Dark Clouds and Slow Rain

TODAY by Mary Oliver from Swan:  Poems and Prose Poems (Beacon Press)
Today is a day of
dark clouds and slow rain.
The little blades of corn
are so happy.


It's been raining steadily since last night as hurricane Sandy approaches the east coast.  I've had my window open since the rain began, listening to the rain drops play their staccato lullaby on the golden leaves that carpet the yard.
The wind is just beginning to pick up a bit and soon I'll have to batten down the hatches but for now I'm enjoying the sounds of the rain.  Its rhythm is calling to me to go back to bed with a cup of tea and a good book. 

And who am I to ignore the invitation of Mother Nature? 

Standing Open-Mouthed at the Temple of Life or Happy Birthday Denise Levertov

PRIMARY WONDER by Denise Levertov from The Stream & the Sapphire (New Directions)
Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.

And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng's clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.

I had a different poem picked out for this morning.  If I had been industrious and written this post last night, as I thought about doing for . . . oh, about the first five minutes after I got home from my meditation gatherings, you probably wouldn't be reading this Denise Levertov poem this morning. 
But no.  I procrastinated, as I so often do.  And then I lost my motivation to do anything but take myself off to bed with a good drink and a mindless mystery.

So when I woke this morning and learned via The Writer's Almanac (the e-mail version, you know I don't get up early enough to hear the 6:35 am broadcast on WAMU) that today is the birthday of one of my favorite poets, I decided to post something by her instead of what I had planned.

I've been trying to figure out what exactly it is about Denise Levertov's poetry that resonates with me.  In doing so, I came across an essay on form she wrote for Poetry magazine in 1965.  In it she writes,

But the condition of being a poet is that periodically such a cross section, or constellation, of  
experiences (in which one or another element may predominate) demands, or wakes in him this    demand: the poem. The beginning of the fulfillment of this demand is to contemplate, to meditate;    words which connote a state in which the heat of feeling warms the intellect. To contemplate comes    from “templum, temple, a place, a space for observation, marked out by the augur.” It means, not   simply to observe, to regard, but to do these things in the presence of a god. And to meditate is “to   keep the mind in a state of contemplation”; its synonym is “to muse,” and to muse comes from a   word mean­ing “to stand with open mouth”—not so comical if we think of “inspiration”—to breathe in. 

So—as the poet stands open-mouthed in the temple of life, contemplating his experience, there come to him the first words of the poem: the words which are to be his way in to the poem, if there  is to be a poem. The pressure of demand and the meditation on its elements culminate in a moment of vision, of crystallization, in which some inkling of the correspondence between those elements occurs; and it occurs in words. If he forces a beginning before this point, it won’t work.

Entrance to the temple of Bacchus at Baalbek
I stood here open mouthed and amazed but
didn't write a poem about it . . . yet. 

It seems to me what she is describing here is akin to Lectio Divina, the spiritual practice of holy reading.

 Experience, Meditation, Poem = lectio, meditatio, oratio



Just yesterday I was wondering why I can sit at my desk for two hours and write the first draft of an essay or a chapter or two of a story yet I can't bring myself to write poetry during my daily writing time.  It's not that I don't write poetry, it's just that when I do, it does come from that place of standing open mouthed after a period of meditation. 

So maybe this is that ineffable in Denise Levertov's poems to which I relate, something akin to prayer that my soul recognizes, which it not only breathes in but also breathes out with a sigh.

A Breath of Fresh Air

WHAT CAN I SAY? by Mary Oliver from Swan: Poems and Prose Poems (Beacon Press)

Cong Forest, Ireland

What can I say that I have not said before?
So I'll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinished story
  and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until it all ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the
  chamber of commerce
but take it also to the forest.
The song you heard singing in the leaf when you
  were a child
is singing still. 
I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,
and the leaf is still singing.

Another reminder about seeking out the wisdom of old holy teachers from Mary Oliver this morning.

Later this afternoon I will heed the siren song of the leaves and take a walk in Rock Creek Park, perhaps not into the forest but at least beside it.  There's something about walking among trees that cleanses my soul.  It dislodges the little bits of dirt that cling to my consciousness, like dried mud on a shoe.  I end up discarding the clumps and clods, almost imperceptibly, along the path. 

