Art Major to the Military History Minor

In the age before the ageless streams
You and I, agreeably,
Walked to the wild river's edge.
The whitecaps inspired in us a pledge:
In concord, we share everything.

In the time after that the clouds burst forth
and we witnessed thoughts, then births
Of storms of human madness and grief.
We learned our disciplines but took heed
Undone by colors and clashes.

But oh from the mountains active and high,
To their blueberry Pointillist hillsides I
Had sketched tomorrow, smeared faux-hieroglyphics.
Oh what a twist
Of fate that I had made it

Out of the depths of my own past intact.
To be thoroughly exact
One chooses edges and then calls for back-up
bolstered by the spirit who can't live with fractures
And I try to catch these notable diplomacies

In the roots at least of my painting.
Don't get me wrong, please.
I like standing, ears open, poised in time,
Waiting for the bell cry--it's easier than rhyme--
the Revere two-act that swoops up our world

And gallops toward hell with its tiny tomes
Of trillions and trillions of unclaimed treasures
Glittering in the night of the hope moon's light.
This rise and fall is what we both measure
And bring to the brush and the battle hymn.

Late Summer

We were driving
down Route 6
your stereo blasting
from dash to passing
scenery.

Corn and soy fields.
Muscle-thick
humidity.
The sky of sunset pinks
and reds.

You said
we would
be friends forever, said
"Damnit,
that's just the way it is."

That's the memory
in my head
and if pressed to say so
in my heart.
For what matter the corn?
what color the sky?
what shade of hazel
your eyes?

It makes no matter
to our storyline

for you were promising
and music
was everywhere
and they were
the very

same thing.

National Poetry Month Day 30

Freak
Susan Grimm

Grin. Pinch. At arm’s length. But then the tense line
melts, the willingness to leap, the creamy fall

into love, an engine that once begun purrs
perpetual adoration, the hearthfire that never

goes out—a boy in short pants or frontier girl
having carried the coal from one home to another.

It’s never over for a dog. The red glass breaks. Cold
sharpened votive tongues. Standing before the guttering

candles, wicked jokes that cannot be blown out.

*
A Theory of Bowers
Jesse McGuinness

: dwelling
sense of leafy arbor and tricky
needlework by mothlight.

Of cups of moss, of bud-blooded
sense of made and a stylus for the wing

work of ruby kinglets in low canopy.
And ever needles and fleecy spider throws

for a large clutch. Bark strips.
What has been left. What is leftover.

Sense of hollow place banded by twiggings:
The king ruds when riled. Of gems of eggs,

a dynasty of hovers over rootlegs
of white spruce and black, fir and stitch,

and the high canopy habits of still wires.
Of the paper airplane and its nest of sawdust
undreaming of its branches.

*
Untitled
Jonathan Sadowsky

In the city I have
the perfect camouflage.
Like the pigeons
I dress in gray.

I sit on the fire escape.
Even the pigeons are fooled.
Every few minutes
I make a flapping noise.

On the street
when someone walks towards me
I walk away.

National Poetry Month Day 29

You Are Right
Cathryn Essinger

In your super-logical,
analytical,
bumbling way,
with halting speech
and much digression,
you explain that male
mathematicians are rarely
verbal...

"Oh by the way,
did I mention that this theory
is largely unproven, but
nevertheless, quite probable?"
because of a pre-natal
super-dose of testosterone
to the left side of the brain
which suppresses the right
side of the brain
where you are currently
trying to express
your lack of verbal agility

while at the same time
peeling an orange,
stroking your mustache,
pulling your ear,
and making little finger-steeples.

And I am about to conclude
that you are right.

National Poetry Month Day 28

The Guild
Sharon Olds

Every night, as my grandfather sat
in the darkened room in front of the fire,
the bourbon like fire in his hand, his eye
glittering meaninglessly in the light
from the flames, his glass eye baleful and stony,
a young man sat with him
in silence and darkness, a college boy with
white skin, unlined, a narrow
beautiful face, a broad domed
forehead, and eyes amber as the resin from
trees too young to be cut yet.
This was his son, who sat, an apprentice,
night after night, his glass of coals
next to the old man's glass of coals,
and he drank when the old man drank, and he learned
the craft of oblivion--that young man
not yet cruel, his hair dark as the
soil that feeds the tree's roots,
that son who would come to be in his turn
better at this than the teacher, the apprentice
who would pass his master in cruelty and oblivion,
drinking steadily by the flames in the blackness,
that young man my father.

