Even the Beast of the Nile Needs Some Fun Every Once in a While

Hippos on Holiday by Billy Collins from Ballistics (Random House)
is not really the title of a movie
but if it was I would be sure to see it.
I love their short legs and big heads,
the whole hippo look.
Hundreds of them would frolic
in the mud of a wide, slow-moving river,
and I would eat my popcorn


in the dark of a neighborhood theater.
When they opened their enormous mouths
lined with big stubby teeth
I would drink my enormous Coke.

I would be both in my seat
and in the water playing with the hippos,
which is the way it is
with a truly great movie.
Only a mean-spirited reviewer
would ask on holiday from what?


That hippo isn't the only one who could use a holiday . . .I'm off to New York for a long weekend with a couple friends where we'll do a little of this . . .

And a little of this . . .

And hopefully return home looking like this . . .

Walking a Fine Line . . . Inspiration or Plagiarism

I hadn't intended on writing a post about inspiration or plagiarism this morning.  But there I was, going through my morning blog readings when I came across a poem that sounded familiar to me . . . very familiar.  I knew I hadn't read anything by the author before, but the more I re-read the poem, the more I was convinced I'd encountered very similar words and sentiments in the David Whyte poem below:

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 heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God. 

David Whyte's poem was published in 1992.  The other poem was published in 1999, by HarperOne no less.  The book in which it was published had recommendations from folks like Wayne Dyer and John O'Donohue, who also was a good friend of David Whyte's.  How, I wondered, could he not see the similarities?  Here I sit, with no personal connection to either poet, feeling conflicted about my moral duty as a reader (and writer) yet John O'Donohue called this other writer's book "remarkable."  "Yeah, remarkably similar to David Whyte," I thought to myself.

In doing more research (via the Amazon.com comments section) one particular one star reviewer said it was "watered down David Whyte."*  That prompted a comment from another reader that the author said the poem based on a writing exercise given to her by David Whyte.  And sure enough, using the Amazon's "search inside this book" tool there are a couple references (in the dedication and acknowledgements) saying that the poem upon which the book is based was inspired by David Whyte.  I didn't find this information on the author's website, where the poem is prominently placed on her home page, nor is there an acknowledgment in the title of the poem like some poets do when paying homage to another artist who has inspired their writing. 

A 21st century image of inspiration?

Which leads me to my conundrum.  Is that enough acknowledgment to move the poem across the line from plagiarism to inspiration?

 I can imagine David Whyte giving students the assignment to try writing a poem or prose piece using the formula, "It doesn't interest me . . . I want to know . . .  (the other poem follows this pattern and also includes some remarkably similar lines to David Whyte's version).  When I lead writing workshops or retreats I often ease people into putting words on paper by giving them some poems for inspiration and inviting them to use one as a trellis onto which they can graft their own images, words, ideas . . . write an ode to an everyday object como Pablo Neruda, write about what might have been "otherwise" like Jane Kenyon, or try a litany of what pleases you, like Taliesin. 

The purpose of these exercises is to get pens moving on paper, to create a sense of safety and security by offering a form as guidance.  The instruction to "write a poem" can be daunting but "write an ode about something you encounter every day" leads me to think about the way my tea mug is comforting because it's the color of Campbell's tomato soup and, even though it's a smidge too big to fit comfortably in my hand, I will hold onto it for its orangey-red hue alone.

Writing exercises are like treasure maps.  They can lead us on the path to discover our voices as writers.  They help get us to a place where we can crack open the treasure chest of images and experiences that we each have inside of us, the one that our inner critic often sits on saying that what's inside is just paste and fool's gold.

And yes, we should acknowledge those who inspired us on the way, especially if we use their work as a basis for our own.  Which is why when I write my ode to my mug later this morning I will say very clearly in the title, "After Pablo Neruda."


*Actually unnecessarily padded is the description I would give it. The other poem is much longer than the David Whyte text and not as focused which to me, makes the kernel of the poem lose its import, unlike the original text which cuts like a knife to the center of my being.

Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me - A Poem for Earth Day

LAST NIGHT THE RAIN SPOKE TO ME                                                                                         by Mary Oliver from What Do We Know:  Poems and Prose Poems (De Capo Press)

After a rain shower, gardens at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
in a new way
on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,
smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches
and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing
under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,
and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment
at which moment
my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
and the soft rain –
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.

 

Today is Earth Day and here in the DC area, Mother Earth is getting just what she needs:  a good soaking rain.  I'd hoped the showers would hold off long enough for me to take a walk in Rock Creek Park this morning but no such luck. 

