“Cultivating (Preserving)” in Bolts of Silk
October 19, 2010
While I was away this weekend up at the Rodale Institute’s organic farm in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, my poem “Cultivating (Preserving)” appeared in the Scottish online journal, Bolts of Silk. It’s another poem from my “Dwelling” sequence, which Alison Hawthorne Deming has called, “a phenomenology of how we live on the Earth.”
Bolts of Silk, which has the subtitle “beautiful poetry with something to say,” is curated by the delightful Crafty Green Poet, Juliet Wilson of Edinburgh, Scotland, whom I met through our both being published in another Scottish journal, Anon.
The irony of this poem being published while I was unplugged up at an organic farm was not lost on me. Perhaps (I’m not going to ask) it wasn’t lost on Juliet, who follows me on Twitter and could very well have seen my last tweet on Friday evening as I was heading to the farm.
In any event, here is my poem,
Cultivating (Preserving)
Dwelling as preserving
is cultivating.
Dwelling means knowing
what inhabits a place
and understanding that
which belongs to a place.
We cultivate what grows,
while building things
that don’t grow.
We seek the organic
in our own creations,
which are inorganic.
Imposing our will
on the landscape,
we can remove either
that which promotes capacity
or that which prevents capacity.
We are tenders of the garden,
we tend what needs tending
(heart or “langscape”)
What we save remains—
–Scott Edward Anderson
On John Lennon’s “Help!”
October 9, 2010
- Cover of John Lennon
The debate about rock lyrics and poetry has been going on for decades. Ever since Bob Dylan hit the scene in the early ’60s and songs started to be about more than dance moves, teenage love, and holding hands.
The Beatles started to break out of that mold in late 1964 through 1966 with their principle songwriters — perhaps the greatest songwriting team ever — John Lennon and Paul McCartney branching out into new sounds and new concerns.
Lennon, who would have been 70 today, started writing more personal, introspective songs, clearly showing the influence of Bob Dylan. And McCartney wrote two of his most poetic songs in this period, “Eleanor Rigby” and “Yesterday.”
While Lennon songs like “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” “Nowhere Man,” “In My Life,” and “Norwegian Wood,” are often cited as revealing the more personal John, it is with “Help!” that I think John really puts himself on the line.
Recorded in April 1965, it was, according to some accounts, a throw-away; something John had to dash off after the film they were working on had been renamed.
But John himself revealed in 1980’s Playboy interview with David Sheff that “I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it’s just a fast rock ‘n roll song. I didn’t realize it at the time…but later, I knew I really was crying out for help.”
When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody’s help in any way.
But now these days are gone, I’m not so self assured,
Now I find I’ve changed my mind and opened up the doors.Help me if you can, I’m feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round.
Help me, get my feet back on the ground,
Won’t you please, please help me?
Despite its jaunty pop melody and speed, the song is really a plaintive poem that has a maturity beyond the author’s then 24 years.
“It was my fat Elvis period,” Lennon told Sheff. He was “very fat, very insecure, and he’s completely lost himself. And I am singing about when I was so much younger and all the rest, looking back at how easy it was. Now I may be very positive… yes, yes… but I also go through deep depressions where I would like to jump out the window, you know. It becomes easier to deal with as I get older; I don’t know whether you learn control or, when you grow up, you calm down a little. Anyway, I was fat and depressed and I was crying out for help.”
He was seemingly on top of the world, had everything he imagined he wanted from the group’s early days. And yet, seeing himself from outside himself, John the vulnerable man sees Beatle John and recognizes things are not all they seem.
And now my life has changed in oh so many ways,
My independence seems to vanish in the haze.
But every now and then I feel so insecure,
I know that I just need you like I’ve never done before.
Lennon told Jann Wenner in Rolling Stone in the 1970 Rolling Stone interviews, that it was among his favorites “Because I meant it — it’s real. The lyric is as good now as it was then. It is no different, and it makes me feel secure to know that I was that aware of myself then. It was just me singing “Help” and I meant it. I don’t like the recording that much; we did it too fast trying to be commercial.”