National Poetry Month Day 27

Subterranean Homesick Blues
Bob Dylan

Johnny’s in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I’m on the pavement
Thinking about the government
The man in the trench coat
Badge out, laid off
Says he’s got a bad cough
Wants to get it paid off
Look out kid
It’s somethin’ you did
God knows when
But you’re doin’ it again
You better duck down the alley way
Lookin’ for a new friend
The man in the coon-skin cap
By the big pen
Wants eleven dollar bills
You only got ten

Maggie comes fleet foot
Face full of black soot
Talkin’ that the heat put
Plants in the bed but
The phone’s tapped anyway
Maggie says that many say
They must bust in early May
Orders from the D.A.
Look out kid
Don’t matter what you did
Walk on your tiptoes
Don’t try “No-Doz”
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don’t need a weatherman
To know which way the wind blows

Get sick, get well
Hang around a ink well
Ring bell, hard to tell
If anything is goin’ to sell
Try hard, get barred
Get back, write braille
Get jailed, jump bail
Join the army, if you fail
Look out kid
You’re gonna get hit
But users, cheaters
Six-time losers
Hang around the theaters
Girl by the whirlpool
Lookin’ for a new fool
Don’t follow leaders
Watch the parkin’ meters

Ah get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don’t steal, don’t lift
Twenty years of schoolin’
And they put you on the day shift
Look out kid
They keep it all hid
Better jump down a manhole
Light yourself a candle
Don’t wear sandals
Try to avoid the scandals
Don’t wanna be a bum
You better chew gum
The pump don’t work
’Cause the vandals took the handles

National Poetry Month Day 26

Diving Into the Wreck
Adrienne Rich

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers

the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
abroad the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.
There is a ladder
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it's a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or week

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
and I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he
whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
Obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to the scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

National Poetry Month Day 25

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Wallace Stevens


Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

National Poetry Month Day 23

i carry your heart with me
e.e. cummings


i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

National Poetry Month Day 22

In Memory Of W.B. Yeats
W.H.Auden

I

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
The snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

II

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.

III

Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

National Poetry Month Day 21

The Hollow Men
T. S. Eliot



Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

National Poetry Month Day 20

Traveling Through the Dark
William Stafford

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason--
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all--my only swerving--
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

National Poetry Month Day 19

Two poems that explore the dislike of poetry:
"Poetry" by Marianne Moore and "Against Poetry" by Sandra Gilbert
*

Poetry
Marianne Moore

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless
wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse
that feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against "business documents and

school-books"; all these phenomena are important. One must make
a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
"literalists of
the imagination"--above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them,"
shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.

***
Against Poetry
Sandra Gilbert

Suddenly I too see
why everybody hates it--
the manifestos of metaphor, the mad
voice that mumbles all night
in the dark: this is like that, that
is this, the phosphorescent
flares of vision, the busyness
of words sweeping up
after all that sputter...

When the princess spoke toads
everybody loathes her,
but when her mouth spouted jewels
it was hardly better:

Not much difference, muttered the courtiers,
between a slide of slime, of jumpy
lumps on the table,
and a spurt of little glittering pellets
hitting you in the eye!

It would be more seemly all round
if that lady kept her shapely
lips
tightened on nothing.

Although, as a matter of fact,
those marshals and admirals
kept on dreaming of things
that were--like what?
like rubies? like
emeralds?

National Poetry Month Day 16

Name of Horses
Donald Hall

All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding
and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul
sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer,
for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range.

