"The Forest Woman's Monlogue"

[Hi folks: for your Tuesday enjoyment, a poem by Eberle.  She composed this as part of the prologue to an upcoming production of the Second Shepherds’ Play, for which she’s also composing the music.  The Forest Woman is based on a character in the movie Sorceress (Le moine et la sorcière).]

The Forest Woman’s Monologue

Soon the nights will be warmer
and soon the owls will leave this valley.
They always leave when the Moon
is in her waning and the Eldertree in flower.
That’s when I must be ready to pick the elderflowers
For they won’t wait.

When the owls leave and the nights are warmer
That’s when the fever comes to the valley
And when it leaves we are fewer,
there are always mothers mourning the hollow place
within their arms where a child once slept. 
I must be ready to pick the elderflowers
when they froth open in the moonlight of her waning
when the dew falls warm and heavy
I’ll fill my cauldron to the brim with their whitening blooms
For they save lives.

The priest looks at me sideways when I pass his door at night
on my way to the grove of the Eldertree – such a tree!
Her arms hold generations of us
in the moonlit hollows where her branches curve,
and in the dark where her roots cradle the earth
moistening among the worms and beetles.
The priest lets me go about my work because he has seen
the flower potion heal, and because he too grieves
When children die.

The priest has asked me how
I can have converse with the Eldertree -
for he has no mother and children with him
through the night and so his nights are occupied
with fears of demons and their many forms
leaping and prancing in the moonlight.
He asks me how the tree appears to me,
do I hear voices, he asks, how do I know
the meaning of the tree?
I point to the little black marks
in the sacred book he carries and ask how these
speak to him – does he hear voices? Do they take form?
How does he know their meaning?

He holds the book up, but doesn’t offer it to me,
he says: “This is the Word of God.”

I tell him that the tree is also the Word of God -
how else would the healing flowers bloom
just when the nights grow warmer and the owls
leave the valley, just when the warm dews
settle on the ponds and the fever comes?

But I don’t have time to tell him more,
the Moon is in her waning and the tiny pale fists
of the elderflowers open to her, one by one.
I must go now, to the grove and pick them
For they won’t wait.


Eberle Umbach
© 2010
 

"Lethe"

Musical Monday is upon us once again, & this time around we have our Alice in Wonder Band song of the month. 

When the Alice in Wonder Band started out, most of our repertoire was written by Eberle—actually, as I believe I’ve written in previous posts, our decision to move more toward covering old standards & away from original material was probably a mistake: Eberle is an excellent composer, & she had a knack of writing material that would bring out band members’ strengths & steer clear of their weaknesses.

Another feature of the early Alice in Wonder Band songs was that several involved Eberle composing musical settings for poems by women poets.  She wrote music for poems by H.D., Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson & Joanne Kyger.  In fact, her setting for “Lethe” actually was part of the music she wrote for a high school production of Antigone that was staged in December 2001; that production led directly to the formation of the Alice in Wonder Band, since the original five instrumentalists in the Wonder Band were also the Antigone “orchestra,” & Kati Sheldon, the band’s original vocalist, was a featured member of the cast.  Kati is singing the song in this recording, which was made at the Alpine Playhouse in September 2002.

The line-up in addition to Kati was: Lois Fry, violin; Art Troutner, oboe; Eberle Umbach, marimba; Barb Dixon, drum & percussion; & yours truly on electric guitar.  I have no idea why the electric guitar sounds so strange in this recording!  There actually weren’t any odd settings on the amp—it was played “clean.”  But the recording was done on a minidisk thru a small condenser mic, & the quality is not all it might be. 

The images accompanying the music in the slideshow are all some form of waterway in the area of southwestern Idaho & southeastern Oregon.  Obviously, “Lethe” refers to the river in the Classical Greek underworld whose waters erase the memory of the shades. 

I’ve included the poem for your added enjoyment.  Hope you like the music!


