It rained all night. No gale force winds or torrential downpours but it did rain on into the morning enough for us to pull out our umbrellas and raincoats. Didn’t stop us though. We arrived at Waterloo Village at 8:45 for the 9 a.m. poet conversations. Liza went to hear Tony Hoagland on the main stage and I decided to listen to Ko Un, a Korean poet who was born during the Japanese occupation of his country, lived through a wrenching war, was a Buddhist monk for ten years then a militant activist who was jailed for ten years, and is now married with a college-aged daughter. This morning he spoke of the rain as being our “guest” and how it was important to have rainy days in life, not always sunny, that it was good to struggle against the elements, how it built layers of resilence and character in the landscape.

Here is one of the poems he read (Ko Un read in Korean and the translation was read by Richard Silberg, co-editor of Poetry Flash):

The Poet

For a long time he was a poet.

Children

called him a poet and

women did too.

Surely he was a poet

more than anyone I knew.

Even the pigs and the boars

grunted him poet.

He died returning from a distant land.

In his hut there was not one word of poetry.

Was he a poet who didn’t write?

So a poet wrote a poem for him.

As soon as the poem was written,

the wind blew it away.

Then all the poems of the East and the West, old and new,

flew away, swish, swish,

every one followed suit.

*************

There is much more to say about this day but I will leave you with a few more pictures so I can, once again, get to bed and sleep well. Suffice it to say the days are filled with rich language and deeply expressed longings. There is vigorous conversation, tears of joy and sorrow and so much thought–contemplation on how words, language have the power to transform the human spirit–for better or for worse. This sacred trust is one the poet takes on as part of the mantle. It is no small thing and requires questioning and a willingness to forge into territory where one can err and come back to the page again and again to put thoughts on the page.

Linda Hogan and Gerald Stern

Billy Collins

Ekiwah Adler-Belendez (19 y.o. disabled in body–inspiring in his poetry and courage)

Brian Turner, an Iraqi vet who wrote about his experience of war

Main Stage Tent–After the sun came out

Becca (from Chicago) and me lookin’ good!

One of the buildings at Waterloo Village

There is beauty everywhere you look here

The geese who eat anything they can find (including candy wrappers)

The port-a-poddy. An essential (but not pleasant) part of the experience

It’s the first day of four of the Dodge Poetry Festival. The weather was cloudy, kind of tropical, with warm winds. Liza says it’s supposed to rain buckets tonight, but so far not a drop. I flew into Boston on Monday, took a cab to Liza’s where she had Chinese take-out waiting. Tuesday we went into Boston to Newbury Street and shopped, ate lunch at Joe’s and then toured Beacon Hill. Wednesday we drove to New Jersey and after eating at the Macaroni Grill settled into our rooms at the hotel to chart our course for the next day, then watch TV until the wee hours.

On Newbury St. in Boston.

It was a gorgeous fall day in New England. Liza loved it!

This steeple was so stunning.

Today we launched out of the hotel around 9:15 and arrived at quaint Waterloo Village where the festival is held, got our 4-day passes and headed straight for the main tent where Tony Hoagland was going to speak at 10:15. Tony’s been on my favorite poet list ever since I read Donkey Gospel, his first book of poetry. I so identify with his experience of growing up in the fifties and sixties. He talked about how when he first started writing poetry he knew he wanted to find and write about “truth,” to understand himself and his place in the world. He said a good poem has to move, has to struggle with itself, that it has to entertain and give pleasure to the reader. He read poems by John Berryman, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara and Anna Akhmatova, as well as a few of his own.

Tony Hoagland speaking on the craft of poetry

The grounds are so beautiful. Waterloo was once a thriving village. It has a series of small canals where grain was brought to the mill on small barges. It has a blacksmith shop, a church, school, library, barns, and private homes set among the trees (have to find out what kind of trees they are) and ponds and sloping hills.

Thursday is student’s day at Dodge and 5000 high school students and their teachers descend in yellow buses of all sizes from New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and beyond to get a dose of poetry. It’s inspiring to see them and hear them ask questions of the poets.

It’s getting late and I need to take a hot bath, drink some Bedtime tea, take my melatonin, meditate and get a good nights rest before another long day of poetry basking. So, I’ll leave you with photos from the rest of the day and a few tidbits from the talks.