In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields,
dark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with oats.
All summer you mowed the grass in meadow and hayfield, the mowing machine
clacketing beside you, while the sun walked high in the morning;

and after noon's heat, you pulled a clawed rake through the same acres,
gathering stacks, and dragged the wagon from stack to stack,
and the built hayrack back, uphill to the chaffy barn,
three loads of hay a day from standing grass in the morning.

Sundays you trotted the two miles to church with the light load
a leather quartertop buggy, and grazed in the sound of hymns.
Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill
of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.

When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze,
one October the man, who fed you and kept you, and harnessed you every morning,
led you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond,
and dug a hole beside you where you stood shuddering in your skin,

and lay the shotgun's muzzle in the boneless hollow behind your ear,
and fired the slug into your brain, and felled you into your grave,
shoveling sand to cover you, setting goldenrod upright above you,
where by next summer a dent in the ground made your monument.

For a hundred and fifty years, in the Pasture of dead horses,
roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs,
yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter
frost heaved your bones in the ground - old toilers, soil makers:

O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost.

National Poetry Month Day 15

A Supermarket in California
Allen Ginsberg

What thoughts I have of you tonight Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

National Poetry Month Day 14

I Hear America Singing
Walt Whitman

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics—each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work;
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat—the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck;
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench—the hatter singing as he stands;
The wood-cutter’s song—the ploughboy’s, on his way in the morning, or at the noon intermission, or at sundown;
The delicious singing of the mother—or of the young wife at work—or of the girl sewing or washing—Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else;
The day what belongs to the day—At night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.

National Poetry Month Day 13

There's a Certain Slant of Light
Emily Dickinson

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are –

None may teach it – Any –
'Tis the Seal Despair –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air –

When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –

National Poetry Month Day 12

Fern Hill
Dylan Thomas

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

National Poetry Month Day 11

April Rain Song
Langston Hughes

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.

National Poetry Month Day 10

Untitled
Yogini Tara

An equal tempered scale
is unknown to the sea.

Ping of metal
our stern flag swivels
on small metal springs
flapping proudly in the wind.

Sigh and moan the two-tone
call of a wind pinned hull
rubber fenders squeeze
a wooden dock.

In what key does the lightning
crack the thunder drum the
rain filled wind scream?

Where is the fat lady
when you need
her when you
forget how
safe this
hull is
in a storm?

What if we all
merrily sing
off key?

National Poetry Month Day 9

Chaplinesque
Hart Crane

We will make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

National Poetry Month Day 8

The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

National Poetry Month Day 7

Lesbos
Sylvia Plath

Viciousness in the kitchen!
The potatoes hiss.
It is all Hollywood, windowless,
The fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible migraine,
Coy paper strips for doors
Stage curtains, a widow's frizz.
And I, love, am a pathological liar,
And my child look at her, face down on the floor,
Little unstrung puppet, kicking to disappear
Why she is schizophrenic,
Her face is red and white, a panic,
You have stuck her kittens outside your window
In a sort of cement well
Where they crap and puke and cry and she can't hear.
You say you can't stand her,
The bastard's a girl.
You who have blown your tubes like a bad radio
Clear of voices and history, the staticky
Noise of the new.
You say I should drown the kittens. Their smell!
You say I should drown my girl.
She'll cut her throat at ten if she's mad at two.
The baby smiles, fat snail,
From the polished lozenges of orange linoleum.
You could eat him. He's a boy.
You say your husband is just no good to you.
His Jew-Mama guards his sweet sex like a pearl.
You have one baby, I have two.
I should sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb my hair.
I should wear tiger pants, I should have an affair.
We should meet in another life, we should meet in air,
Me and you.

Meanwhile there's a stink of fat and baby crap.
I'm doped and thick from my last sleeping pill.
The smog of cooking, the smog of hell
Floats our heads, two venemous opposites,
Our bones, our hair.
I call you Orphan, orphan. You are ill.
The sun gives you ulcers, the wind gives you T.B.
Once you were beautiful.
In New York, in Hollywood, the men said: "Through?
Gee baby, you are rare."
You acted, acted for the thrill.
The impotent husband slumps out for a coffee.
I try to keep him in,
An old pole for the lightning,
The acid baths, the skyfuls off of you.
He lumps it down the plastic cobbled hill,
Flogged trolley. The sparks are blue.
The blue sparks spill,
Splitting like quartz into a million bits.

