Poems of Transformation

In the class I'm teaching this semester we're talking about Whitman, and I asked each of my students to choose a section of Song of Myself that interested them, and then to make something -- a poem, remarks, commentary, whatever -- and to take five minutes to present what they'd made to the group. It's been amazing, their adventurous plunging-in to the text. One man spoke about works of art as engines of transformation; he was most interested, he said, in art that could provoke in its audience a sense of their own connection to the world, something larger than the ego or limited self. How does art wake us up to a broader sense of who we are? I asked the students if they had ever had such an experience, and they began to talk about examples: of standing for an hour in front of Michelangelo's David in Florence, of having their awareness taken over by a painting, or being lifted out of themselves in the theater. It was a moving conversation.

And it led me to think about this extraordinary poem by Marie Howe, from THE KINGDOM OF ORDINARY TIME. It's part of a series of poems based on the life of Mary, but you can just as easily read it as a text of any sort of experience of the transcendent.

ANNUNCIATION

Even if I don't see it again -- nor ever feel it
I know it is -- and that if once it hailed me
it ever does --

And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
not as towards a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,

as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn't -- I was blinded like that -- and swam
in what shone at me

only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I'd die
from being loved like that.

Elizabeth's Poem

Earlier today, the Times and other sources posted transcripts of Elizabeth Alexander's beautiful inaugural poem, but I hadn't till just now seen it with its lines and stanzas as the poet intended them. It's a fine example of the way a well-placed line and a shapely stanza energizes and formalizes plain speech; the formal choices here emphasize the clarity,dignity and grace of Alexander's language. Here it is:

PRAISE SONG FOR THE DAY: A POEM FOR BARACK OBAMA’S PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION


Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.



Copyright © 2009 by Elizabeth Alexander. All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota. A chapbook edition of Praise Song for the Day will be published on February 6, 2009.

Curves of Repose

Paul posted some images and text about these sea lions yesterday, but I can't resist adding some more. Groups of them were floating together in Santa Cruz Harbor. They seem to be lying on their sides (though the spatial orientation of a sea lion is complicated by their wonderful fluidity in the water) and resting, maybe actually sleeping. Some have a flipper or tail raised in the sun, some keep their heads up, but mostly they're suspended just below the green surface of the water, and they raise their heads up to breathe now and then, seemingly automatically, without waking. The current carries the group here and there, they drift together. When this group came close to the wharf where we stood, we could hear them breathing, and soon we realized that their collective breath had synchronized -- a collective moist exhalation, at regular intervals. I don't know when I've heard something so soothing; they were completely at ease, in the sun, the very image of contentment, and it made us feel restful to watch and to listen to them. To sleep like that, all together, on what Cummings called "the bulge and nuzzle of the sea"...

The Apotheosis of Butter

This still life appears in the online edition of the Times today, as part of a slideshow of highlights of the National Gallery. It's called "Mound of Butter" and was painted by Antoine Vollon, ca 187-85, and it's completely startling. The Times' writer, Roberta Smith, thinks it's "perhaps a comment on the excesses of Impressionism." And maybe so, but it seems a multivalent image, inviting us to think about greasy, tactile oiliness, be it butterfat or oil paint. The picture conjures up verbs of oily substances, the way butter and paint are spread, slathered and smeared, how they live in between the liquid and the solid, so that this incredibly wet-looking pile is also capable of holding that knife perfectly upright.

And it seems an invitation to indulgence, that mound, an opportunity for complete sensual immersion, its lack of boundary emphasized by the neat containment of the two eggs. But there are only two eggs, for all that butter!

I can't help but connect this painting with my new pleasure of living temporarily in California: the softness of the light, the just-right temperature of the air, the piles of beautiful citrus on the sidewalk this morning on my walk to the bank, the way the cologne of Mr, Bonduk, the banker, strikes a subtle but very vibrant note of physicality -- truly, it's all the experiential equivalent of butter. Though without the immediate prospect of over-indulgence; Palo Alto somehow is about pleasure melded with some seemly degree of restraint. Why do I feel I shouldn't like it so much, I should know better?

Uncharacteristic Poems

I'm working on an essay called "Cavafy's Rooms," a reading of a number of poems of the great Greek/Alexandrian poet's which define spaces of privacy and intimacy. In the process, I've been reading lots of Cavafy, and it's a pleasure to find poems I hadn't known yet. Daniel Mendelsohn's forthcoming translation is a trove of these, and here's one. This is a totally unexpected poem, coming from the dry, worldly, ironic master; were it posted here without a name, I don't think anyone would guess Cavafy. It makes me think of Robinson Jeffers and "The Housedog's Grave (Haig, an English Bulldog)" another poem where animal presence brings forth an unexpectedly sweet-tempered warmth.

HOUSE WITH GARDEN (1917)


I wanted to have a house in the country
with a very large garden -- not so much
for the flowers, the trees, and the greenery
(certainly there will be that, too; it's so lovely)
but for me to have animals. Ah to have animals!
Seven cats at least -- two completely black,
and for contrast, two white as snow.
A parrot, quite substantial, so I can listen to him
saying things with emphasis and conviction.
As for dogs, I do believe that three will be enough.
I should like two horses, too (ponies are nice).
And absolutely, three or four of those remarkable,
those genial animals, donkeys,
to sit around lazily, to rejoice in their well-being.

A report on the T S Eliot Prize reading

Since I wasn't able to be in London last night for the reading of poets shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize, a splashy event in the UK poetry world, the terrific poet Nick Laird, from Northern Ireland, filled in for me. Here's an entertaining blogger's report on the evening.

A sad afternote: one of the shortlisted poets, Mick Imlah, died this morning, of a chronic illness. He was 52, and had been nominated for his second collection.

A Californian Demonstrates that I Have Become a New Yorker

I've been sidelined a few days with a stomach bug, but I'm well enough now to stir around some. We took a drive to Los Altos, a nearby town, and while we there went into a busy coffee bar, where they were taking a long time to fill orders. The cashier asked for my name; this always gives me a slight desire to lie, to call myself Melchior or Ulysses, but I never have yet. After quite a while, I heard the barista say "Mark" so I claimed my drink, went outside to sit down, took a sip and -- feh, chai! Way too sweet. I took it back, told the young man it was an error, and that perhaps there were two Marks. Nope, he said, he'd called out Bob. Oh well, I said, one syllable name, hard to hear... Then an officious man, clearly the manager, swept in and said to me, Did someone get a chai? and swept away with the drink.

So far so good. But then, as my new coffee is being prepared, the manager sweeps back to the kid again, clearly thinking about blaming him. But then he says, What, did someone who wasn't Bob just take the chai even though you called Bob?

I said, I took the chai, it's a one syllable name, it was hard to hear. And he said, well, that's why we ask for your name, and swept away again. So I said, to his vanishing back, Well, I'm just an idiot. Rather forcefully.

The interesting part of this story is that the woman beside me, politely waiting for her whatever, turned to me and made a gesture with both her hands like smoothing out a mountain, and at the same exhaled, and said, Ex-haaaale, breathe out. Meaning, clearly, let it go.

There was probably a time in my life, back in my old Arizona days, when I'd have thought that was admirable. Ah, let's rise above the fray, let's release tension and rise to a higher plane... Thus the proof that I'm a New Yorker now: I want my coffee made attentively and efficiently, without fuss, if somebody's going to call my name I want them to bark it loudly and clearly, thank you. But somehow the baristas in the city usually don't seem to need your name; they just look right at you and say, Medium Americano... and you're good to go.

And I don't want anyone to tell me to calm down.

I don't think Bob knows I had a sip of his chai.