonnet 106
“When in the chronicle…
Then, in the blazon…
So all their praises…”

Sonnet 130
“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like…
I have seen roses damasked…
I love to hear her speak…”

While this prismatic effect seems in itself something that would lend itself to contemporary treatments, in fact the English sonnet form doesn’t seem to be used as much as the Italian form. My guess is we’re so familiar with the English sonnet following an expository argument in Shakespeare & Donne (et al.) that it’s difficult to see the other possible effects as separate from that. It’s true that Ted Berrigan’s sonnets retain something more like the English form than the Italian, but the prismatic character there is even more minutely & irregularly divided. One 20th century poet who did use the English sonnet form in a generally recognizable guise but with a contemporary poetic outlook was e.e. cummings—perhaps not the first person you’d think of when it comes to sonnet writing. Check out this example:


)when what hugs stopping earth than silent is
more silent than more than much more is or
total sun oceaning than any this
tear jumping from each most least eye of star

and without was if minus and shall be
immeasurable happenless unnow
shuts more than open could that every tree
or than all life more death begins to grow

end's ending then these dolls of joy and grief
these recent memories of future dream
these perhaps who have lost their shadows if
which did not do the losing spectres mime

until out of merely not nothing comes
only one snowflake(and we speak our names

e.e. cummings

In certain ways, this inhabits a thematic territory that’s not dissimilar to Sonnet 30, but cummings’ syntactical displacements take us to a wholly new territory—again, as with Berrigan (but in a very different way) the quatrain prisms sub-divide into smaller prismatic units. It’s also worth noting that tho the sonnet has a regular rhyme scheme, all of the rhymes are “off” or “slant rhymes; so while certain sounds tend to unify the quatrains, they also allow the boundaries to be much more blurred.

I’ll post at least one more exploration of the sonnet, probably next Wednesday, tho I’m still cogitating what angle I’ll explore.

Picture of e.e. cummings is from the Library of Congress (thru Wikipedia) & in the public domain.

Dad’s Photos #8 - The Hurricane of '38

In the US, we typically think of hurricanes hitting the southern states along the Atlantic & Gulf coasts, but they do occasionally stray northward to New England, & can wreck considerable damage along that coast as well. One of these was the "New England Hurricane of 1938," also known as "the Long Island Express" because its initial landfall was on Long Island & because its forward movement was very rapid—this kept it from weakening even as it traveled over the cool North Atlantic waters.

The hurricane struck on September 21, 1938, & according to Wikipedia was the sixth most costly Atlantic hurricane ever, causing the equivalent of $39.2 billion dollars (adjusted to the contemporary dollar). The storm killed somewhere between 680 to 800 people.

Of course, as followers of the Dad’s Photos series know, my father was working on Cape Cod in 1938, & so saw the devastation first hand. He also brought his camera along & captured what I believe are some arresting images. I’m including all 10 of the hurricane photos found in the album I inherited.



The Hurricane – Onset, Mass



Dry Sailing – Onset, Mass


High & Dry
A Seagoing Boat Out of Place


Wareham, Mass – Ever Ready Telephone Men on the Job

Road Past the Public Pier – Onset, Mass


Wareham, Mass

Buzzard’s Bay


Some Wind!


Bridge at Wood’s Hole (not a drawbridge either)

Palabras Como Rosas

As the old saying goes, I’m so far behind I think I’m in first. I’ve bemoaned my hectic week already here, as well as the hectic week to come, so I’ll spare you. I will say that when I wasn’t writing a ghazal, I spent much of the weekend at the business end of a lawn mower….

So I’m finally getting to some sorely neglected blog business, which involves passing on the Palabras Como Rosas Award that Cheryl of the wonderful Lizzy Frizzfrock blog passed along to me last week.

According to Cheryl, “The award is for words that like roses, leave a wonderful perfume, lingering for a while.” I get a feed from 50 (yikes!) blogs in my Google Reader, & all of these blogsprovide me satisfyingly lingering ideas & creations. But I’ll namesome that stand out & which, with one exception (which is appropriate, since Cheryl passed two awards to me recently), haven’t received any of the other awards I’ve passed on ; also I’m not mentioning any blogs to which Cheryl passed the award.