O jewel! O valuable!
That night the moon
Dragged its blood bag, sick
Animal
Up over the harbor lights.
And then grew normal,
Hard and apart and white.
The scale-sheen on the sand scared me to death.
We kept picking up handfuls, loving it,
Working it like dough, a mulatto body,
The silk grits.
A dog picked up your doggy husband. He went on.

Now I am silent, hate
Up to my neck,
Thick, thick.
I do not speak.
I am packing the hard potatoes like good clothes,
I am packing the babies,
I am packing the sick cats.
O vase of acid,
It is love you are full of. You know who you hate.
He is hugging his ball and chain down by the gate
That opens to the sea
Where it drives in, white and black,
Then spews it back.
Every day you fill him with soul-stuff, like a pitcher.
You are so exhausted.
Your voice my ear-ring,
Flapping and sucking, blood-loving bat.
That is that. That is that.
You peer from the door,
Sad hag. "Every woman's a whore.
I can't communicate."

I see your cute decor
Close on you like the fist of a baby
Or an anemone, that sea
Sweetheart, that kleptomaniac.
I am still raw.
I say I may be back.
You know what lies are for.

Even in your Zen heaven we shan't meet.

National Poetry Month Day 6

Why I Am Not a Painter
Frank O'Hara

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink” he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
All that’s left is just
letters, “It was too much,” Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.

National Poetry Month Day 5

We Real Cool
by Gwendolyn Brooks

We real cool.
We Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

National Poetry Month Day 4

"I Have a Dream"
speech by Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."¹

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."2

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

National Poetry Month Day 3

Blowin' in the Wind
Bob Dylan

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, ’n’ how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ’n’ how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, ’n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ’n’ how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ’n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ’n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind



Listen to Bob singing his song:
http://s0.ilike.com/play#Bob+Dylan:Blowin%27+In+The+Wind:10279:s1594513.8166983.4657974.0.1.78%2Cstd_399ef747d99f6ce88708afcdf5607a97

National Poetry Month Day 2

Eating Poetry
by Mark Strand

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man,
I snarl at her and bark,
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

National Poetry Month Day 1

The Greatest Poem Ever Written

There once was a lady of station.
"I love man" was her sole exclamation.
When men cried, "You flatter!"
She replied, "Oh! no matter.
'Isle of Man' is the true explanation."

(Happy April Fool's Day! This is NOT the greatest poem ever written. But limericks are fun, and so is April 1st. See you tomorrow.)

Flying by the Seat of Her Vision

She enters the Japanese restaurant briskly. It is an extremely cold wintry evening in Cleveland’s Coventry neighborhood, and much snow is falling on an already deep blanket of white and city-street gray.

She is dressed in a long, black, puffy-quilted coat. She wears leather and rubber winter boots and a duck-brimmed, plaid wool cap with ear flaps, which looks not unlike the hat that L.L. Bean wore one hundred years ago on his outdoor excursions that inspired a company of clothing and that made northern winters more endurable. For acquiescing to the need to bundle—for daring, actually, to be warm despite the Cleveland freeze and tendency here to under-bundle—she commands, dressed like this, some sort of quirky respect.

She greets her friend at the table while beginning her outerwear peel. Underneath her coat she wears a polka dot and striped scarf that in no way, shape, or form in anyone’s fashion book could ever match the plaid of her hat, or the patterning of her thick winter sweater, even if fashion irony were the goal, and in her case, for she is far from ironic, it is not. From her mis-matched ensemble, one gets the sense she selected her clothing based on the warmth factor and the warmth factor only. She piles these warming winners—her coat, scarf, gloves, and finally hat—on a spare chair at the table, atop her friend’s outer gear.