The music is a mask of sorts, then, and perhaps John wasn’t quite that comfortable showing how insecure he was at the top of the pop world. But isn’t that what makes songs like “Tears of a Clown,” and Lennon’s own “I’m a Loser” so great?
Songs like “Help” reveal a vulnerability we all feel, but help us get past it through the sheer joy of the music and recognition that we’re not alone.
And really, I think that’s the mark of true genius, whether as a poet, musician, or pop star.
On Epigraphs & Cairns
September 18, 2010
A cairn on Cauld Face.
David Orr had an interesting article in the New York Times this week about the use of epigraphs in contemporary poetry. He cites a number of recent examples and offers some historical context, pinning much of the blame for the prevalence of the practice on the shoulders of T.S. Eliot.
Orr also quotes literary theorist Gérard Genette on the functions for epigraphs in his book “Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation.”
The first two are straightforward — an epigraph can comment on the title of a given work, or it can apply to the work’s body. But after that, matters get a little more “oblique,” as Genette diplomatically puts it. “Very often,” he says of the epigraph, “the main thing is not what it says but who its author is, plus the sense of indirect backing that its presence at the edge of a text gives rise to.”
This caused me to reflect upon my own use of epigraphs in my poetry. Turns out I use them a lot.
In my current manuscript iteration, perhaps a third of the poems have epigraphs. My “Dwelling” sequence, which had its origins in an essay by philosopher Martin Heidegger, even has a full page of quotations from source material for the poem.
In conversation with Julie Johnstone, a librarian at the Scottish Poetry Library, via Twitter this morning, I offered that I’ve used epigraphs as a leaping off point, to set the stage or as commentary on the poem.
In fact, a few recent poems, such as “Risks Are Risky,” and “Healing,” got their start from a line or quotation, the former from a tweet by Paulo Coelho; the latter a line from Gary Snyder.
“Perhaps they show where you’ve travelled while writing the poem,” Julie suggested, “and also where you and the poem are travelling to.”
I like the idea of epigraphs as signposts or, to borrow from the Scots, a cairn on the trail of the poem.
Dead Bird Poems: “Dead Red Wing”
September 16, 2010
- Image via Wikipedia
Jim Behrle, who has to be one of the funniest most irascible poets on the Interwebz, had a recent post about Dead Bird Poems on his AmericanPoetry.biz blog:
“The Dead Bird Poem is one of the most honored of American forms. Take sappy pastoral, add a dead or dying bird and just watch the meaning drip from your canvas like grease off a slice of bacon. Someone had sent me a Facebook note about the 5 or 6 dead bird poems in whatever year’s that was Best American Poetry.”
I wrote a dead bird poem almost a decade ago, called “Dead Red Wing.”
At the time, I worked for The Nature Conservancy and gave a presentation to a birding group. The group meeting started with typical group meeting business, then segued into a Quaker-meeting-style sharing of bird sightings and notations. It was quite poetic.
Then they brought out the specimens.
The meeting turned into a kind of flea market or science fair. Dead birds, bird parts, wings, feet, beaks; heads, whole birds, birds with missing wings; gashed birds, smashed birds. It was quite a spectacle.
One woman removed a Ziploc bag from a portable cooler. She opened the bag and unwrapped a beautiful, complete (and quite frozen) red-winged blackbird. She handed it to me. That was all I needed.
Here is my poem “Dead Red Wing,” which didn’t make it into Best American Poetry in 1995 the year it was published in a small journal called Blueline out of SUNY Potsdam:
“Dead Red Wing”
Come spring, you’d be up
in the low trees,
on telephone wires,
bowing foxtail in the marsh,
your song become vain:–
“Look-at-meeee…Look-at-meeee…”
Flash of red on black wing
poised to singe the eyes
trained on you,
a life-bird,
through field glasses.