Linda Pasten

Lucille Clifton

Find the myth in the human, the human in the myth. Remember when you are writing that “surely I am not the only one” who has felt this way. Feel into the other. When it comes down to it Lucille says she choses to offend the person rather than offend the poem.

Mark Doty

Poetry is juxtaposing the transcendent and the ordinary moments in life. It is an attempt to say the unsayable. Writing a poem is shining a laser beam on a particular moment in time. Poetry points you back to the fundamental unknowable. We usually have writer’s block when we have too much to say, not when we have too little.

Toi Dericotte, Lucille Clifton, Linda Gregg & Mark Doty speak on “Going Public with Private Feelings”

Linda Gregg: First I contain the poem, then I write the poem. My life is run by the rules of poetry. I feel safe in the world of poetry. I don’t argue with the poem.

Mark Doty: The “wound” becomes the gateway to the real work. Allow the poem to have its own life.

I’ll check in again in the next day or two on the latest goings on. I did connect with poets from Squaw Valley–Alex from NYC with his high school students and Diane & Jill from Canada who are staying in the same hotel as we are. Becca, who was in my workshop group with Jane Hirshfield at Napa last year is here from Chicago. Being here is so inspiring and fills me up with such joy and determination to keep writing, keep those poems coming, keep working to say better what I want to say. What I took away today was about how vitally important it is to write about the most terrible and painful places in our lives, to “say the unsayable” because so much of our communications are on the surface and so, so much of what really matters is in the underground caverns that we carry around in our psyches. This is what brings on depression, neuroses, alienation and a host of other isolations from others and, most importantly, our own souls. As Lucille Clifton said, “Surely, I am not the only one.”

This morning while walking I realized that there are dueling opinions about the state of the world (mine and the greater one) that play out in my head. There’s the complainer and the praiser—the first is dissatisfied with my body, my thoughts, my environments, accomplishments, attitudes, my neighbors, friends, the president, air, water and noise pollution, and on and on and on. This one, the kvetcher, seems to think it’s important to be vigilant about what’s not perfect, dilapidated, sliding, tainted and just NOT RIGHT. There’s some kind of belief that enumerating these less-than-perfect attributes is important—that be doing so one (well, I) will be in a better position to improve them. If I don’t remind myself 20-30 times a day that my back would feel better, I’d drop a dress size and extend my life a few months if I lost twenty pounds, well then, I’m not doing my job, which is, of course, to improve, to attain what I know is possible and best for myself. Otherwise, gulp, I’ve failed, I’m a loser and I’ll be back next time around weighing 350 pounds and have to deal with it all over again, only worse.

At our house here in L.A. we have a beautiful oval-shaped swimming pool in the back and a hot tub that we bought when we moved here. This morning, after walking the dogs and watering the plants I was feeling hot and sweaty so I jumped in the pool (which was pretty cold, since we don’t heat it) and then in the hot tub for a while, then back in the pool. Afterwards, I sat outside, relaxed, enjoying the sun. I realized it had been a couple of weeks since I had slowed down long enough to really see the world around me—the way the light plays off the water, the brilliant orange flower draping over the wall, the shimmer of the fichus leaves against the sky. Oh, I had noticed, but I hadn’t seen, hadn’t taken them in. My head had been too full of stuff that needs to get done, stuff I need to figure out, stuff I believe or don’t believe, blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean.

So, sitting there I felt the presence of gratitude, of the praiser, inside—in awe of the wonder of existence. I started thinking about the difference between the perception of how screwed up everything is and the perception that everything is just as it is supposed to be. Listening to the traffic out on the street and thinking of the people in the cars, in the malls, at work, at home, all across the country and the globe—thinking how few of them, how very few of them, ever stop, ever give over to the fragility of their lives, the precious moments that slip by, slip by, and are gone. It made me wonder what would happen if, instead of the bravado and posturing of politicians (like what we witnessed at the U.N. this week), these leaders, these men and women went together on a retreat to meditate, chant, write, speak in a scared circle, tell their stories, if they got real, and felt each other and the pain inside each other’s hearts. I wonder what would happen if each of us vowed to go past the fear and anger that masks our vulnerability and decided it was okay to weep at the sight of beauty, to sing out the truth, to affirm every moment of every day that what is here, what is now, will not always be, that we are here only temporarily and what we do while we are here is the legacy we leave those who come after us—our children and their children.