Based on her bundling, one might peg our friend as a practical woman. And one would be right, to a degree. She has a government job, so, obviously, she sees both the upside and downside to bureaucracies, wanting security but no bull, weighing the drawbacks and their saturation points perpetually against her career trajectory. In this day and age, she still carries a paper calendar (insists on the low-tech, low-cost originate of the PDA). She is married, owns a home, and keeps to a stringent budget. Her hair is no-nonsense, long and simply cut, and if she wears make-up, one would not know it by looking at her.

But our friend is much more than just practical. She plays flute and is a music theory whiz, holding dual music master’s degrees. She is a gifted photographer, having recently had her own show. She is a jewelry maker with eclectic taste. And she aspires at times to want to make her living entirely as an artist.

*
‘Did I tell you this?’ and ‘did I tell you that?’ Over hot water with lemon and miso soup, she and her dinner companion converse, typical talk for friends who haven’t sat one-to-one in some time. They update one another on all details of daily living: jobs, houses, finances, friends, families, vacation, diet, exercise, crises, and worries. Snow continues to fall as the women run through their daily life tales.

And then, as is always the case when they’re together, a shift occurs.

*
They sit back and delve now, after almost an hour of talk, for this is the point in the conversation they both fought the elements to make. This is the point in their dinner where their laughter increases, they lean toward each other more, their certainty rises, and their gestures grow emphatic. Their eyes lock more in collegial understanding than in woman-friend understanding, for this is the point in their conversation when the conversation turns to art.

There is something more to the woman artist, the woman who has more to express and who has more at stake for expressing it. And there is something more that two artistic women sitting together in a Japanese restaurant on a cold snowy night need to tend to beyond the day-to-day. Discussing sashimi is one thing. Discussing how one is making a sashimi-inspired necklace is another.

For conversation beyond the mundane is crucial in the development and well-being of a woman artist. After all, it is in these moments of deeper inquiry and verbal musings with friends and trusted colleagues when food for thought might become energy for a new project, or conviction becomes a promise revisit an old one. Women artists talking together is life giving us more, and, in reciprocity, asking more of us.

They discuss an idea for a book. They talk about collaboration. They tangentially discuss the value of art for and by needy children and both know after a few minutes the topic is too large and will require a separate meeting. They comment, as the snowfall outside slows, that this might be the year for an art undertaking involving yoga. They are inspired. They sigh and sip their soup and eat sushi.

*
And then our friend hears from her dinner mate how wonderful she found her recent photography show and how of all the great things in the world, it would be the greatest right now if she could afford the newest version of her photo editing software, for it is clear her work is unique, and her editing talents endless. Our friend says thank you, and, yes, it’d be great to get more training in digital editing, and that she does a pretty good job with what she has, that being an old, clunky version. She hears her friend say, “Hm. You do a REALLY great job, given that.”

Our friend says thank you again and reaches for her hat atop the mound of winter wear, for the bill has been paid, and it is time to go. She says, putting on her duck-billed hat, “I would really like that, to learn more technique. Instead of flying by the seat of my vision.” They share a smile. The women rise, get re-bundled, leave the restaurant, and say their goodbyes.

Our friend’s friend walks to her car and imagines color in the sky, shapes, fabrics, photography, words on paper, paint on canvas. Flags. Children dancing to song in the sunlight. Birds. When will it be spring? Our friend’s friend walks—the snow has stopped but the freeze pervades—grateful for those who dare share their day-to-day AND their deepest realms, grateful for those who despite common housekeeping encumbrances and life practicalities go ahead and fly regardless.

Flying by the seat of one’s vision. She thinks she might know this much: There is nothing greater one could do in life. Everything else is just the mitten that warms the hand, the soup that fills the belly. Take care of those things for all, yes. Then get down to the business of beauty.