So instead this evening I have contented myself by reading some Wendell Berry poetry and then various poems about rain.  I finally settled on the Mary Oliver poem above as my offering for this Sunday.  Maybe tomorrow if it clears up, I'll go stand under a tree (I'll make sure it's one with happy leaves) but for now, I'm off to snuggle up in my bed with a cup of peppermint tea and a book. . . . just what I need this Sunday night.

 

 

 

 

Carpe Libris

When I first dipped my toe in the waters of the blog-o-sphere it was as a reader, an indulgence I still partake in a few mornings a week.  I'll wake up, check my e-mail and the latest headlines on BBC News (because I feel I need to be well versed in what's happening in the UK while maintaining a blissful ignorance about what's going on in my own neck of the woods), and then start working my way through my blog bookmarks. 

I never cease to find inspiration from the web pages of this creative community.  From craft projects and recipes found on Sweet Paul and Creature Comforts to beauty tips from make up artist Lisa Eldridge (finally-- black eyeliner that stays put!) and fashion know-how from The Sartorialist and Nicolette Mason, after I'm through reading I'm ready to face the day.  Even when I just throw on my favorite jeans and cardigan, dab a bit of Smith's Rosebud salve onto my lips, and make my same old Greek yogurt and fruit for breakfast, the inspiration still lingers with me like the scent of yesterday's April showers.

My favorite posts, however, come from the bloggers share what they're reading and invite their readers to do the same.  While I may not try the latest fashion trend or arugula recipe (OK so I probably will try any recipe featuring arugula-- bad example) I will and do take book recommendations to heart.  When I click on The English Muse and discover she has posted one of her periodic "What book are you reading?" entries, I get a pen and paper and start making a list of all the wonderful suggestions her readers recommend in the comment section.  Likewise, when I read about a book on Ill Seen, Ill Said , Le Project D'Amour or From the Hatchery, I take note because these women are such gifted, thoughtful and talented writers themselves. 

So in keeping with the spirit of my favorite posts on other blogs, I decided to periodically post what I'm reading.  I preface this with the warning that I rarely read one book at a time.  Like a well balanced diet for the body, I believe in a well-balanced diet of reading material for the mind, with a sweet treat thrown in every now and again.   Here it goes . . .

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal 
This book first came up as a recommendation for me on Amazon last year and it wasn't until after I'd read the description and was hooked that I realized it was written by the son of a dear friend and my mentor in all things Celtic and poetic, Esther de Waal.  Even if I didn't know Esther, I still would have purchased the book.  Not only is it a history of a fascinating family and their journey through the anti-semitic Europe of the ninteenth and twentieth centuries, it's also a treatise on the place of objects in our lives and an ode to the sense of touch.  Edmund is a potter and perhaps this is one reason he is able to write so eloquently and viscerally about handling.  I also admire the way he imagines the story of his ancestors through the objects they possessed and the places they lived, teasing out the metaphysical through the physical. 


Sacred Place, Chosen People:  Land and National Identity in Welsh Spirituality by Dorain Llywelyn
This is a book you probably won't find listed as a "must read" on many blogs.  And the fact that I'm reading it for the second time (the first was in Gladstone's Library the summer of 2009 while doing research for a paper on how landscape impacts poetic expression) doesn't mean I think it is a must read for everyone . . . just for those of us who are planning on leading a pilgrimage to Wales in 2013.  Meaning me.  Although the focus is on the Welsh experience, Llywelyn raises some interesting points for those of us non-Welsh readers as well.  In the first chapters he discusses the sense of exile felt by many people in today's world.  "Many people in modern Western cultures-- Wales is something of an exception to this-- express a loss of an organic sense of place."  (p. 22)  It made me wonder if what I feel is loss or devaluation?  For those of us who are products of a suburban or urban place, or "the new world", do we discount this experience, and somehow give more import to the impact rugged, rural, foreign landscapes have on the spirituality of their inhabitants?  Just the tip of the iceberg in terms of questions raised by this book . . .

And speaking of icebergs, I just finished A Night to Remember by Walter Lord.  I raced through this non-fiction account of the sinking of the Titanic, captivated by the "perfect storm" of occurrences that led to the disaste,r and the stories of the passengers and crew.  It's a quick read . . . I finished it in about the time it would take to watch the re-released film without having to put on a pair of specially crafted glasses to do so.