I’m not sure if the complainer will ever completely fade out of my head. She’s pretty tenacious. I’m thinking though, if I make the effort to slow down and catch up with myself, take in what “is” and see it as so very right and so very perfect—I might just get the upper hand. I’m not naive enough to think that I’ll see President Bush and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sit side by side in a seminar to learn “nonviolent communication” and heal their differences. It does occur to me though, that the most important work being done on this planet today is by those who attend those conferences, who do go to meditation and poetry and yoga retreats. As often as it has been quoted, what MhaAtma Ghandi said will always ring true, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” It’s the only thing we really have control over, our hearts, our minds, the way we see each other as we walk down the street, the way we see ourselves when we look in the mirror. Why not live in kindness, in hope, in gratitude? Why not?

There’s something I like about prose poems–the freedom to get a little wild, whacky, I guess. A poem in stanzas is so, well, “poemish.” It has a certain dignity and it has rules, wants to be respected in a particular way. (Although, we’ve all seen some wild poems written in formal poetic forms.) I guess the prose poems says to me…Ramble On! I do like to ramble, go off on a subject and make long, drawn out, sentences connected with ands and buts and so’s and …’s and —’s. It’s a way of draining my brain, of letting all the many variations on a theme have their say without feeling they have to be tied up in a bow.

I have two anthologies of prose poems. One is No Boundaries, edited by Ray Gonzalez, which has selections by 24 contemporary poets including Charles Simic, Robert Bly, Amy Gerstler, Naomi Shihab Nye and Cambell McGrath. Great American Prose Poems, edited by David Lehman, is the other one. It covers a much wider swath of time and poets starting with Emerson and winding through T.S. Eliot, e. e. cummings, Hart Crane, Elizabeth Bishop, James Merrill, Mark Strand, Frank Bidart, Anne Carson, Rita Dove, Mary Ruefle and many more along the way. Here’s playful piece by Louis Jenkins about, well, of course…

The Prose Poem

The prose poem is not a real poem, of course. One of the major differences is that the prose poet is simply too lazy or too stupid to break the poem into lines. But all writing, even the prose poem, involves a certain amount of skill, just the way throwing a wad of paper, say, into a wastebasket at a distance of twenty feet, requires a certain skill, a skill that, though it may improve hand-eye coordination, does not lead necessarily to an ability to play basetball. Still, it takes practice and thus gives one a way to pass the time, chucking one paper after another at the basket, while the teacher drones on about the poetry of Tennyson.

**********

My husband once entered a zucchini in the county fair and won a blue ribbon for the largest of the year. I think he still has the ribbon pinned to his wall. We haven’t had a garden the last two years but before that we had them for twenty, in Oregon and here in L.A. The rite of turning the soil, planting seeds, watering, watching the seedlings pop out of the composted soil was always amazing. Every year the zukes and the tomatoes and chard, beans and corn were so delicious. You know, real taste, not what we settle for out of the store these days. I read the poem below by Naomi Shihab Nye to him tonight and he got a good chuckle out of it. I asked if he had any pictures of that giant zucchini so this sent him on a quest to go through six boxes of photos. Couldn’t find that particular one, but here’s a photo of some of the bounty from a few years ago.

The Mind of a Squash

Overnight, and quietly. Beneath the scratchy leaf we thicken and expand so fast you can’t believe. Sun pours into us. We drink midnight too, blue locust lullaby feeding our graceful sleep. When you come back, we are fat. Doubled in the dark. Faster than you are. Sometimes we grow together, two of us twining out from the same stalk, conversational blossoms. Bring the bucket. Bring the small knife with the sharp blade. Bring the wind to cool our wide span of leaves, each one bigger than a human head, bigger than dinner plates. Wait till you find the giant prize we have hidden from you all along–no muscle-rich upper arm exceeds its size. But the farmer doesn’t like it. Too big for selling, he says. Only for zucchini bread. Never mind. We like it. We have our own pride.