One Person

I am sitting in the airport, and I don’t know who I am. I would like to say I am you, for you, stranger, wear a suit of the most beautiful black fabric, which is silky and soft, and you carry a strong, black bag. Your shoes are black and matte and your belt is, too, and despite of all the dark clothing you wear, you give off an idea of lightness and current the way a window in a quiet, dark space cannot help but illumine. I might not talk into my cell phone as much as you do yours, but I would like to say I am you, because as you talk hands-free in this crowded airport you pace, calmly gesticulate, look out the grand airport windows with your sky blue eyes. I would like to say I am you because you are conducting business while hundreds around you have nothing to do with what you are doing, and that seems to be all right with you, for like the gray light coming through these large airport windows, you seem completely at home. I would like to say I am you because you are a professional person likely associated with an organization of some importance in which you share an intensely vested interest, and I assume they are invested in you, or at least this is my hope as I watch you bow your head to dial another number on your phone and listen for the ring, because if I were you, if I were you, I would want to know someone on the other end of this phonecall had me in the palm of some caring hand, or hands. As it is, now, though, I wish I were you simply so I could call someone on that cell phone of yours with some answers, for I am walking through he airport, and I don’t know who I am.

I am seated in the auditorium, and I don’t know who I am. I would like to say I am you, for when the curtain rises, you, dancer, are alone on the stage. You are a dancer, seated on a backless bench. On a bench alone. You are seated on a bench, alone, dressed in stretchy fabric, stretchy fabric that makes for you not a tunic but a tunic with a seamless hood, which, really, makes a tunnel. You are dressed in your fabric tunnel, and it is solid in color, and somber. You start slowly moving to music that must be, I feel right away, the song of unceasing pain. I would like to say I am you because the world watching can barely see your face, but as you begin to dance, you stay seated, and its sees your limbs beginning to move, stretching the fabric, and your shoulders moving in concert with your awkward, unwitting arms, and your head is turning and your torso is contracuting within the cocoon costume that you wear. I would not be able to turn my head or contract my muscles as deliberately as you, but I would like to say I am you because now as you dance, still seated, you are dancing both the dance of tightness and pain and at the same time the dance of surrender to pain’s holdings. If I were you, I would do my best to offer that to those watching me, just as you are: kick up a foot or two or, like you, stand up for just a moment in order to offer the whole body to the dance, to the audience, to the theme of unlimited lament that it suggests, like you. And I would add to the dance the elemental query: Am I you? Do you see me in you? If so, do you know who I am? because I am sitting here watching the dance, and though I am a member of an audience, and I am watching you, and when you stop I applaud for you, and I cry for what I have seen and felt, I still don’t know who I am.

I am a guest in your monastery, about to enter the meditation room for early morning sadhana, and I don’t know who I am. I would like to say I am you, for you arrive at the door and be-drape silently, taking your gray robe from a wooden rack on the wall that holds at least a dozen other robes just like yours. Because it is cold here in this monastery this early morning, you are wearing white socks, and you take several soft steps in them as you dress. It is so quiet I can hear the effect of your cotton-covered feet padding peaceful, as opposed to my barefoot-stick sonorousness, which is my situation, across the floor. I would like to say I am just like you because as you passed me in the hall moments ago and put your hands in prayer position at your heart and bowed your head to kindly and silently greet me, and I did the same, I felt welcomed, both by you and by this place, of which there is a seamless unified breathing. I wish I could be just like you, for as I watch you in the meditation room making preparations, I note clearly you are incapable of distinguishing between the hierarchy of what and for whom more everyday people reserve their smiles: human beings, great ideas, art, and love. In any place, really, real or imagined, I would like to be like you, in other words, for you walk around with a nearly continual half-opened eyed smile of serenity on your face, offering said smile to plants, ceilings, rugs, bells, and cushions you are placing on the floor around the room in a semi-circle. I might not shave my head as you have done, but I would like to say I am you, I would like to say I am you, for the wooden mala beads I see you are wearing around your wrist as you pull up your sleeves and sit now for Zazen are something I own too, so in a way, I feel I am resembling you. And that makes me smile. And that makes me humble, and still, but still, I don’t know who I am.