In my hand you are stiff,
unrecognizable.
The woman
who brought you
to the birding group
kept you
in a Ziploc bag
in the freezer,
next to the roast
and last week’s red beans.
Every evening,
when she finished her vigil
at the window,
she took you out,
rubbed your cold breast,
ruffled feathers,
sang your song.
–Scott Edward Anderson, Blueline, Volume XVI
Ground Zero: Trying to Write About 9/11
September 11, 2010
In the wake of tragedy on September 11, 2001 — in the face of it, in some ways — there were reports of poems appearing all over New York. On lampposts, bus stops, phone booths, taped over advertisements; poems to lost loved ones, the missing, the dead, to the world.
Poetry seemed to be a healing force for some, a way of calling out in remembrance for others. Poems then started to appear in print, as poets from Deborah Garrison to Wisława Szymborska tried to come to grips with what had happened that day.
I tried to write a poem to express what I felt about that day. I wasn’t there, I was 100 miles away in Philadelphia, but some people I love were there and their lives were forever changed by the tragedy. All of us were.
I started writing the poem that November and worked on it for a while before giving up. It wasn’t easy to write about. I took it out again six years later and found it wanting. I was reminded of the poem today — nine years after the tragedy — and decided to share it here.
Here is my poem, “Ground Zero”:
Neighbors worked in these buildings;
buildings no longer there, no longer here.
Their emptiness fills the space once occupied.
How tall is emptiness?
How empty is remembrance?
Memory flares, burns out.
Neighbors are strangers become familiars,
and neighborhoods are the places we meet
the stranger’s glance, acknowledge or turn away.
Only now, who can turn away?
Who can pretend innocence?
Decoy repelling and attracting.
The boy in Belfast on his way to school
who runs past the empty spaces
between houses, fearing snipers;
the girl who fears an ill-timed car bomb;
the mother awaiting children from the playground;
the father fearing policeman protecting and serving.
Neighbors may be those we’d least like
to live with, but they make our community.
The empty space left by buildings gone.
Our hearts wanting for lack of something,
connection, community, solace–
Who can fill the space gone empty, gone?
(for Barbara Einzig & Chloe Indigo Hannah Guss)
–Scott Edward Anderson
My Longshot Submission: “Imaginary Comeback”
September 10, 2010
Over 48 hours, from noon on August 27, 2010, through noon on August 29, 2010, “hundreds of writers, editors, artists, photographers, programmers, videographers, and other creatives from all around the world came together via the Internet — and in offices in Los Angeles, Portland, and San Francisco — to make a magazine from start to finish.” It was called Longshot.
The theme was “comeback.” My submission wasn’t published in the magazine, but will appear on their blog linked to this blog post. It’s a cool idea. Here is my longshot, a poem I wrote in a flash on Saturday, August 28th, called
“Imaginary Comeback”
He was big, really big.
In his mind, he was the only star
There ever was — the one true star.
A star of the stage, screen, and sport,
Legions of fans cheering his every move.
They bought all his records,
Sold out his shows, cheered every score.
No one could get enough of him,
Kept demanding more.
He fell in with the wrong crowd,
An adoring mass of one,
That took him down the wrong path.
He fell into bad habits: sex,
Drugs, deviant behavior – all by himself.
Only, when he fell, nobody knew
It was all in his mind. He disappeared
Further into obscurity; none missed him.
He stopped hearing the cheering
In the back of his mind,
The soundtrack no longer played,
Accolades and self-congratulation
Were no longer forthcoming.
But now, poised for a comeback,
He sits on the couch and stares,
Paralyzed with fear and self-loathing.
What if you were a star
Of your own mind
And you made a comeback
To which nobody came—
Would the fame taste as sweet?
Or bitter, bitter as bile piling up
In the pit of his stomach
Churning with anxiety.
Heck, even John Lennon used to
Throw up before The Beatles’ gigs,
He tells himself. Then he heaves,
Leaving his lunch on the living room
Floor: the only thing making
A comeback today
Is the sandwich he ate an hour ago.