**********

In case you live in the L.A. area and in case you’re interested in exploring the world of the prose poem, you might like to participate in a workshop at the Ruskin Art Center on October 14th taught by Sarah Maclay. I guarantee it will be a good romp. Sarah’s a terrific poet and workshop facilitator. Here’s the scoop…

The Prose Poem
October 14, 2006 9:30am - 4 pm
The Ruskin Art Club 800 S Plymouth Blvd LA CA 90005
$75: Send $35 Deposit to the Ruskin Art Club
310-669-2369/ 640-0710

What is a prose poem, and how does it force us to re-examine our notions of what, in fact, a poem might be? This workshop will examine the many ways in which this seeming paradox cannot be understood as simply narrative or paragraph, and is very often neither. What, instead, does it seem to allow, or even promote? Where did it originate? And how does it skew our expectations of both poetry and prose? Participants will have the opportunity to workshop their own prose poems (or other poems) after we’ve looked at examples from some of its many explorers: Arthur Rimbaud, Russell Edson, Killarney Clary, Mary Jo Bang, Robert Hass, Carolyn Forche, Nin Andrews, W.S. Merwin, Lynn Heijinian, Rene Char, Franz Wright, Karen Volkman, Allison Benis, Mary Ruefle, Charles Simic, Robert Bly . . . and others.

Next week is the Dodge Poetry Festival—a bi-annual poetry extravaganza staged in the village of Waterloo, New Jersey. This will be my second pilgrimage. I went two years ago for the first time. It was a year of record rainfall on the east coast as a result of hurricanes blowing through Florida and then angling north into New England. The mud was thick, cars got stuck, shoes were gummy and the organizers had to lay tons of hay all over the fields so we wouldn’t all be sucked down into the squishy muck. For the first time in the history of the event it was held at an alternate site, the Duke family park/estate. Despite the best efforts of all involved, the grounds took a beating and it’s clear that it was thought better to return to the old haunts, even though they are smaller and the event has grown substantially over the years.

Being there, where poetry is spoken fluently and there are so many venues with so many different poets speaking, reading their work or dialoguing is–as these things often go—alternately exhilarating and exhausting. Some of the highlights I remember were the early mornings at the main stage under a gigantic tent with a hot cup of tea listening to Coleman Barks read Rumi, accompanied by the music of the Paul Winter Consort; crowding into under an overflowing canopy on a sunny afternoon to hear Mark Doty talk about how poetry is made and keeping us all enthralled and entertained; Seeing Lucille Clifton, Sharon Olds and Gerald Stern, who I had the privilege to work with at Squaw Valley. And, really the best was being there in a community of people dedicated to something that has very little to do with money or power—an art form that, throughout all history, has spoken for the lost, the repressed, the dreamers, to be with those who do not see the primary source of fulfillment as a human being as one of acquisition and manipulation but one where the interior world of the heart and the commonality of our grief and desire is given a voice.

Throughout the week I’ll be logging on with commentary, photos and poems to share the experience with those of you who would like to be there but can’t be and those of you who are just curious to see what it’s all about. I’m flying out on Monday, the 25th to Boston where I’ll stay a couple of days with my friend Liza and drive to New Jersey on Wednesday. The poetry fest starts on Thursday and we’ll be there when the gates open, rain or shine.

Waterloo Village

It’s a Saturday morning. A beautiful morning, cool and clear. I’m not going anywhere in particular today, have no commitments. You know, that song by, mmm…(it’ll come to me), but it goes like this…”Slow down, you move too fast. You’ve got to make the mornin’ last. Just trippin’ down the cobblestones. Lookin’ for love and feelin’ groovy.” Or something like that. Hari Bhajan Singh & I took Yoshi and Ria to the beach this morning for a walk, down to Will Rogers Park. You can’t take dogs on the beach in L.A. County so we walked along the bike path enjoying the sun and the sight of the ocean. Busloads of men, women and children had just spread out along the beach wearing plastic gloves and carrying trash bags and scouring the sand for candy wrappers, cigarette butts and any other debris left behind from beachgoers. It’s Heal the Bay day and I heard on the radio yesterday that in one day they pick up about 40 tons of debris from the Southern California beaches. The funny thing is that the beaches look clean on first look but obviously there’s a lot more under the surface. We helped out by picking up a styrafoam cup, a soda can tab and some other trash. Yoshi usually does his part by grabbing any plastic water bottles laying around, but there were none to be found today. I forgot to bring my camera so here’s a picture of the Santa Monica beaches I took off the web.