I am walking through the past, and I don’t know who I am. I would like to say I am you, for you are sitting, reading a book. You are eight years old, and the chair you sit in is too large for you. I might not pick the same book as you to read, but I would like to say I am you because you have a look on your face that I admire, of soft, innocent peacefulness: not a care in the world, as goes the cliché. I would like to say I am you because you have not lived long enough to know the deep waters owned by time, its currents, its crashes, but I feel that by watching you, I sense its first mighty encumbrance in your life (however well you plan, you, like everyone, young one, shall not avoid it) shall not tear down the break wall of your being, young as that break wall is, and I would like to say I am you because this scene—you, reading, quiet--suggests such shored-up strength. I would like to say I am you without hesitation now because as a man walks into the room and comes to you and says your name, I see the origins of the break wall’s composition: You look up and smile instantly, shockingly energy-shifting swiftly, and jump out of your chair, your now-irrelevant book crashing to the irrelevant floor, all signs of peaceful passing passed. He picks you up and hugs you and swings you around, and you are saying hello with joy to a man who is probably your father. I would like to say I am you for I would like to know the feelings such an encounter renders. I would like to say I am you so that I could grow again, re-grow, an orchid under such exotic conditions, under such a lucky star as this situation seems to suggest, that you are the child of something that is a child of something, and that in all that passage of all that is right, it is all right.

I don’t know who I am. What am I to do? What am I to do? I am a piece of this and a piece of that and came from this but not from that, and I stand here in the moment, all moments, alone, going through the plethora of my perturbations and longings, going through myriad, happenstance tableaux, formed pictures in my life, of my life. A borderless bounty extant somewhere in the frontiers of not only our minds, hearts, and memories, but also of our souls, beckons us all, they say, eventually, and sometimes I feel I am at the shore of that beckoning. Would that be the call of the wild? Is that the song of angels? Is this the ‘yuj’ in yoga? I don’t know who I am. I only know: I am.

True Blue: Glimpsing the Na’vi

I finally saw Avatar. While I did not love it, I will admit I cannot stop thinking about it. The notion of the avatar itself is my favorite part of this film.

What is an avatar? In internet land, we know it to be a being we select or create to represent ourselves. But the word has much older roots than late 20th-Century computer-generated entity making. The word avatar is ancient, from Sanskrit avatāra, meaning ‘a passing down’. In Hindu mythology, it refers to a deity who descends to Earth in a shape recognizable to humans. Usually, as in many ancient religions, powerful deities/gods/God have long-sent avatars down to us to engage with us, teach us a lesson, and either help us change or preserve our course.

Avatar employs both the contemporary and ancient meanings of the word. The contemporary treatment is obvious, a basic premise of the film that someday might very well be reality: Science advances to the point where science-makers can align one’s human consciousness, personality, and will to the body of a manufactured being—an avatar--and transport that created one into another world to accomplish a mission. In this film, it is mankind sending its own avatars outward rather than deities sending its avatars ‘downward’ to man.

While the contemporary depiction of the avatar in the film is clear, Avatar also treats the ancient notion of the avatar, and this is nothing short of lovely. It is precisely this ancient treatment of the avatar that continues to occupy my imagination.

As I mentioned, the word avatar comes from India’s ancient and spiritual language, Sanskrit. So who were the avatars of ancient India, and what can a glimpse at an ancient avatar tell us about this film? As a yogi and an artist who has always loved India, I am deeply fond of many ancient Hindu deities and of one avatar in particular. It is this avatar, in fact, who appears en masse in the film, much to my delight.

Vishnu is a great and powerful Hindu god. He is the second member of Hinduism’s great trilogy (“trimurti”), the others being Brahma (creator) and Shiva (destroyer). Vishnu manifests himself several times on Earth in the form of avatars. Known as ‘the preserver’, Vishnu sends us one of the most recognizable avatars in all of world mythology: Krishna. The film Avatar seems to me to be a film about Krishna.

Krishna is depicted variously in the many Hindu tales. Sometimes a child, often a prankster, almost always a flute-playing wooer of lovely women, and categorically a protector of cows and of sacred words, Krishna totes the human spiritual and well-being line. He also serves as wise counsel on the topic of war to the soldier Arjuna, bereft on the battlefield in The Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu scripture. Krishna is what humans could be: worshipful, fun-loving, strong, wise, peaceful, and kind. But what is most fascinating is that, in fact, Krishna is something that humans can’t really be. Krishna is BLUE.

