Holy Coincidii, Bat Poets!

Day 273 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and first let me send you to The Bat-Poet, by Randall Jarrell, illustrated by Maurice Sendak, a favorite book of mine and a lovely holiday gift, if you are getting in that kind of mood, used or new from HarperCollins. I have two used copies, one hardcover, one paperback, both slightly damp-stained, but clean on the inside, poems and illustrations intact. It's pretty much a perfect book for poet adults to read to their kids, as it's a how-to-be-a-poet book with talking animals that helps you like and understand poets better. And not like critics and academics quite so much, though the mockingbird is still much admired by our innocent bat.

But, lest you think I am reliving my childhood, or living in the past, let me reassure you. I am!

Way too many poignant coincidii lately. For instance, we often listen to the Jimmy Durante station on Pandora at work. He sang this today, "September Song," a gorgeous song with schmaltzy background singers and orchestra, rescued from utter sentimentality by his honesty, his big nose, and his gritty cigarette.

Anyhoo, yesterday I mentioned the John Knoepfle interview in Fifth Wednesday, and early this morning I read it, along with his poems. At the end of the interview, Knoepfle talks about how being 87 is affecting his writing and publishing of poetry. He realizes that if a new book is accepted, called Stay With Us, it will still be 2 years till it is published. He's not worried about this, just aware. At the end of the interview, he says:

You know the lines from scripture: "Stay with us because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over." How can I tell you this?  Not an occasion for fear or being heartsick.  I know whom the two men on the road were inviting to supper.  In a graceful interlude, I might be able to be there at Emmaus.

Well, the scripturally aware will have caught the central allusion in my poem from yesterday's blog entry, "On the Road."  In my pencilled draft, it was actually called "On the Road to Emmaus" and "to Emmaus" also appeared in a line in the poem. But I realized that it wasn't needed, and might lead people astray. When I inhabit that speaker, I make him simply a traveler on the road. Not Jesus. Any man, any woman (yes, "just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on a bus"--hear it in Jim Carrey's voice from Bruce Almighty for ideal effect) to be welcomed and invited to the table.  And not a ghost, not a vision, nothing supernatural, and not a "resurrected corpse" as Robin Meyers would say.

But Emmaus was of course the inspiration, so to find it in the interview made me say, "Holy Truffle, Mr. Knoepfle!"

And at the Fifth Wednesday event, I asked Barry Silesky how he was doing with his health and his grief. He said he was doing a lot of reading as he heads toward the end, and that, of course, a lot of it is about religion, and it was pretty much leading him toward atheism. Meaning, I think, no particular personal literal god, as there is lots of correspondence between the myths and narratives and basic values of multiple religions, and no linear, geographical afterlife.  (He can correct me if I'm wrong! Barry, I mean, not YHWH.) I was just about to ask if any of the reading included Karen Armstrong when he said, "I'm reading a lot of Karen Armstrong.  The History of God is good."  Barry lost a son, a wife (not to death), and has MS, getting out infrequently but pretty darn well in a motorized wheelchair, and, like John Knoepfle, seems to be looking at things pretty clearly and calmly.  It was so good to see him!

And now you know for sure that I'm a bit batty!

Train Window

Day 272 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and, after last night's release reading, I know a number of people are reading the new issue of Fifth Wednesday, published in Lisle, Illinois. The reading at the Book Cellar in Chicago was well attended, and the store has a charming cafe, with coffee, wine, and  pumpkin soup.

Susan Hahn read an excerpt from her novel, published as the story "If I Set Up the Chairs," Barry Silesky and I read poems (with the coincidence of whales in them), and editor Vern Miller read, to relate to yesterday, a "redneck" short story by Jonis Agee, who was not present.  This issue has a feature on Illinois poet John Knoepfle, a nice interview and several poems.  Knoepfle's bio at the back says, "Right now he is writing a series of poems about the world he sees from his window."

Here's what I saw out the train window on today's pleasant ride home in the fall sunshine: several hawks soaring over the harvested fields, those long golden stretches of field with sharp broken stalks of corn, and beautiful white wind turbines, turning.

And I was reading.  I had taken some poetry books, and I had Fifth Wednesday, but I was reading Saving Jesus from the Church, by Robin Meyers, discussed here in the past, as so many local people were reading it.  Now I can, having borrowed my mom's copy, with her underlining and brackets, serious question marks, rare exclamation points, and excellent questions in the margin.

I like this book.  It's down to earth.

And I wrote this, in pencil, on ruled paper.

On the Road

I don't know if I resembled
the one they loved
or if the tremor in my voice
from hunger and fatigue
reminded them of the one they missed
but two travelers on the road
fed me, and were kind.

And now, wherever I go,
I remember this kindness
and how the simple breaking
of the bread made a sweet plenty
for us all.

And, speaking of whales, that's Mr. Splashy Pants, from Greenpeace.

Lunar Men and Women

Day 107 of the “What are you reading, and why?” project. Linda, a professor of astronomy, is reading The Lunar Men, by Jenny Uglow (what a perfect name!), about the scientists and engineers of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, England in the late eighteenth century.

“They met on the Monday after the Full Moon so as to have light to travel home by,” says Linda, “and discussed science, inventions, and politics. Many of them also wrote poetry and literature.” A lovable bunch of "lunaticks," these fellows were, as the subtitle says, Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World. Indeed, one was James Watt of the famous steam engine, and one was Joseph Priestley, who figured out what oxygen was! One was Josiah Wedgwood, of Wedgwood china, and one was Erasmus Darwin, who gave us...Charles Darwin, his grandson, and evolutionary awareness. And one was a toymaker, Matthew Boulton. What a powerful bunch of inventive brains!

Wow! And tonight is the full moon, giving plenty of light to travel home by (if it doesn’t storm) or poetic inspiration. I am very touched that many people have been writing, calling, and emailing to say they are reading my new poetry chapbook, Living on the Earth, just out from Finishing Line Press and also available at Babbitt’s Books, which has a little almost full moon on the cover. (See, I told you I would tell you more here in the blog when it came out. Sigh, once again, all about me! But, never fear, I’ll be linking you to plenty of Un-Me.)

The working title for this book was Living on the Moon, and was building itself around what would have been the title poem, first published in Fifth Wednesday. (Thanks to editor Vern Miller for that, and guest poetry editor Nina Corwin of the inaugural issue!) Here is the poem, partly inspired by a news story on National Public Radio and partly by a feeling of alienation, as business and politics “as usual” carried on in our country and my personal life was squeezing the air out of me.

Living on the Moon

When they finally come, they’ll find me
here already. I won’t have disturbed
the flag on its pole,

only a photograph, anyway,
only a memory now.

I’ve received the radio transmission
on Neil Armstrong’s sound glitch, his intended grammar.
They will all want to say the right thing

but there’s not enough oxygen.

I’ve watched the ice caps melt. I know why
they are coming.
They’ll discover on their own how cliché devolves

into truth: you really can’t go home again.
But I can show them how to live here step by step,
small by giant.

I’ve learned how to breathe
with my helmet off.

I’ve learned how to climb out of all the craters.

Then we had another election, people started to go “green,” the local food movement took off, I quit my job and left everything but my husband, and I began to feel more like Living on the Earth. But that’s another title poem, for another day. (Thank you, dears, for reading my book!)

Meanwhile, the cold Martian winter has, as scientists expected, caused the Phoenix to bite the mythically red Martian dust. A mythical Phoenix may rise from the flames, but a NASA Phoenix cannot rise from the carbon dioxide ice on Mars. Is somebody reading The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury?!