So now for light reading I'm onto The Seance by John Harwood.  One of my other guilty pleasures (besides blogs) are Victorian Gothic and ghost stories.  Maybe it's because I used to borrow Gothic romances from my mother and aunt's bookshelves (Victoria Holt, Mary Stewart, Barbara Michaels, Dorothy Eden).  Reading these atmospheric tales, be they modern like Susan Hill's The Woman in Black or classic such as The Turn of the Screw, takes me back to rainy days spent curled up in the basement with a musty smelling paperback and an imagination full of remote manor houses, down and out plucky heroines (usually governesses), and the brooding men with secrets that eventually win their trust and hearts.  I started The Seance last night, only to realize I think I've read it before. The heroine here isn't a governess but a young woman who, in an attempt to pull her mother out of a decade long depression brought on by the death of her youngest child, pretends to go into a trance so her sister can "speak" to her mother and reassure her she's at peace.  This well intentioned act starts a chain of events that leads to . . . I can't remember where, which is why I'll keep reading this book again. 

Illustration from the original text,
"Please sir, I want some more."

Finally, the last book on my plate right now is a story I know well but one I've never actually read:  Oliver Twist.  It's not only Victorian ghost stories that I'm reading lately, but also a host of Victorian novels of all sorts for a writing project (a novel) on which I've been working for the past 18 months or so.  After filling my Kindle with dozens of free books (three cheers for public domain texts), I finally limited myself to three authors:  Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Dickens.  Although I've read some Dickens in the past, the 1968 film Oliver! has always been my go-to telling of the story.  I've enjoyed reading the original text not only for the humor of Dickens, but more for the insights into the lives of  those in the Victorian era who didn't live in haunted castles and manor houses.  They had a much more frightening and dangerous existence than any Gothic   
                                                  novelist could imagine.


So that's what I'm reading.  How about you?  What are you reading?  Any recommendations?

Mary Oliver Monday - Deep Summer

DEEP SUMMER
by Mary Oliver from Evidence (Beacon Press)

The mockingbird
opens his throat
among the thorns
for his own reasons

but doesn't mind
if we pause
to listen
and learn something

for ourselves;
he doesn't stop,
he nods
his gray head

with the frightfully bright eyes,
he flirts
his supple tail,
he says:

listen, if you would listen.
There's no end
to good talk,
to passion songs,

to the melodies
that say
this branch,
this tree is mine,

to the wholesome
happiness
of being alive
on a patch

of this green earth
in the deep
pleasures of summer.
What a bird!

Your clocks, he says plainly,
which are always ticking,
do not have to be listened to.
The spirit of his every word.

I realize that it isn't even shallow summer much less deep summer yet, although the rising red on the thermometer might lead those of us in the DC area to believe otherwise.  An afternoon in the mid-high 80s means my plans for afternoon gardening will be modified by the word "sweltering."  I can already imagine the dusty earth sticking to sunscreen and sweat as I toil to get my herb garden replenished and my moon garden reclaimed from the neighbor's ivy that is choking the few plants that the deer didn't eat this winter.

Mondays are meant to be my writing day and a bit of writing might happen in between taking my parents to doctors' appointments, grocery shopping, and gardening.  A few weeks ago if I hadn't been able to stick to my "work" schedule -- Writing Monday, Cathedral Tuesday, Anam Cara Wednesday, Cleaning and Errands Thursday, Reading and more Writing Friday-- I would move through my week feeling a frenetic sort of off-kilter, like a novice lumberjack in a logrolling competition. 

Lately, I've come to realize that the clock and calendar don't necessarily have to be listened to.  Instead, I listen to what I need, and I try to listen to what those around me need (although I still need to work on this). 

So instead of feeling like I'm trying to stay upright on the log, I feel more like this . . .

Surrendering my need to control allows me to sink into being rather than doing and bask in the moment.

Mary Oliver . . Tuesday - Messenger

Messenger

Lamb in pasture - Hawarden, Wales

by Mary Oliver from Thirst (Beacon Press)

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
  equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
   keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
   astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
   and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
   to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
   that we live forever.

I've been having an issue with my work lately.  I've spent the past two years basically floating in the breeze as I finished my doctoral degree and all the work that entailed, while letting the work that pays the bills ebb and flow.  That cycle carried me through graduation in May, but then May became June, and June became December and there I was, still anchored in the same place. 

So come mid-February I decided it was time to get down to business-- to make a change, get organized, develop a plan, envision goals, create to do lists . . . basically get my act together.  I spent weeks on the project . . . dreaming, scheming, filling my walls with a festive patchwork of post-it notes and sheets of paper with headings like "Communications and Marketing" and "Potential Income Streams."  Eventually the post it notes and newsprint came unstuck, raining on my desk like a spring shower until I gathered them up and organized them into on-line notebooks via One Note.

