Poetry for Mid-Summer

Tonight I'll be leading a "Poetry for Mid-Summer" program as part of Washington National Cathedral's Crossroads program.  From 7:30 - 8:30 I'll be in Bethlehem Chapel, hopefully with other people, reading some summer poetry and reflecting on how the poetry of the season can be companions for us on the journey.
Of course, we'll be reading Mary Oliver's The Summer Day to kick things off.  It may be ubiquitous but is a good intro for talking about the connection between prayer and paying attention (as is When the Roses Speak, I Pay Attention, which I've commented on before).  A few more poems will follow:  Mark Doty's The Green Crab's Shell, a couple by Billy Collins, and a gorgeous, timely poem from the luscious poet Li-Young Lee, just to name a few.  If time permits, we'll try our hand at writing poetry and that's where this blog comes in.

 

But first, I'll let you in on a little secret.  In the poetry programs I lead my intention is always to get people writing poetry as well as reading it.  I daresay if people knew this was part of what they were getting in to, about half of them wouldn't show up.  The idea of writing a poem terrifies many people.
While most, if not all of us, have probably tried our hand at writing poetry at one point in our lives-- do childhood attempts at a riff on the classic "Roses are red . . . " and the angst filled,  really bad poetry of teen age years sound familiar to anyone other than me?-- as adults who have been taught (hopefully) to think before we act or speak, and who have learned to read and therefore write with a critical eye, the idea of creating a poem of our own, facing that blank page, is often intimidating. 

And that's exactly why I give people only five or ten minutes . . . it's enough time to put together a coherent thought without stopping to think about what they're doing   Which brings me to my second secret:  I always provide a structure, which people are more than welcome to ignore if they are poetry pros.

 

I've written before about using other poets as inspiration for writing but more often, when we only have five or ten minutes, I like to give people a tighter container like a cinquain or haiku.  This evening I will invite people to write a pantoum,while we're together or after they've gone home. 
A pantoum is easy enough to write, a repetitive poem of twelve lines that repeats ten central lines in a specific order.  It's derived from a Malay form and poets from Baudelaire to Linda Pastan have tried their hand at the format at one time or another.
For those who won't be there this evening and want to give it a go, here's how.

• Number a piece of paper from 1-10 leaving enough room to write a full sentence on each line.
• Decide what you want to write about.  Mary Oliver writes that each morning the world says to us, "Here you are, alive.  Would you like to make a comment?"  Your poem is your comment.  You can use as a starting point an object, place, memory, experience, anything you'd like to write about.  (Our overall theme for tonight will be summer if you want to write along.)
• Sit with your subject for a few minutes.  think about the sensations it brings to mind, the colors, the textures, the scent, the taste, the sounds, the emotions, the images, the metaphors, any wisdom or insights that come to mind.   
• When you feel ready to write, record ten words, phrases or sentences on your paper. 
• Then rearrange your ten lines into the following format of four stanzas to finish your poem:

     1
     2
     3
     4

 

     2
     5
     4
     6

 

     5
     7
     6
     8

 

     7
     9
     8
    10

As Baudelaire would have said, "Et voila!"  You've written a poem. (Although it's not yet noon as I write this so chances are Baudelaire wouldn't have tumbled out of bed from his laudanum induced slumber yet.)

When I've led workshops and programs such as this, people often say they wish there was a forum for sharing what people have written so later tonight or tomorrow I'll edit this entry to post my pantoum here.  I'll also invite others to either post their pantoums in the comment section or e-mail them to me if they'd like me to post them.  So check back for some summer pantoums in the next day or two or post/send me your pantoums to have them added to the collection . . .

Mary Oliver Monday - Breakage

BREAKAGE by Mary Oliver from Poetry (August 2003)

I go down to the edge of the sea.

How everything shines in the morning light!

The cusp of the whelk,

the broken cupboard of the clam,

the opened, blue mussels,

moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—

and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,

dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.

It's like a schoolhouse

of little words,

thousands of words.

First you figure out what each one means by itself,

the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop

full of moonlight.

Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

“Seek no farther concerning God; for those who wish to know the great deep must first review the natural world . . . If then a man wishes to know the deepest ocean of divine understanding, let him first, if he is able, scan the visible sea . . .” Columbanus

I've been looking at the book of creation lately, not the part set by the sea (although I am having major beach withdrawal and long to get to that chapter soon) but the part of the story that takes place among the grass and garden and trees. 

For some reason this weekend I found myself spending a lot of time either staring out the window or taking a turn around the yard just to look at things . . . the tips of branches that have fallen off the maple tree as the female cicada lay their eggs there, the rosemary and parsley thriving in the neglected herb garden overrun by violets and morning glory vines, the twiggy legs of the young rabbit made visible as he stretches to reach a leaf or lifts a hind leg to scratch behind his ear, the furry bumblebees jumping from blossom to blossom in the wildflower garden, the swirl of fireflies that light up the backyard at like a twinkling cloud at dusk. 