Lethe

Nor skin nor hide nor fleece
     Shall cover you,
Nor curtain of crimson nor fine
Shelter of cedar-wood be over you,
     Nor the fir-tree
     Nor the pine.

Nor sight of whin nor gorse
     Nor river-yew,
Nor fragrance of flowering bush,
Nor wailing of reed-bird to waken you,
     Nor of linnet,
     Nor of thrush.

Nor word nor touch nor sight
     Of lover, you
Shall long through the night but for this:
The roll of the full tide to cover you
     Without question,
     Without kiss.

H.D.



Pic is of the poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), taken c. 1921

Photo of the Week 10/17/10

Bus on Gray's Creek Rd

Indian Valley, Idaho

Saturday, October 16th

Please check out today's post at The Days of Wine & Roses; it's called "Kinder- Und Hausmärchen Without A Nightlight." 

More poetry?  How about a virtual reading at The Spring Ghazals?

Tomorrow on Alcools?  A poem called "Medicine Show" ("Saltimbanques.")

& tomorrow on Robert Frost's Banjo?  This month's Alice in Wonder Band feature song: Eberle's musical setting for one of H.D.'s poems!

Homegrown Radio 10/15/10

Friday is upon us again, & that means it’s time for another installment of Homegrown Radio with Joel Murach.  Mr Murach has another top-notch song for us this week, so let’s see what he has to say about “You Wanna Have Your Cake”:

One day I started thinking about the saying, "You want to have your cake and eat it too." To be honest, I never really understood this saying. But then I couldn't stop thinking about it. And then I realized that it applied to a situation that I was in. And then I wrote this song.

The recording is essentially a live recording. I just set up two mics and played it. Someday, I'd like to overdub some pedal steel on the end of it.

Get ready for a sad one but a good one, folks.  Enjoy!

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Writers Talk with Jonah Winter

It’s with great pleasure that I introduce today’s Writers Talk interviewee, Jonah Winter.  I first met Jonah in Charlottesville in 1985 when we were both attending the MFA program at the University of Virginia, & we struck up a friendship “oriented around talking, analyzing, mulling,” as he puts it in this interview (I also hope I am a “good conversationalist.”)  I’ve always held Jonah’s poetry in high esteem, & tho our poetics diverge at some points, we share an enthusiasm for the surreal & for formal experiments, & I can honestly say that his poetry has not only been an inspiration but also an influence over the years.  Jonah also has been one of the best readers of my own poems, something that I value a great deal.

When Jonah & I weren’t mulling—or even sometimes while we were—we engaged in some memorable escapades, including an overnight road trip from Charlottesville to Niagara Falls with a couple of other “poets in their youth,” all intent on proving Wordsworth’s dictum, I fear (I described it in a poem as “No Exit except in a/Motel 6 in Tucumcari/one of those Hope-Crosby Road/extravaganzas gone wrong”)—a tale perhaps too wild & ultimately, too sad to tell—& a cross country road trip in an old Toyota that would keep running even if you pulled the key out of the ignition.  We both lived in San Francisco during the 90s at which point Jonah was yielding clarinet, mandolin, accordion & tin whistle in the band Ed’s Redeeming Qualities.

Jonah Winter’s poetry has been widely published.  In addition to his poems appearing in a number of magazines & in chapbooks, he has also published Maine & Amnesia; the latter book won the 2003 Field Poetry Prize.  Jonah has also published 20 children’s books on  subjects ranging from Roberto Clemente to Hildegard Von Bingen—perhaps my favorite is Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude, his children’s book bio of Gertrude Stein!  

Please check out Jonah's dynamite poem "What We Know" on the Writers Talk blog.

Without further ado, Jonah Winter:

When did you first realize your identity as a writer?