My desk during the planning

At the end of the second week I double checked my  notes to make sure I'd captured everything electronically, put the paper out for recycling, and turned off my computer, breathing the sigh of satisfaction that comes from a job well done.  I had a plan, I had goals, I had tasks to do to achieve those goals. I'm not a very detail oriented person but I was beginning to understand why some people find making lists or adhering to directions comforting.  Seeing the storm of ideas that usually were swirling around in my head set concretely on paper, even virtual paper, was like settling into the eye of the storm. The energy was still there but I was able to gain some perspective on the maelstrom around me rather than being being caught up in the chaos.  On Monday morning, I told myself, I would get up early and get to work.

And then my computer crashed.  And then a family crisis took center stage.  And two external deadlines loomed large.  And life has yet to go back to "normal" . . . or has it?

At one point during the writing retreat I facilitated on St. Patrick's Day, we started talking about the phrase, "Life is what happens when you're making other plans."  And that's exactly what happened to me. 

By the start of April I had planned to have my website up and running, some future retreats penciled on the calendar, a few essays in the mail to potential publication venues.  Instead I've been running to the grocery store and pharmacy, have doctors' appointments for my parents scheduled, and a host of essays to still be edited (although I have managed to finish a new piece and a poem that needed very little editing appeared when I was in the shower one morning). 

I yearn for more than a couple hours here or there to delve into "my work" but as I read this familiar Mary Oliver poem on Monday morning, it brought back a conversation I had several years ago with my former boss/mentor/friend.  We were discussing vocation and he said that vocation isn't your job but rather your work.  For some people it's building things or fixing things, for others it's nurturing or teaching or encouraging, or loving the world. 

For me, my vocation came to me one night in the shower.  (A lot of good thinking happens when I'm bathing, and while a lot of vocations seem to be gerunds, I don't know if bathing is a vocation although I have no doubt thinking is.)

My vocation is feeding people.  All the jobs I've ever seriously considered making a career fall under this heading-- pastry chef, teacher, writer, retreat leader, combination book store/tea shop owner (one of my fantasy lives).  My work is giving people food for their mind/body/spirit. 

The question I've been asking myself is has my work really been interrupted these past few weeks?  Or am I just living out my vocation in a different way than I planned when life happened . .

What is your vocation and how are you living that out in your current circumstances?

Resurrection Angels



Easter Lillies blooming at Holyrood House, Edinburgh

Resurrection Angels

by Ruth Bidgood from Time Being (Seren)

(Poet’s Note:  The diarist Kilvert was told that people used to come to the Wild Duck Pool on Easter morning ‘to see the sun dance and play in the water and the angels who were at the Resurrection playing backwards and forwards before the sun.’)

These were not troubling the waters                          

to bring healing.  They were serving

no purpose.  After the watch at the tomb,
the giving of the good news, they were at play.
To and fro went the wings, to and fro
over the water, playing before the sun.

Stolid-seeming villagers stared

enchanted, watching sun dance and play,
light-slivers splinter water’s dark.
In dazzle they half-saw
Great shining shapes swoop frolicking
to and fro, to and fro.
 
                                     This much was shared,
expected; day and place had their
appropriateness, their certainties.
The people had no words to tell
the astonishment, the individual bounty—
for each his own dance in the veins,
brush wings on the soul.


Billy Collins Sunday will return next week.  That's right, next week.  Despite the fact that today is Easter Sunday and thus, the Lenten practices can be put aside, I will continue posting poems and reflections and sometimes just poems and sometimes just reflections . . . but probably not quite every day.  My journal has been missing me, and I it, these past six weeks. 

For today, however, I offer you this Easter poem by Ruth Bidgood.  It's not the fact that it is a poem written about an Easter morning tradition that makes me think of this as the perfect poem for this Easter morning, although that doesn't hurt.  

Rather, it is because it describes a particular event that occurs in a particular place on a particular morning, yet somehow one that is not bound in time or place.  It tells of an experience shared by a community, yet one that each person must experience, internalize and interpret in her own way, "for each his own dance in the veins, brush wings on the soul." 

And isn't that how we must all approach the story of Easter . . . or Passover, or the birth of Buddha (today is his birthday BTW), or any of the stories of our faith anew each time we hear them?

How are you experiencing familiar stories anew today?