–Scott Edward Anderson
Edwin Morgan’s “Strawberries”
August 31, 2010
- Image via Wikipedia
The great Scottish poet Edwin Morgan passed away nearly two weeks ago and the tributes and accolades have continued throughout the Edinburgh Book Festival that’s just ended.
I’ve been fortunate to follow much of it via Twitter, having connected with such wonderful poets and poetry lovers as @ByLeavesWeLive, @OneNightStanzas, and @craftygreenpoet among others, who have made me feel like I was there alongside them, paying my respects.
Morgan was a remarkably gifted poet, and gifted not only in the sort of conventional sense of the word. I mean he had an incomparable ear for the rich variety and breadth of poetry that one rarely sees in this day of specialization and of literary “camps.”
Morgan saw the magical in the ordinary and wasn’t about to limit himself by the constraints of either subject matter or style. He could be funny, such as “The First Men on Mercury,” but he was equally adept when he turned his hand at tender, more traditional love poems.
One of my favorites — probably my favorite Morgan poem — is “Strawberries,” which you can read in its entirety at the Edwin Morgan Archives at the Scottish Poetry Library.
For now, I’ll just quote the ending, which is stunning even without mention of the strawberries or the scene between two lovers:
let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hillslet the storm wash the plates
–Edwin Morgan
Related articles by Zemanta
- “RIP Edwin Morgan” and related posts (craftygreenpoet.blogspot.com)
- Letter: Edwin Morgan obituary (guardian.co.uk)
- Edwin Morgan: a universal treasure (guardian.co.uk)
- Scottish poet Edwin Morgan dies at 90 (cbc.ca)
- Poem of the week: A Trace of Wings by Edwin Morgan (guardian.co.uk)
On Saudade and Longing: Two Poems
August 26, 2010
Have you ever felt a deep longing for something or someone? Someone from your past, perhaps, or a place or time for which you feel an intense, nostalgic yearning.
There’s a wonderful word in Portuguese that describes this feeling: “Saudade,” which some define as a “feeling of incompleteness…due to the absence of someone or something…or the absence of a set of particular and desirable experiences and pleasures once lived.”
It can be very intense and somewhat hard to decipher. You know when you feel it, however — and when you got it bad. I’ve tried to describe it in two poems over the years; although one could argue it is a consistent theme in much of my poetry. (Perhaps it’s my Portuguese heritage?)
The first poem is called “Saudade,” and it was published in the literary journal Kimera in 2001:
Saudade
I feel beliefs that I do not hold.
I am ravished by passions I repudiate.
–Fernando Pessoa
We’re surrounded by people
who sentimentalize collegiate life,
swoon over first marriages,
would kill to return to Rome, or
wish for the restitution of days
gone by, or worse, days
they’ve never known.
(The Portuguese have a word for it,
saudade, a longing for lost things.)
For myself, I have fond memories
of houses in New England
(where my childhood
blossomed, disappeared);
of a life of the mind,
of places for a brief time mine.
But the only thing I long for
is the old cherry tree,
in front of our home
— we were newly wed —
how it dashed its branches
against our roof.
##
The second poem, “Longing,” is from my poetic sequence called “Dwelling,” which a poet friend of mine has described as “a phenomenology of how we live on the Earth.” This is the first time it has appeared anywhere (not for lack of trying!):
Longing
“Love is the distance
between you and what you love
what you love is your fate”
–Frank Bidart
Desire is a city street flush with longing;
losing is the darkness inhabiting that street.
Say that losing becomes a way of knowing,
words failing to capture its music–
Desire is to longing as longing is to losing.
If this is so, losing strengthens longing
as longing makes mystery of desire.
Concave mirrors cascading light in common focus
each reflecting and magnifying the other,
unformed or uninformed, but nevertheless–
Life’s little endings: the big unresolved, unrequited
unfolding of the world into what longing desires.