Dover Beach
by Matthew Arnold.

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch’d land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the {AE}gean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

*************
This morning while meditating I was thinking about what a perfect tragedy life is. Not one of us bounces through life without losing so much, without grieving, without having to constantly let go of what we love, what we cherish. If we cling too tightly we are sure to find our arms empty, our hearts bereft. If we do not reach out to hold and to risk, we turn to stone, are ground down into fine sand. The only way to make sense of it all is to see that it doesn’t make sense, really, all this do-dah around us. A new BMW, a house ini Malibu, being a rock star or having a seven figure bank account is not worth the proverbial hill of beans. We arrive naked and we return naked. We get old (most of us anyway) and lose our faculties, to one degree or another. This life slips away and when the reel of the film has run it’s course and the credits are running–well, then it’s too late to write another script, to rewind and edit the shots. On the other hand–there’s the Divine Comedy of it all: Don’t Worry, Be Happy, Chop Wood, Carry Water and Be Here Now. If we slow down, if we remember to breathe, remember it’s all temporary then there is beauty all around, there is the essence of the divine, we come into awareness of the unity of all.

It must’ve been Saturday morning, how there’s that feeling of relaxation in the air and how the stress of the city has eased just a little bit–it must’ve been this that got me thinking, along with the fresh sea air and dreams that stirred my consciousness the night before and, well just being a human being trying to sort it out. Yeah, it happens. Now it’s time to go back outside and find some cobblestones to trip down. La, la, la, la, la, la…feelin’ groovy!

The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)
( Simon & Garfunkel )

Slow down, you move too fast
You’ve got to make the morning last
Just kickin’ down the cobble stones
Looking for fun and feelin’ groovy!
(La,la,la,la,la,la, feelin’ groovy)

Hello, lamp post, whatcha knowing?
I’ve come to watch your flowers growing
Ain’t ya got no rhymes for me?
Doot-in’ doo-doo, feelin’ groovy!
(La,la,la,la,la,la, feelin’ groovy)

Got no deeds to do, no promises to keep
I’m dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep
Let the morning time drop all its petals on me
Life, I love you, all is groovy!
(La,la,la,la,la,la, feelin’ groovy)
(La,la,la,la,la,la, feelin’ groovy)

Liza Rutherford reads great books and writes great stuff so I’ve asked her to chime in now and again about the books she’s reading and what she thinks is valuable, or not so, so you and I can sort through the maze of what’s out there on the bookshelves these days. Liza lives in Boston, has three grown children and is in the process of applying for an MFA program to further her writing career. We were classmates at the Vermont College Adult Degree Program for two years. We’ll be sharing two weeks next month at the Hambidge Center for the Arts & Sciences in Georgia where I’ll be working on compiling my writings for–well, still to be determined–and she’ll be working on her own memoir with a dramatic historical twist (really cool stuff!). Liza’s one of those people who lives an undaunted life–who cares deeply and gives generously. I love her and know you’ll enjoy what she has to say!

*********

The Glass Castle
by Jeanette Walls

A wind picked up, rattling the windows, and the candle flames suddenly shifted, dancing along the border between turbulence and order.
- The Glass Castle

I admit to initially being unenthusiastic about reading The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls memoir of her family life, when it was first suggested at my monthly book club. For some reason I’d developed a prejudice toward her and her story. The memory of why is already dim. I tell you this now because, courting my prejudices, I read the book anyway and discovered that I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Jeanette Walls’s surprising memoir is an intimate examination of the relationships within a family, her family, which throughout this book precariously dance on, “the border between turbulence and order.” In this scene-driven wonder, Walls leads us through the stories of her childhood as the daughter of two parents, both of whom find themselves living in poverty on the fringes of society due to their own quirky aspirations, addictions, and ambitions. Alternatingly brilliant and abusive in their child rearing techniques, Rex and Rose Mary Walls justify their neglect of their children using denial exacerbated by alcoholism and undiagnosed mental illness. This is not a book about self pity but instead a book about the far reaches of love and how it can and does exist in a family regardless of its means or its level of sanity. Walls has amazing distance from her strange and sad memories which make this book a pins and needles journey for the reader. We are never told what to feel but instead simply allowed, through Wall’s expert storytelling, to live in her memories and feel them for ourselves. What a gift!