I could try to dig these out on my own, but it's so much easier and much less messier to get outside-- of my house and out of my head-- into a wide open space where I can let things go and just focus on listening to the leaves singing.

The Color Orange - Update on the Orange Prize and Your Monthly Dose of Vitamin C

Damn you Orange Telecom.  Although philanthropists such as Cherie Blair and Joanna Trollope have stepped in to privately fund this year's women's prize for fiction until new sponsorship can be found, they are also renaming the prize to . . . well, The Women's Prize for Fiction.   While there are limited rhyming possibilities, the Orange Prize did allow for other plays on the prize name such as the two in the title of this post.  The Women's Prize for Fiction?  Not so much. 

I can only hope that another corporate sponsor is found soon, in part to keep the prize going and support women writers, but also because I'll need another name to work with in the future.  (Calling Richard Branson.  I wonder what kind of conversations would emerge from having the Virgin Women's Prize for Fiction????)

Until a new sponsor and name come along, however, I will continue to post monthly reviews of Orange Prize nominees as Your Monthly Dose of Vitamin C.  So without further to do . . .

This is How by M. J. Hyland
What can I say about Patrick Oxtoby, the narrator and central character in Hyland's novel?  Ostensibly, he's a young man trying to make his way in the world.  The problem is, the way he sees the world and the way the world sees him are at odds with each other.  The reader doesn't necessarily realize this at first but the more I read Patrick's words and actions, the more I came to realize that something is off.  He thinks he's noble, others just think he's kind of creepy. 

I think that's part of Hyland's brilliance in developing the character of Patrick. Is he just clueless? Or is it something more, a diagnosable pathology such as personality disorder or a form of autism? Whatever his diagnosis, I found myself pitying Patrick-- as he tried to woo the waitress in the local diner, as he struggled with his feelings for the owner of the seaside boarding house where he lived (is she a mother figure or a potential Mrs. Robinson?), as he tried to fit in with the other lads who lived in the boarding house and, most keenly, after a rash decision has dire consequences. 

It quickly becomes apparent that Patrick doesn't have the emotional or cognitive capacities to fully understand the cause and effect of his actions and it's this realization that moved me from mere pity and feeling uncomfortable, and at times amused, at Patrick's awkwardness to a real sense of compassion and empathy for his plight.  There are no happy endings here, no resolutions but it was a story that stuck with me and made me think.

The Seas  by Samantha Hunt
One of the things I thought as I read This is How is that Patrick's story would have turned out much differently if his parents had gotten him a good psychiatrist.  The same thought occurred to me about the unnamed narrator in Samantha Hunt's story.  And until I started writing this, I didn't realize I picked two books, set by the sea, told from the point of view of quintessential unreliable narrators.  Take note, future novelists.  If you want to be nominated for an Orange Prize/Women's Prize for Fiction, write from the point of view of an unreliable narrator and set your book by the ocean.  The formula seems to work.

In the case of The Seas, the unnamed teller of the tale is a nineteen year old young woman, another misfit although in her case, she realizes she doesn't fit in.  She attributes this to the fact that she's a mermaid.  Or at least that's what her father told her a decade before, just before he walked into the ocean.  Never able to accept the fact of his suicide, she watches the sea and waits for his return.  And while waiting, she meets Jude, a much older man (can anyone say father figure?) with whom she falls obsessively in love. 

Unlike Hyland's novel, while The Seas is told strictly from the point of view of the narrator, we also get a glimpse into the lives of those who love this troubled young woman.  Her mother and Jude, in particular, are well developed characters in their own right whose stories are worth being told.

The writing itself is reminiscent of the sea, evoking the ebb and flow of waves in its rhythm,  Some have likened Hunt's book to a retelling of The Little Mermaid or the German tale, Undine but Hunt's narrator is more complex.  We see her struggle between reality and fantasy, adulthood and childhood, truth and denial, and perhaps even sanity and insanity but in the end Hunt writes in just enough doubt to make the reader wonder if perhaps there isn't a little magical realism going on in her story. 

Old Holy Teachers and Old Holy Ways

THE TREES by Mary Oliver from Evidence (Beacon Press)
Do you think of them as decoration?

Think again.