It was when I was a sophomore at Oberlin College, just having lost the key to my clarinet case (I’d been a music major at another school with the unrealistic hopes of somehow sneaking in to the Oberlin Conservatory through the back door) – that’s when my identity crisis over musician vs. poet came to an end…, well, uhhh…, for about 10 years at least (I later took up the clarinet again and started making some money as a musician).    I’ve struggled from the beginning over my identity, always inexplicably bewildered over just what the hairy heck I am.   At one point, in the ‘90s, I was making money as a musician, an illustrator, and as a poet and children’s book author.   I’m now in my 19th year of making a living as a children’s book author, so I guess I can safely call myself a children’s book writer, but “poet” – I don’t know.   The word seems fraught with pretension and self-importance.   To think of oneself as a poet seems a bit absurd (almost like seeing oneself as a “visionary”) – that being said, I continue to write things that might be called “poems” (and are certainly intended as such) and have several filing cabinets overflowing with such specimens that I’ve written through the years, and a few books to show for my efforts as well.   Should an artist depend on external validation for her or his identity?  After giving this question much thought, I’d have to answer with an emphatic “NO.”   You are what you are.  And if you don’t know what you are, or you aren’t willing to define yourself with a label, well then, nonetheless, you still are what you are, right?  If a tree falls in an unseen forest….     [Author strokes non-existent chin whiskers…]

Describe the creative process involved in any one piece you’ve written—this could be book, a story, a poem, an essay, etc.
A few years ago, I wrote a sestina based on Anna Karenina.    Before I even chose my end-words, I had decided that I wanted it to be a sort of aural book report spoken by an inarticulate modern youth.   So, if memory serves me, I chose as my end-words “like,” “relationships,” “like,” “so,” “wow,” and “dude.”    It was a lot of fun to write!    I had to actually stop writing at certain points because I was doubled over in laughter – it was that fun!   I love cracking myself up – that’s probably what keeps me writing.   Who needs anti-depressants when you can come up with a poem called “Burt Lancaster’s Big Head”?!

Could you describe your relationship to the publishing process (this can be publishing in any form, from traditional book publishing to blogging, etc)
I have a fairly traditional, old-fashioned relationship to the publishing process.   I publish my books with regular old print-publishers, and for my children’s books, I have an agent.    Proudly “Luddite,” I have eschewed the temptations of turning my kids’ books into e-books thus far, and I am absolutely opposed to pretty much all forms of electronic publication for children, as I believe this is leading to mass-laziness, stupidity, and disconnectedness from reality.   I don’t have a blog, but I do have a website… that is pretty much non-functional!   I’ve published adult poems in online magazines, largely because I’ve been solicited by the editors of these magazines, whose taste is apparently compatible with my own.   Generally, though, I mistrust anything having to do with the internet…, uhhh…, except for this blog!   All of that being said, I am becoming increasingly frustrated with the direction the publishing industry is taking – in both the more lucrative trade publishing sector and the small presses of obscure poetry.   The trade publishers are becoming more crassly mercenary by the second, churning out more and more “celebrity” author books every year (in the hopes that this will somehow protect the industry from the ominous storm clouds of Amazon and electronic books), whilst the small poetry presses are doing nothing more than perpetuating the sickening alienation of poets from any real audience by printing increasingly obscure, hermetic, overly (pseudo-) intellectual garbage written by their grad school chums and intended for an audience mainly of other aspiring poets who’ve submitted their manuscripts to the demoralizing, rigged “contests” which provide the only means of getting one’s poems published nowadays other than self-publishing.  It’s enough to make someone throw up.   (Excuse me for one moment….)