I just counted the poems in my “to be revised” file. The total comes to 125, give or take, and there you have it. They all need work. I pull them out, fiddle with a word, a line break, delete whole stanzas, switch out “burnt” for “charred,” change the tenses, pull all the “ing” words, then put them back–all the while trying to remember the spirit of the poem—when I wrote it and what mood I was in and why it was important to get this moment down. Take for example this one…written a few weeks ago when I was in Oregon:

Over the Pass

On the last leg
I drive
behind a motorcycle
listening
to the Moody Blues, following

the ribbon
of yellow stripes,
singing to the biker man
who reveals no patch
of skin—
wanting,

in some throwback,
to trail
him until he rolls
to a stop in some dusty,
lost town takes
his boots off the skids,
and slides

his helmet over his head.
But it is better
this way—
pretending,
waving and cranking
up the volume, taking
a sharp

left
away from the setting sun
and gunning
the car
on home.

It had been a long day. My mother and I left around nine in the morning from my house in Sisters, drove the three hours to Portland, had lunch, visited my father and about four o’clock I dropped her off at her home and headed back over the Santiam Pass away from the cloudy and drizzly Willamette Valley. At one point I thought I had missed my exit and back tracked a couple of times, freaking out about my blurring eyesight and how I could barely make out the words on the giant green highway signs. I was struggling desperately inside of my head not to feel old and over the hill (couldn’t help the pun here). I fought the impulse to turn back, to stop and take a rest. I just wanted to get home before nightfall. With about fifty miles to go I found myself behind two motorcycles and, even though I had opportunities to pass them I did not. As we came to the summit of the pass and began to descend the clouds gave way to sunshine, my vision was 20/20 again and the years that weighed so heavily a couple of hours before melted like spring snow. I wrote the poem that night as the sun set.

I know the poem needs something. It’s telling me that loud and clear. It’ pretty good until the last sentence that begins with “But it is better / this way” where I feel the poem trails off (uh, oh, another pun) and, pretty much cops out. It’s part of a pattern I see where I can really go for it in the beginning of a poem but the endings!! Man, are they a bear most of the time. I wonder if it’s my brain that can’t seem to go certain places, that resists fully expressing my desires, phobias and rage. Or, is it (and I think this is pretty likely) that I want to wrap it all up with a nice bow? Want to have a happy ending? To engender hope, rather than despair? Want to provide a solution and not the question? Ah, now I think we’re getting somewhere.

So revision can be a real hard nut to crack, what with the internal head-circus going on and then getting down to the actual crafting of the poem. The latter seems like easy street compared to the former, which is why, I think, writing poetry intimidates so many people. The requirements are many, foremost of which is to never stop digging into your psyche, asking the tough questions and trying at every step to not be attached to an answer, to your answer. Come to think of it, this is most likely the primary reason I fell into poetry (or it fell into me), as another one of those ways to poke, provoke, confront and come out elevated. I better get back to working on that poem—and hey, if you have any ideas for those last lines don’t hesitate to send ‘em.

The following is a guest post by friend and fellow poet, Sarb Nam Khalsa. She participated in the Five Days With a Master Poet Course in July on Anna Akhmatova and I felt the writing she did about how the poetry and the life of Akhmatova affected her were both eloquent and insightful. I hope to include Sarb Nam’s thoughts and poems again from time to time in the future.

What I find so powerful about Akhmatova’s work is her

accessibility and universality, which makes her poems

so relevant and present. Being of Russian descent,

I found a deep resonance with the words of this poet

whose pain and courage fired an amazing body of work.

This is a discussion of some of her poems and how they

speak to my personal life experience.

Sarb Nam

*************

*************

How many demands the beloved can make!
The woman discarded, none.
How glad I am that today the water
Under the colorless ice is motionless.
And I stand — Christ help me! –
On this shroud that is brittle and bright,
But save my letters
So that our descendants can decide,
So that you, courageous and wise,
Will be seen by them with greater clarity.
Perhaps we may leave some gaps
In your glorious biography?
Too sweet is earthly drink,
Too tight the nets of love.
Sometime let the children read
My name in their lesson book,
And on learning the sad story,
Let them smile shyly. . .
Since you’ve given me neither love nor peace
Grant me bitter glory.