Here are maples, flashing.
And here are the oaks, holding on all winter
  to their dry leaves.
And here are the pines, that will never fail,
  until death, the instruction to be green.
And here are the willows, the first
  to pronounce a new year.

May I invite you to revise your thoughts about them?
Oh, Lord, how we are all for invention and
  advancement!
But I think
  it would do us good if we would think about
these brothers and sisters, quietly and deeply.

The trees, the trees, just holding on
  to the old, holy ways.

This weekend at the  seventeenth anniversary celebration for the Cathedral Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage I led a session on poetry as prayer.  As we read a few haiku and reflected on the lessons we saw in the autumn landscape, several people spoke about the insight they gleaned from trees. 

Evergreens in the midst of a decaying garden are a reminder of the constant nature of divine love.  The burnishing of leaves that is brought about by a decrease in sunlight illustrates how dark as well as light is necessary in our lives.  And how ironic it is that so many of us rejoice in the changing of green leaves into the brilliant foliage of fall, yet change in our own lives is so often viewed as something to be lamented or feared.

As for my reflections, I thought about how the cherry tree in my neighbor's yard has long been bare, while our dogwoods are a brilliant red and the maples are just beginning to fade to a pale yellow green.  All get the same light, the same water, are planted in the same basic soil, yet each embraces autumn in its own time, in its own way. 

Celtic spirituality points to nature as the first book of divine revelation.  I think this is part of the old holy way that Mary Oliver mentions. Trees are more than decorations in our landscape -- they are messengers, preachers, teachers, and perhaps even sacraments, offering us a glimpse of grace if we pay attention.

Getting a Fix for Free or In Praise of the Public Library

Hi.  My name is Terri and I'm a book-aholic.  My acknowledgment of that isn't anything new.  I've often described myself as a bibliophile but it wasn't until yesterday that I realized my love of books may cross the fine line from vice into addiction. 

I went to the library to return one book and came home with three more to go with the three already on the floor by my bed.  The library stack is next to two other piles of my own books and one of books borrowed from friends.  They're on the floor because there's no room on the nightstand or either of the two bookshelves in my room.  Nor on the two shelves I have in the basement.  There are also a few books in the back seat of my car, "Just in case . . ."  Some people, like my brother, have emergency preparedness kits that consist of water, granola bars, and blankets in their cars in case they get stranded in a storm.  I have a biography of Henry James.

Despite my love of books, I'm trying to be more frugal in my purchase of them.  My new rule of thumb is that I can't purchase a book-- electronic or otherwise-- unless I've read two and gotten them off the shelves.  But being an addict, I'm always looking for my next fix.  So as I looked through my stack of library books last night, trying to decide what to read before bedtime (yet another Ian McEwan won out), I was overcome by a rush of amazement and gratitude for the public library.

One of my favorite libraries - Gladstone's Library in Wales

Then again, I've always loved my local library.  Some of my fondest childhood memories are cozy recollections of choosing well worn, well loved books from the children's section-- The Country Bunny and the Golden Shoes, Blueberries for Sal, one of the many Madeline stories.  The first time I checked out a book from the adult section I must have been about 10 or 11.  I remember it was October and I wanted some seasonal reading but I'd read everything Halloweenish in the juvenile section.  Looking in the card catalog, I found a book on local ghost stories and checked it out.  As I wandered the tall shelves in the adult aisles I was entranced by the titles and colors of the cellophane covered spines.  I decided when I was older, I'd start in the A section and read every novel in the library. 

I haven't managed to do that yet, although I did begin the project at one point and soon gave up, realizing that while the library has a bunch of books I want to read, it also has just as many that hold no interest for me whatsoever.  But the great thing about the library is that it does encourage me to read books I wouldn't necessarily read if I had to purchase them for myself.  Sitting in my stack right now is what I think, based on the cover image and description, is a steam-punk mystery.  It's a book I would never buy for myself but seeing it on the shelf in the new book section I thought, "Why not?"

I realize that when I say I can get my book fixes for free at the public libraries that they really aren't free.  The budget of my local library system is funded by taxes.  The current figures per my estimate with the latest data available is that it costs each citizen of Montgomery County Maryland around $30/year for the use of the public libraries. 
Thirty dollars.  This is an amazing bargain when you think of it.  My library offers free internet service, electronic and audio books, DVDs, Cd's, story time for children, book groups for adults, lectures, author readings, concerts, cultural events, free WiFi for patrons, the wisdom and expertise of librarians both in person and on-line through a chat function, and of course books. 