How has being a writer affected your relationships?
Ha ha – that’s an interesting question!   Well, you know, being a writer has definitely helped me to meet some very interesting, creative, passionate people whom I might not have met had I gone into a field other than writing, for instance, plumbing, though of course one never knows.   If one is a writer, there’s a good chance that one will meet other writers, who by their natures generally love language, communication, talk.   Most of the writers I’ve known are good conversationalists, and our friendships or acquaintanceships have generally been oriented around talking, analyzing, mulling – activities for which I have a nearly pathological zeal.    The fact of being a writer, for me, also entails quite a bit of private time.  For 19 years, I’ve been self-employed as a writer.   I work at home – alone.    And I savor the huge chunks of alone time I have to get writing done or even just to daydream or to stare at goldfinches.    Such time helps me to feel more connected to the world around me and also to my own soul.   The sorts of limited-access relationships I have had with other humans, therefore, are not of the sort of daily, constant variety that might happen in a workplace or a communal living situation or any other environment which involves non-stop human interaction.   I suppose, though, that having a lot of alone time does not necessitate being a writer, per se.   But being a writer sure does afford a handy excuse for avoiding people!   The grandfather I never met used to say, apparently, that “the more I see of fish, the more I like bananas.”   The writer in me wants to revise this to “the more I see of humans, the more I like fish.”    Though I do find people “endlessly fascinating,” in general, I also generally find them very exhausting to be around.     Navigating around everyone’s neuroses and egos and opinions and cruelties and “boundaries” can be a fulltime job.   And I, thank God, am a freelancer.

Getting back to the word “relationships,” though:        Might this question also refer to the relationships one has to nature or animals or even inanimate objects?    I lived alone in rural Maine for 2 years, and the relationships I had there were mainly of this variety – and I found myself writing about this realm quite a bit:  moose, chipmunks, ducks, snow.   Writing about these things helped me to feel an even deeper bond with them than I would have experienced had I not been a writer.     So, I’d have to say that being a writer has generally had a positive impact on my relationships, especially my relationship with paper.

As far as humans go, though, I do my best to try and focus on the humans I love and admire and on the relationships which I value, but it’s an effort.   All I have to do is to walk outside my front door and see a couple of shirtless white guys with shaved heads and tattoos, shouting really stupid things in loud voices across the street to each other…, and it takes a full hour of yoga to bring me back to anything resembling peace.   Is my “relationship” to such people “caused” by my being a writer?   I don’t know.   Maybe.

For the most part, I prefer seals to humans.    Though I can’t say that I’ve ever had a relationship with a seal.

How would you describe the community of writers you belong to—if any?  This may be a “real” or “virtual” (in more than one sense) community.

The community of writers I belong to?   Non-existent!    I have a couple of friends with whom I exchange poems – but that’s different from a community.   In the best of all possible worlds, I would love to be a part of a community, but I simply haven’t found one that is right for me.   It would have to be a community of writers who are generally skeptical of modern writer communities.  This seems… unlikely.    As far as “virtual” communities go, I find them frighteningly alienating – which is not really what you want from a “community”!  I was on facebook for about 6 months, and I would have to agree with a writer friend of mine who summed it up as a “creepy online popularity contest.”   But I’d take that one step farther – it’s a corporation providing a template of sociability and self-definition that basically turns all its users into corporate clones:   Here are my “religious views.”   And here are my “political views.”    And here’s “what I’m doing today.”   And hey, if you like you can be “a Fan of Jonah Winter”…!    But only if you sell your soul to the devil and join, join, join this fun, fun, fun “network”…!    I know a lot of writers and editors who swear by facebook and other online communities as a way of “connecting” with other writers and for “promoting” their books and careers.   But as another writer friend of mine said when I joined facebook for that unfortunate 6-month period, “I hope you’ve now accomplished everything you want to accomplish in this life…, because from here on out all your time will be sucked into the soul-draining black hole which is facebook!”    (Not to put to fine a point on it.)

I wish there were more writer communities these days that revolved around real emotional and aesthetic connections rather than just some particular alma mater or the need to get published.   It must have been fun to be a part of the Beats, to be living out some youthful dream that was verbally in an intense relationship to the Real World (as opposed to some academic credo concocted in an Ivory Tower), something alive and pulsing, rumbling, sweating.   As opposed to hipster networking “book parties.”     To quote Ecclesiastes:  Vanity, vanity, vanity!