Akhmatova 1913

Each line of this poem seems to echo some time in my life when I struggled with issues of self-worth, self-love, co-dependence, and an overwhelming need to be appreciated and loved by others, when I felt that my needs were being subsumed by the overwhelming needs of others and I repressed my creative spirit to please them for fear of losing their presence in my life, however dispiriting or crippling. Knowing that as a woman in society I could never really pursue my dreams without the support of men. How only the power of surrender and prayer to God would finally save me and allow me to walk safely on the brittle ice without fear; to face the death of my ego and my weakness and my insecurity and still come out a warrior. To escape the “nets of love” and dare to hope that I might leave a legacy of truth in the pursuit of the spirit, that my suffering shall not have been in vain and that others, generations hence, might find solace and inspiration. That I can dare to hope for something compensating that is not so much a bitter glory but a greater gift of knowing that one has made a valuable contribution that will live on beyond one’s physical death.

*************
Somewhere there is a simple life and a world,
Transparent, warm and joyful. . .
There at evening a neighbor talks with a girl
Across the fence, and only the bees can hear
This most tender murmuring of all.
But we live ceremoniously and with difficulty
And we observe the rites of our bitter meetings,
When suddenly the reckless wind
Breaks off a sentence just begun –
But not for anything would we exchange this splendid
Granite city of fame and calamity,
The wide rivers of glistening ice,
The sunless, gloomy gardens,
And, barely audible, the Muse’s voice.

Akhmatova June 23, 1915

Again, I too feel a longing for a “simple life and a world / Transparent, warm and joyful.” I remember this world from my childhood, shrouded in the blissful ignorance of youth. This poem transports me to that time and just as quickly reminds me of all the trappings of modern society lived “ceremoniously and with difficulty” as we “observe the rites of our bitter meetings.” I pray not to experience a loss of words, not to know a “reckless wind” that “breaks off a sentence just begun,” but to step forward courageously and speak my piece. Okay, I know I chose this life with all of its accompanying limits and challenges. However, like Akhmatova, I too would not “exchange this splendid / Granite city of fame and calamity” for anything…would not give up the opportunity to hear “barely audible, the Muse’s voice.”

*************

Wild honey has the scent of freedom,
dust–of a ray of sun,
a girl’s mouth–of a violet,
and gold–has no perfume.

Watery–the mignonette,
and like an apple–love,
but we have found out forever
that blood smells only of blood.

Akhmatova

What a poetic way to say that War Sucks!

*************

For the Ages

Sonnet
so slow that I can hear the
creaking of ages
Lines
written in solemn spaces
or noisy anterooms
with quill pens
and computers
dotting I’s and crossing T’s
so that we won’t forget
won’t slip into
a downward spiral
away from Art
Religion & Poetry
away from all that has
elevated us
one note
one ideal
one hope
at a time
out of the darkness
into the Light.

Sarb Nam Kaur Khalsa © 2006

*************

Lot’s Wife

And the just man trailed God’s shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
“It’s not too late, you can still look back

at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed.”

A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.

Akhmatova

For some reason, the poem “Lot’s Wife” has haunted me this week. I am taken by the simplicity of the telling of this story, without judgment, of a woman who had every blessing for a spiritual destiny (the theologians tell us that she was the wife of a professor and had access to the holy teachings and leaders of her time, including Abraham, who was her uncle by birth). Yet she chose to turn away from all this, even with a warning from God’s angels that to do so would cause instant death. What compelled this woman to turn her head, just to look, knowing that she could never return to her former life and all its comforts. Was she so fearful of the spiritual and physical terrain that lay ahead that she would rather die than meet her destiny head on? I feel drawn to this poem and to Akhmatova’s telling of the story. I feel redeemed by the poet’s forgiveness as she grants redemption to a woman lost in the pages of history, a woman condemned not by one religion but many for her lack of obedience and duty. Maybe she was answering to a higher call?

The Pillar

Who will grieve for me
when I am given up
to the burnt place
when the ashes of my body
sail in the immortal spaces
where once I played
and rejoiced?