So thank you public libraries, for feeding my addiction.  I'd be a lesser read person without you.

A Sort of Homecoming

WILD GEESE by Mary Oliver from Dream Work (The Atlantic Monthly Press)

 

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.


One time a pastor/friend was at a program with other churchy types where the presenter used a poem by Rumi to open up the discussion.  My friend said she turned to a colleague and said, "Ugh.  Not "The Guesthouse" again. . . "  Not that it isn't a great poem, it just was the go-to Rumi for so many contemplative circles and meditation groups, becoming so ubiquitous that it had lost its impact and meaning for her. 

As much as I love Mary Oliver, there are some of her poems to which I react the same way.  For a long time, "Wild Geese" was one of those but somehow after this past weekend I can read it again with fresh eyes.  Maybe it's because enough time has past.  Maybe it's because this weekend I sat outside watching flocks of geese and ducks fly overhead.  Or maybe it's because while sitting by the banks of the brackish Pamlico River, I was able to let the soft animal of my body love what it loves for the first time in  . . . well, years. 

Seaside in Northern Wales

There's something about salt water-- the smell, taste, color and life contained therein that always restores me.  It's like the .09% of my body that is salt quivers with excitement when I'm near the ocean. 

So many creation stories tell how humans were formed from earth, but I feel more like the salt doll in the Buddhist tale.  There's a realization that returning to the sea is a homecoming of sorts, a place of discovery and recognition where I'm able not only to let go of my ego, but also reconnect with the source of my being.

Carpe Libris - What I Did and Didn't Read This Summer

It's been a while since I've written a Carpe Libris post.  After my summer reading list post I'm almost ashamed to admit that about 90% of the books on my summer shelf are still sitting there gathering dust-- sorry Virginia Woolf and Julian Barnes, maybe next year.

That doesn't mean I didn't read this summer.  I did.  A lot. 

And it doesn't mean that I haven't been reading this autumn.  I've just given up on the idea of a seasonal reading list, although I am saving the Russians for winter . . . I'm hoping I can knock out Anna Karenina with one significant snowstorm and a lot of tea.  Until then, here are a few of the books that I've been reading lately. 

This is Water by David Foster Wallace
I don't know if it's exactly fair to call this a book, but since this is my blog and I make the rules here, I'm going to do so.  I've probably read more about DFW than read things by him.  Although I remember reading a couple essays by him in The Atlantic, in my mind he's always been tainted-- guilt by association from all the times he's been exhaled in the same breath with Jonathan Franzen.  I then came across an article about DFW that made me want to read words he actually wrote.  I put Infinite Jest on hold through my local library and while I waited my turn in the queue, I downloaded This is Water:  Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life, the transcript of a graduation address he gave in 2005 at Kenyon College. 

Wowza!  You can find copies of the speech for free on-line but this was something I wanted to have available to read and re-read, to carry with me (at least whenever I have my Android tablet in my purse) like a touchstone, maybe even to use with our Centering Prayer gathering.  Yes, that's right.  You heard me.  One of these nights the Centering Prayer gathering at Washington National Cathedral will be using David Foster Wallace as our text for discussion . . . because DFW articulates the human condition and our need to connect to something outside of and larger than ourselves in words and images as profound as gorgeous and true as any mystic or spiritual teacher, past or present.  Here's one example:

But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will    actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as    not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

I have to confess, that makes me cry every time I read it.  I feel like he could have been inside my head poking around when he wrote this essay.  And maybe it's knowing his fate that makes it seem more imperative for me to pay attention. 

The Child in Time, Enduring Love, and The Comfort of Strangers A Trio by Ian McEwan

On one of the recent episodes of "A Good Read" on the BBC Books and Authors podcast, The Comfort of Strangers was chosen as a good read by one of the guests.  It sparked a heated debate about whether or not a book can be deemed good if there are no redeeming aspects to the story, the characters are unlikable, the setting depressing, etc.  And while all of that is true about the book (McEwan managed to make Venice seem depressing and seedy even to me, who loves La Serenissima like no other place in the world) I think I come down on the side of it being a good read, as I do with the other two novels I read by him this past month. 