##
I’m not sure which poem is more successful at capturing that intensity of feeling and persistent yearning or desire. (Well, obviously, someone thought “Saudade” caught it better, for it found its way into print.)
Frankly, I’m not sure the word saudade can ever really be described in English; we just have to feel it to understand it.
What do you feel saudades about?
–Scott Edward Anderson
The Ten-Legged Polar Bear
August 12, 2010
Qupquigiaq drawing by Scott Edward Anderson
When I lived in Alaska, I heard a story from an Inupiaq man about the Qupqugiaq, a legendary ten-legged polar bear who renounces violence and tries to create a love-based community.
He also told about a time when some hunters came across a Qupqugiaq that had fallen into an ice hole and was struggling to get out.
Rather than kill it, they decided to help the bear out of the hole. This seemingly impossible task took a lot of team work. The more they struggled, however, the harder became the task. Only when they stopped and stood still for a moment did they realize their frantic actions were useless. Once they calmed down and worked in concentrated harmony the task became easier and the bear could be freed.
How often do we let the tasks at hand get the best of us, when what we really need is to calm and slow down?
Here is my poem about the Qupqugiaq, which originally appeared in Terrain:
“The Ten-legged Polar Bear”
(Qupqugiaq: a legendary ten-footed polar bear described
by the Inupiaq of Alaska’s Arctic North Slope.)
Ten legs are better than two
only if they work together—
when all five legs on one side
and all five legs on the other side
move in concert like a sled runner,
the Qupqugiaq moves smoothly,
but if the legs get tangled up
and one leg trips up another,
then another trips another,
the whole bear comes crashing
down; it takes a lot to get
a ten-legged polar bear upright
and get it moving again—
Think of our enterprise in humanity;
when we work well together,
what union of harmony and grace—
–Scott Edward Anderson, Terrain 13
I thought of this poem after reading a blog post by Jerry Colonna that featured David Wagoner’s poem “Lost.”
On Poetry & Business Life
August 6, 2010
Years ago I developed a talk called “Poetry & Business Life,” which I delivered to Rotary Clubs and other gatherings of business people. I thought of it today after this exchange on Twitter:
I began my talk, which is unfortunately too long to publish here, with an often quoted line by William Carlos Williams (the Doctor-poet):
“It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.”
The real news in my talk was about the importance of allowing poetry into our lives as business people — and yes, of opening our hearts and souls, too.
I also talked about how many poets take up other professions. Many are teachers, of course, but I was thinking about other professions: doctors, insurance salesman, vps of marketing, copywriters for ad agencies, bankers and publishers, to name a few famous examples.
It’s a product of our age that, with very few exceptions, poets can’t make a living from their craft. As poet Robert Graves said, “There is no money in poetry, but then/ there is no poetry in money either.”
Some, like Wallace Stevens, keep their poetry and business lives completely separate. But increasingly, as I wrote in my talk, “more and more poets are coming out of the board room and are more open about their corporate lives in their writing.”
I went on to observe
This is a good thing, both for poetry and for business. We need a greater understanding of the emotional ties and the spiritual side of the work we do. So much of our lives are spent among this certain group of people, who are not our family and not always our friends, but who nevertheless represent important relationships.
Together, we are a corpus, an enterprise of humanity, and there is much to be learned from our interactions.
Poetry can be a means to tap into the stories we share; for poetry, with its economical use of language, connects us with our compassionate selves as managers and as business people. Poetry can teach us how to find the balance within life and work, rather than between life and work.
We need poetry for exactly what can be found there and what it can bring to our lives in the office.
David Whyte, in his book The Heart Aroused, describes the need for poetry in what he calls “the fight to save the soul of corporate America.” Business people who bring poetry into their business lives and poets who bring their business lives into their poems are also saving poetry by making it more relevant to people’s lives.
This can only be a good thing for the future of poetry in America—and for business.
Scott Edward Anderson
Scott Edward Anderson's Poetry Blog 