By the way, I know at least one of the blogs I’m mentioning has a policy about not passing along awards (a policy I understand & support in those who choose to follow it), so as usual, this award comes with no strings attached—but do pass it on if you’d like.

In alphabetical order:

Amazing Voyages of the Turtle: When I awarded Sandra Leigh the One Lovely Blog Award, I was kind of shocked that someone who’s been blogging for quite some time & at such a consistently high level had only been picked for one of these. So to remedy that, here’s the Palabras Como Rosas, which richly fits the excellent writing at Amazing Voyages of the Turtle. Sandra also was the creator of Original Poetry Sunday, a grand idea that I believe will attract more folks as time goes by. In addition to my contribution, please check out Sandra’s poem here & René Wing’s poem here; René’s blog Yes is Red is also very much worth repeated visits.

The Gold Puppy: Unlike Blogger, I don’t alphabetize this under “T”; Reya Mellicker of The Gold Puppy is a fantastic photographer & a very deep & interesting thinker. Her daily posts range widely in topic, but they always contain some wisdom about the way we experience the world, & how that experience changes us that give me something to think about thru the day. Reya’s blog is very successful, & deservedly so, with a wide readership, but a visit there still has the feeling of a “smaller” blog, since Ms Mellicker interacts with her many commentors in a friendly & good-humored way. Reya has also been a very staunch supporter of Robert Frost’s Banjo, & I appreciate that a great deal.

Just a Song: The Citizen K. blog has long been a must read for K.’s insightful take on politics, as well as his writing about films, books & music. In fact, K. has a special gift, I think, for writing about music, so it was no surprise that he started Just a Song as a side project. Just a Song features a full review of a given song, with a video showing the song performed & the lyrics. It’s a simple but elegant idea, & K. pulls it off very well both thru his insightful write-ups on the songs, but also thru his song selection—obviously a crucial element in this type of blog. K’s song choices range from numbers by Hank Williams & Leonard Cohen & Paul Robeson & Joan Baez & Merle Haggard & Bob Dylan—an eclectic batch, but each is given a great treatment. Be sure to check this one out.

New England Travels: I have a lot of respect for blogger Jacqueline T. Lynch. She produces three blogs, all with terrific content. I passed an award on to her once for perhaps her most popular production, Another Old Movie Blog, but I want to acknowledge the fine work she does on New England Travels (& Tragedy & Comedy in New England, her live theater blog). New England Travels both is & isn’t exactly what it sounds like; Ms Lynch does take us to any number of noteworthy places throughout New England—many of which were unknown to me, at least, & I did live in New England for almost 28 years, so she does take us off the main drag. But even more importantly, & as is the case in all her blog writing, Ms Lynch is a painstaking & insightful social historian, & she is capable of fleshing out, as she did recently for instance, the history of one street in Springfield, Massachusetts to give a vivid & compelling picture of a town’s history—cultural, commercial & so forth. I recommend all of Ms Lynch’s blogs very highly.

Notes from Lizard Camp: This is an interesting blogger from Missouri with thoughts on everything from politics to quantum physics to the laws of Karma. Randy Watson always succeeds in piquing my interest as he examines various philosophical (in the large sense of the word) concepts as they apply to his own daily existence. Which, of course, is “real” philosophy, as opposed to an intellectual exercise. There are also some photos on Notes from Lizard Camp taken by Randy’s wife Susan. This is a blog that may be flying a bit below the radar right now, but which really deserves a wider readership.

Finally: thanks for your generous consideration, Cheryl & sorry about taking so long to get to this! Now I need to put on my thinking cap about passing on the Kreativ Blogger Award passed on to me by my long-lost cousin several times removed, TotalfeckingEejit. More on that soon!

Original Poetry Sunday: "Ghazal 5/16"

Sandra Leigh of the fantastic blog, Amazing Voyages of the Turtle has come up with the excellent idea of Original Poetry Sunday, & as my contribution I'm posting the latest poem in the ongoing Ghazal series; as per the title, it was written yesterday, tho it received a rather extensive revision this morning.