As I walked and looked, stood and viewed, I found myself simply observing, not looking for metaphors and meanings as I so often do.  I was simply present. 

Mary Oliver and Columbanus are right about creation being a book to be read . . . but on some days, there are no words.  It is all a big picture book and I'm like a child, simply enjoying the shapes and colors. 

The Sacred Landscape of Suburbia

THE SUBURBS by Enid Derham from Poems (University of Melbourne Press)

Miles and miles of quiet houses, every house a harbour,
Each for some unquiet soul a haven and a home,
Pleasant fires for winter nights, for sun the trellised arbour,
Earth the solid underfoot, and heaven for a dome.

Washed by storms of cleansing rain, and sweetened with affliction,
The hidden wells of Love are heard in one low-murmuring voice
That rises from this close-meshed life so like a benediction
That, listening to it, in my heart I almost dare rejoice.
    

Miramachi Bay, New Brunswick

In my April Carpe Libris post, I mentioned Dorian Llywelyn's book, Sacred Place, Chosen People and the questions it was stirring in me:   Do I truly feel loss of a sense of place?  Or is it a case of devaluation-- not crediting the ways in which growing up in suburbia has shaped me as being as remarkable as if I had been born in a fishing village on the rugged coast of the New Brunswick like my Grandpa Simpson or spent part of my formative years in an orphanage in D.C., as my other grandfather did?  In a post on her blog yesterday, my friend who writes From the Hatchery told how she used to ask her students to self-identify as one of four categories:  city people, wilderness people, city people who are fascinated by the wilderness, and wilderness people who are fascinated by cities. 
As I thought about what my response would be to that question, I realized that the suburbs is so much a part of who I am, I don't know how I'd answer. 

Perhaps I'm lean towards one of the wilderness categories.  Lately I've been spending more time in my backyard . . . foraging from the mulberry trees that popped up between our yard and our neighbor's; liberating the back fence and hydrangea bushes from the ivy (poison and regular) and wild grape that's kept them prisoner for the past couple years; surveying my wildflower garden to see if the doe who keeps visiting in the middle of the night has eaten anything other than the echinacea.  In noticing (and at times affecting) these day to day and year to year changes I've been thinking about how the landscape of my yard and my relationship to that landscape has changed as well. 

When my parents first moved to this house I was a little over 2 years old.  Although I remember the curtains they hung in my new bedroom, my first memories of the backyard come a few years later.  The hill that leads to the fence that separates our yard from the house that backs up to it seemed enormous, especially in winter when I'd lug my silver dishpan sled to the top and work up my nerve to slide down.  I'd first start at the gentlest slope and eventually become fearless enough to move the other side where the hill was the steepest.

Conquering the hill was evidently a frequent activity in my younger years.  My mother once told me I'd spend hours trying to climb to its top, taking a few steps up then tumbling back down.  I was (and granted still am) not that physically coordinated so it could have been my chubby little legs that were as much of a challenge as the grade of the hill itself in my efforts.  No matter, I persisted.

I wish I could say I remember what it felt like to be that determined, make that effort, reach the summit, but I don't.  No matter, when I now walk up the hill (four long strides on the gentle slope and seven on the steep part-- I counted the other day) I still remember how looming it once seemed and how small it is in reality. 

It reminds me of a passage I read in Llywelyn's book that talks about how in many Native American cultures, where is often more important in a story than when.  As one elder explains it, the landscape in which a story is set becomes a moral mnemonic, a symbol for the lesson that the hearers of the tale can carry with them.  I think many of us have this sense of place as symbol whether or not they recognize it.  For countless people, seeing the steps of the Lincoln Memorial evokes images of the struggle for justice and equality because of the dream that was shared in that particular location.  The place has become a symbol for the story. When this happens in a community, the location often becomes a place of pilgrimage.  When it happens for an individual, it can also become a holy place, sacred ground. 

Maybe this is why I instinctively want to take off my shoes when I walk up the hill in my back yard-- the acknowledgement of holy ground, even in the middle of suburbia.

To sleep, perchance to dream. . . and hopefully remember it.

DREAMS by Robert Service

I had a dream, a dream of dread:
I thought that horror held the house;
A burglar bent above my bed,
He moved as quiet as a mouse.
With hairy hand and naked knife
He poised to plunge a bloody stroke,
Until despairful of my life
I shrieked with terror - and awoke.

I had a dream of weary woes:
In weather that was fit to freeze,
I thought that I had lost my cloths,
And only wore a short chemise.
The wind was wild; so catch a train
I ran, but no advance did make;
My legs were pistoning in vain -
How I was happy to awake!

I had a dream: Upon the stair
I met a maid who kissed my lips;
A nightie was her only wear,
We almost came to loving grips.
And then she opened wide a door,
And pointed to a bonny bed . . .
Oh blast! I wakened up before
I could discover - were we wed?

Alas! Those dreams of broken bliss,
Of wakenings too sadly soon!
With memories of sticky kiss,
And limbs so languidly a-swoon!
Alas those nightmares devil driven!
Those pantless prowlings in Pall Mall!
Oh why should some dreams be like heaven
And others so resemble hell?