What are your future goals in terms of writing?

I really don’t know.   I have a feeling I’m in for some sort of big change on the writing front, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it will be.    Stay tuned.

Bonus Question: If your writing were a musical instrument, what would it be?

A player piano.

The Wednesday News

Hi folks! A bit of a chatty post this morning, as I keep you up-to-date on things around Robert Frost’s Banjo central.

Music life has been very busy of late around these parts. I played the Cambridge, Idaho Fall Festival last weekend—one set with Heather Uebelhoer in our still-unnamed incarnation of eclectic cover band: everything from the Carter Family to the Cure! Heather is a fantastic singer who also accompanies herself with fingerstyle guitar, while I fill in on dobro, tricone & banjo (see pic below)—& one set of old blues, both solo & with Eberle (see top pic.) During that set, Eberle debuted her blues yayli tambur playing—we don’t have a pic of her accompanying me with that instrument, but there’s a pic below showing the yayli tambur along with Buffy the musical buffalo, our mascot & good luck charm. For those who don’t know, the yayli tambur is a Turkish instrument that looks a bit like a banjo on steroids. The instrument is either plucked or bowed—Eberle bows hers. The yayli tambur is traditionally tuned D-A-D (actually, there are paired string courses), so the instrument is actually kind of perfect for playing the blues in D, especially on the more “modal” delta blues. The yayli tambur is also notable for the fact that its frets (which are tied on) are set up in microtones—in other words, you can play the tones “in between” the notes of a Western scale. Eberle joined in on the yayli tambur on “Banty Rooster Blues,” “Levee Camp Moan,” & “Hobo Blues.” I’m constantly amazed by her ability to fit unusual instruments into the blues—a big part of this is her ability to think rhythmically & percussively.

Eberle & I will be playing essentially the same show on Friday evening in McCall, Idaho at the Alpine Playhouse—hope to see you local readers there! Admission is $5.00—a bargain, I say—& the Alpine will be receiving 50% of the proceeds to benefit the Playhouse. Will this be my last show of the season? I don’t know; I don’t have any other shows booked, but I’d like to keep things rolling at least while the nice weather lasts. We shall see.

On the poetry front: as you probably know, I’ve “re-launched” The Spring Ghazals, my book of poems written 2008-2010. It’s available for purchase here, & you can also read about the book & the publishing process on my new blog, The Spring Ghazals. There have been some really good discussions from the commenters that will be of particular interests to any authors out there who are thinking about self-publishing. Also, today on The Spring Ghazals blog, you’ll get to hear recordings of yours truly reading a couple of poems from the book.

& be sure to stay tuned, because we’ll have a very special guest tomorrow on Writers Talk!

Union Pacific #11

I’d had enough lonesome blues the over-
cast June sky the mountain ridges
east & west bruising the horizons the
highway itself for that matter then

the sky turned liquid in an instant
& it was June as I said the rainy season had
ended in the high desert I’d had enough
blues & greens the sagebrush & bitter-

brush reflected in a swollen irrigation
ditch running north-south as I was running thru
time & memory north of Burns Junctions’
deserted pink & green gas station & café

I'd had enough colors unlike the gray
shades in memory the improvised moment
each time I live it again somehow different a
blue turning gray the windshield wipers’

rhythm a green sage pasture a red car a-
head on its way to Nevada too there’s nowhere
else to go the memory turning gray the
black power lines almost solid

I’d had enough lonesome blues a 100
miles north of Winnemucca each time
I live it again somehow different the
highway itself almost deserted


Jack Hayes
© 2010

[The Union Pacific series is still moving on, tho slowly. If you’d like more information about my recent poetry, please check out my blog, The Spring Ghazals. That blog is devoted to my recently published collection of the same name. You can purchase The Spring Ghazals (the book, not the blog!) at this link.]