Which leads me to the observation that a poem can seem to be technically polished—the "sounds" can seem right, the images can seem to be arresting—but if it's not "true" to itself, it remains "bad poetry." In the original version, the poem was much more "lush" & dream-like, but it really called for a more direct presentation. While technique is crucial, technique by itself can't redeem a poem that's untrue to itself. What this poem "wanted" to be about was a moment that passed between a friend & myself many years ago; in a sense that moment encapsulated much about our relationship—misunderstood "rejections" springing from self-consciousness & jealously guarded personae coupled with a tendency to "poeticize" events & to become trapped in imagined narratives. Such "imagined narratives" are perhaps an inherent danger of the poetic course I've pursued for the past 30 years & more. Of course, when we continue to cast events in a false light, that's when poetry becomes deception in the sense stated by various philosophers—when we cast events in the light of awareness, that's when poetry can, I believe, be part of healing. This all has been part of an ongoing argument with myself about poetry for more than 20 years.

On a lighter note, I've been thrilled to see all the poems being written in the blogging community I feel a part of, & I think Sandra's Original Poetry Sunday will not only highlight this, but also inspire others to try their hand as well.

I hope you enjoy this & all the other Original Poetry Sunday posts.

Ghazal 5/16


waxing crescent afloat within a white nimbus—
nothing’s distinct—a tremoloed note on a

mandolin & the willow limbs’ gray resignation—an-
other night amongst visitations convinced I’m really there—

a Virginia cottage house on a street “that
really went no place”—a silence with eyes singing

hysterically & I said Let’s dance taking her hand &
she turned aside— another visitation across pages

of poems singing You must change your life—
a walk thru muttering streets thru a white fog—I

keep writing the same poem for how many
nights & years & mornings a streetlight’s white

nimbus beyond an electric typewriter’s midnight hum in a
Virginia cottage house—a tremoloed mandolin a hysterical

silence becoming a blurry nimbus the weeks & years
& hours of the same poem repeated a

visitation becoming dawn’s twilight a
tremolo on a mandolin this whitening morning

"Acquainted with the Night"

I haven’t forgotten entirely about sonnets during my recent peregrinations, & today’s Weekly Poem is a long-standing personal favorite written by none other than this blog’s titular banjoist, Robert Frost.

"Acquainted with the Night" is interesting on a number of levels. From a formal perspective, it does conclude with the couplet associated with English sonnets; however, rather than have three quatrains (four-line stanzas), typically with rhymes in alternate lines (e.g., the first stanza typically runs ABAB), the poem is written in Terza Rima—the stanza scheme of Dante’s Divina Commedia. As you can see the rhyme patterns link stanzas rather than dividing them. The rhyme scheme works as follows:

1A, 2B, 3A
4B, 5C, 6B
7C, 8D, 9C
10D, 11A, 12D
13A, 14A

This strikes me as a very peripatetic rhyme scheme as it carries the reader forward thru the poem; rather than providing three different perspectives in individualized quatrains, the four tercets (three-line stanzas) keep us moving on a walk thru the night. Even the concluding couplet isn’t an independent summation, since it links back to the preceding stanza thru rhyme.

"Acquainted with the Night" is also noteworthy for its wonderful use of speech rhythms. Although Frost typically worked in iambic pentameter, his lines flow very naturally because he had such a fine ear for the rhythm of everyday speech.

Frost worked well in the sonnet form—as far as I can recall, his other sonnets are all in the more traditional "English" form—three quatrains & a concluding couplet; a few other noteworthy Frost sonnets are "Never Again Would Bird's Song be the Same," "Once By the Pacific" & "Design."

Enjoy!


Acquainted with the Night


I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Robert Frost


UPDATE: Eberle pointed out that I made rather a hash of the rhyme scheme - the price you pay for trying to think at 4:30 a.m. after a night of dreaming turmoil. I've corrected the rhyme scheme diagram since the initial posting.