Who will cry and mourn
my death, a passing
signifying nothing
and everything
to one who has invested their Soul
in a journey both monumental
and insignificant?

Will I sit counting
the wasted days and hours
when I could have been
working, or healing, or praying?
Will I regret the emotions
unexpressed and words unspoken
from fear or lack of imagination?
Why did I care so much about
the trash, or the laundry, or the housekeeping
when my Soul yearned for its
Home of Homes?

We all reckon with our own days
we wrestle with our daily regrets.
If I leave, let my legacy
be a grain of Truth
and not a pillar of salt.

Sarb Nam Kaur Khalsa © 2006

I was just milling about in my Squaw Valley poem file and thought I’d share with you the last poem I wrote. Well, truth be told it isn’t exactly a poem–unless you chose to call it so. It was one of my goals (although not one that I was married to) at the workshop to try out new forms, writing a different kind of poem each day. I had done pretty well with a prose poem on Monday, an abecedarian on Tuesday, Wednesday I did an ode (in a “primative sound”), and Thursday a list poem. On Friday I read a “conversation” poem” in Sharon Olds’ group that had really been a tough one to write and even tougher to read. Sharon urged me (more like laid down the gauntlet, in her oh, so, gentle way) to take the poem I had written and go deeper into the subject, let it rip, find out what I really wanted to say and write that for my Saturday poem. This was a daunting task considering there was a dinner party that night and I could barely stand up straight and keep my eyes open as it was after the poetry blitz of the previous six days.

I did try. Oh, I sat in front of my computer until midnight but it wasn’t going to happen, no matter how much I tried to dredge up the fury from within. I did want to come with something to Saturday morning’s workshop so I thought I’d write a letter…take a lighter approach and just let myself get silly. It was fun and I felt the pressure lift as I gave myself permission to take what Sharon had said with me and let it settle in. I would write that poem another day. Sometimes I (feel free to insert “we” here) just have to accept my limitations–and maybe they aren’t so much limitations, but opportunities to go easy and let myself slide. Nothing wrong with sliding now and again. You never know when you’ll get a good laugh out of it.

(The “C.D.” in the title is C.D. Wright as she was the group facilitator that morning.)

********

Dear C.D. & Respected 12 Poets of Squaw Valley Poetry Day 7,

It is my sad duty to inform you that today is the day I have failed. I have not brought a poem of any means, have not finished my week with a roar, rather I offer you a whimper. I didn’t mean to disappoint. Ah, kept at it until there was little left of me but acid. But, my dears, it was not to be this day, this sun drenched morning in Bar One. I must look into your soft eyes and say to you that there is nothing here that will light them up or (most desirably) evoke a tear or moment of deep introspection to swell the chest and provoke an almost indiscernible nod of the head, sway of the torso, inner glow of epiphany.

No. I must disappoint. And no one (least of all myself) wants to disappoint but it seems my fate to do so on this our last morning, our last poeming around this table. I do so with my head held high and my integrity in tact as I know you would want me to, as I know you will, with your immense empathy be kind, say not that this does not qualify as a poem—remark that it is neither abecedarian nor sonnet, that it would be far better a work of art to cut the first line, scrap the title or point out that the syntax does not match the tone.

It is my fervent wish that today’s offering does not, in your generous and kindly eyes, diminish the esteem I have so ardently striven to engender in this last week so much so that you consider striking me from the blue-sheeted email list as an outsider, one who didn’t rise to the moment, failed to do the assignment given to follow up yesterday’s poem where I had reached down my throat, ripped out my heart and thrown it on the page, the oh, so gentle suggestion that I do it again, only this time go deeper, go for the gut, dragging the kidneys, pancreas and spleen along with it. I do hope that you will understand, in your benevolence, why, instead I chose to obfuscate, to defer, to wave the white flag of surrender.

And so dear ones, fellow poeteers, we must part on this fine day to return to our abodes across the land. I wish you well in all your revisions and may your submission acceptances be many. I hope to meet you all again one day, one bright and clear morning in this fine valley where bears eat Hagen Daaz in the kitchen, ants milk aphids for their sweet poop and poems grow like lichen on every rock and tree.

Humbly,
Hari Bhajan

July 29, 2006