I know I've read McEwan in the past but I don't think I read him really paying much attention to his artistry as a writer.  He's a bit of an enigma to me.  For one thing, none of these three novels was exactly uplifting.  Although there was some redemption at the end of The Child in Time, reading a story of a man who's life has collapsed after his toddler was snatched from him in a grocery store line was painful.  Likewise, don't be deceived by the pretty cover and alluring title of Enduring Love, where a balloon accident triggers a case of obsession that slowly chips away at the lives of those involved.  As for The Comfort of Strangers, a few pages in I suspected it wasn't going to end well.  If this book had a soundtrack, the screeching violins warning of impending doom would have been playing softly in the background from chapter one and by the middle of the book would be deafening.  Yet just as the characters in McEwan's novels can't (or don't) change their fate, I can't put these books down.  Another thing that fascinates me is his lack of dialogue.  As a writer who has always developed characters through dialogue, the lack of actual conversation was at first unsettling, then distracting and now it intrigues me.  I think with McEwan I read him as much for what I can learn about writing as for the stories themselves, which may explain why he'll stay on my reading list for the fall.  On Chesil Beach anyone?

The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny
I was a relatively late convert to the charms of Chief Inspector Gamache and his side kick, Jean-Guy Beauvoir but in a way I'm happy about that as it meant once I made the discovery I could read the next book in the series straight away.  That it is, until recently.  I had to wait months for the The Beautiful Mystery to come out, and worth the wait it was. 

Penny's mysteries are smart and her characters are complex (and likable, Ian McEwan take note).  So what if I sabotage my diet as I end up craving Tim Horton's but settle for an inferior donut and coffee every time I read one of her books?  It is well worth indulging Penny's tasty plots and delicious writing.    In fact, there were few, if any, coffee runs by Beauvoir in this book although in hindsight I realize what a brilliant writer she is when it comes to food because she had me craving monastery food-- vegetarian soups, good bread, cheese and fresh butter.  (It doesn't hurt that most of my experiences with monastery food have been at Holy Cross in West Park, NY where the chef was trained at the Culinary Institute of America and the meals are this foodie's idea of heaven.)

Maybe it's those small, well written details of daily life that add to the richness of Penny's writing.  While the mystery itself-- who killed a monk in a remote monastery and the complexities of investigating the crime where obedience and silence are vows upheld by the insular community-- is the story on the surface, where Penny excels is in exploring what lies beneath.  The motivations for actions and reactions, the choices her characters have made, what their values are, these are all things that make Gamache and Beauvoir multi-dimensional characters in whose lives I feel invested.  Even after the mystery is solved, it seemed almost anti-climatic because what really concerned me was what happens next in the relationship between Beauvoir and Gamache.  So here I am again, waiting for the next installment in the series. 


So what have you been reading?

An Inside Out Kind of Morning

THE OLD POETS OF CHINA by Mary Oliver from Why I Wake Early (Beacon Press)
Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.


It's one of those days where I feel like I'm wearing my skin inside out and everything is irritating me-- the frenetic Schumann violin piece on the radio that scrambled my energy like a sous chef beating an omelet, the keyboard of my lap top which seems to extend just a quarter inch too far so I can't find a comfortable place for my wrists, the apple I cut up for breakfast that developed a thin layer of slimy juice on it in the trip from the kitchen to my desk.  Even the work I have to do that had me energized last week seems like a nuisance today, little biting flies buzzing around the corner of my mind as I try to get in my two hours of morning writing.

Before Schumann got me riled up, I already knew I was having an off day.  It took perusing five books and countless on-line collections of Mary Oliver's poetry before I found a poem that elicited more than an, "Eh," from me this morning.  The one I finally chose got a, "Hmmm," which I figured was the best I could muster today.  The "hmmm" came as I was thinking about the world and its busyness.  Does it really come after me or is it just there and I react to it, accept its invitation, sometimes even seek it out?

Maybe the mountain wasn't the important thing for the old poets, but the mist that covered them with a soft grey blanket of obscurity so all they could do was snuggle up to what was right in front of them and enjoy the present moment.