Lately I haven't been able to remember my dreams.  I first noticed this happening last week but at the time didn't think too much about it.  When I sit down to write my morning pages if nothing immediately pours out of my pen I often resort to recording my dreams.  But Saturday as I sat staring at the blank page for the third morning in a row, I realized I couldn't recall the last time I remembered a dream. 

It isn't that I haven't been sleeping well and therefore not getting the REM sleep required for most dreams.  Thanks to a combination of limiting my night time Netflix on-demand watching and a night time Benadryl to treat my first-ever case of poison ivy, I've been getting at least 7-8 hours of sleep a night.  And I know I've been dreaming because as I'm just waking up my mind recognizes I'm coming out of a dream.  It's just that when my eyes open, the remnants of the dream are gone. 

This is becoming more and more unsettling to me because I so often remember my dreams.  In fact, some of the earliest memories I know are my own, not ones I've created from stories that others tell about my life, are dreams I had as a child . . . the seven dwarfs from Disney's version of Snow White dancing around on my ceiling as I lay in my crib, a Geisha doll coming to life and trying to push me down the basement steps of my grandmother's house, my father coming home from work and a vampire sneaking in with him and hiding behind the sofa.

While the dreams I have as an adult aren't usually as frightening, they are just as vivid. There are those set in recurring dreamscapes, cities and coast lines I can navigate just as easily as I can get to landmarks in my home town.  Sometimes my dreams have a cinematic quality to them where I am an observer of the action rather than a participant in the story line. 

At other times my dreams involve unsettling images that are evidently quite common and readily interpreted.  A dream about losing teeth?  It could be I'm feeling insecure or am experiencing loss or change.  Dreams about high tides and tidal waves come from feeling overwhelmed, although I always think about going fishing during these dreams . . . wonder what that means? 

After talking about recurring dreams with my mother recently, I discovered that we both frequently dream that we need a loo and can't find a suitable one.  I was surprised to find that "suitable toilet" is an entry in many dream interpretation guides.  The version of the dream I have most often relates to feeling like I have a lack of privacy, which as an introvert living in a household of seeming extroverts , seems pretty obvious.

Dreams by Heinrich Vogeler

But for the past two weeks I haven't had any dreams that I can interpret, record, remember.  Not even a whiff of an emotion that lingers after waking or a flash of an image that comes back to me during the day.  It has me feeling unsettled-- like my conscious and subconscious are living separate lives, are no longer on speaking terms.  While I'm awake, I find I miss having that sense of my dreaming life . . . it seems like the world is a bit less magical, mysterious and leaves me feeling a bit disconnected.

Thanks a lot St. George.   Now where do I get my dragon tongue?

In my wanderings on the web I found an archive of an exhibit entitled, "To Sleep, Perchance to Dream" that was at the Folger Shakespeare Library back in 2009.  In addition to Elizabethan theories on the medical causes and effects of sleep, I learned that rubies and emeralds are supposed to ward off nightmares while wearing an amethyst will lead to exciting dreams.  Easier than eating the wine soaked tongue or gall of a dragon, especially as it has become so hard to find good dragon parts these days.  So maybe tonight I'll go to bed with amethyst earrings on and hope that tomorrow morning I have a dream to record during my morning pages. 

In the meantime, if you want to listen to the audio tour of the Folger exhibit you can click here or if you have a dream you remember and would like to see how the experts in Shakespeare's day would interpret it, check out the Folger's Dream Machine. 

David Whyte Wednesday - Self Portrait

SELF PORTRAIT

by David Whyte from Fire in the Earth (Many Rivers Press)

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
Or many gods.
I want to know if you belong -- or feel abandoned;
If you know despair
Or can see it in others.
I want to know
If you are prepared to live in the world
With its harsh need to change you;
If you can look back with firm eyes
Saying "this is where I stand."
I want to know if you know how to melt
Into that fierce heat of living
Falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing
To live day by day
With the consequence of love
And the bitter unwanted passion
Of your sure defeat.
I have been told
In that fierce embrace
Even the gods
Speak of God.

It's been far too long since the last David Whyte Wednesday.  I had this poem typed up and ready to go for Lent but never used it.  And while I referred to it in a previous post about plagiarism versus inspiration, I didn't really comment on the content of the poem itself.

For some reason this poem has always reminded me of the art of René Magritte.  Perhaps it's the moving beyond the surface to the essence of being, the hidden and the visible, the suggestion of looking at and being looked at and what that reveals and conceals and how that feels. 

“Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.”     ―    René Magritte

Weighty things to ponder for a Wednesday so I'll leave you with another virtual art gallery, this time a Magritte show, to enjoy as you think about your self-portrait . . .

God's Salon

The Treachery of Images

The Human Condition - 1933 Version

The Human Condition - 1935 Version

The Art of Conversation

The Large Family

The Lovers

Memoirs of a Saint

Blank Check

Homesickness

Perspicacity