He has a human shape and behaves like a human, but he has, simply, deep blue skin. (‘Krishna’ literally means ‘the dark one.’) Krishna, the Vishnu avatar, is both human and a step beyond human. He is not orange or brown or black or yellow or any color even slightly resembling the colors of our world’s many races. Blue humans are cold, sick, or dead. Krishna is nothing but filled with life. As an avatar, he completely embraces all things, including blueness, and thus pays homage to the entire life cycle. Krishna’s blueness, therefore, invites humans to celebrate rather than fear the cooler, darker side of blue. Krishna brings blue to life.

So what better color for our Na’vi to be than blue? By manifesting them as blue, James Cameron has flipped the Krishna myth and the act of avatar-creation on its head to offer us a valuable statement of the contemporary human mindset.

Being charged with blueness and a Krishna-nature, Cameron’s spectacular Na’vi re-tell the tale of the pastoral, of nature respect, and of life as organic, artistic expression. Compared with many of the humans in this film, the Na’vi themselves are almost, in fact, godlike. Certainly, they are close to and regularly commune with their gods. This film provides contemporary audiences with the chance to see mighty blue people living in perfect peace, at one with glorious nature, and in perpetual states of environmentally stable beauty that Krishna would have approved of and enjoyed.

In addition, Cameron has made the avatar creator not a deity but a human, more in keeping with our contemporary notion of the avatar, and the message is much grimmer than what the land filled with Krishna-like beings offers.

Man’s avatars in this film are at first completely alien to Na’vi ways. Deities, on the other hand, are never aliens. (That’s what makes them deities. They are privy to all we do.) Thus, deities’ avatars are filled with know-how and wisdom to act as the effective go-between in the lands of heavenliness and earthliness, but man-created avatars are mere puppets, tools, says this film, and must learn from those they are visiting. In this case, human-created avatars are fairly powerless, mere extensions of human ego, while the Na’vi are enlightened spirits living ego-free and in that regard more resemble the ancient avatar.

The happy ending of this film is not a color transformation but a spiritual one: The blue avatars in our film decide to learn to be true blue, true avatars, and truly good despite their incredibly flawed creators, man.

The Krishna-Na’vi association and the focus on human as avatar-maker in Avatar sends a message that humans, as much as we have power, must use it to help others, not hurt them. The film seems to offer a message of the importance of treating all beings well. In that, this film is yogic.

In a future blog, I will look more closely at the spiritual and militaristic themes in Avatar.

Hater/Haiti: Thoughts on “Slactivism”

I learned a new word today: slactivist. It seems to refer to people who become activists only when it’s trendy. Or, on a more mundane level, it seems to refer to people who when real tragedy strikes rise from their couches and give something or take a stand briefly in order to help. Or feel better. Or both.

My problem with the word ‘slactivist’ is that it is extraordinarily judgmental. It assumes a working knowledge of intention behind others’ acts of giving. It suggests, worse, that those who are giving under self-centered conditions (“only if it’s a tax write-off, lovey”) are to be hated and put down.

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Even if they were to tell you exactly why they did it, it is not your business to speculate about Brad and Angela’s reasons for writing a whopping check for this cause and that. It’s none of your business how much kick-back they get and how many pictures get snapped of them in their giving moments. They are giving, and that very act needs to be respected. Altruistic giving, no matter what’s behind it, is the business between the giver and receiver.

It is none of your business if those with the biggest bucks give anything at all, or when, or why. It would be a better world those who are well off did give more, but it’s not yet the case that our greed-based capitalistic economy and superficial culture can or will give it up on a free-flowing basis to those most in need. The day will come when resources are more evenly distributed throughout the world, but dissing someone who acts only when tragedy strikes rather than, say, create a life as an agent for long-term change smacks of our greatest shortsightedness: As beings, we tend toward separation rather than unity. Would those who dislike slactivists prefer the slactivists not give, not act? I doubt it.

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So why the label? Why judge? Are we not all trying to be more loving, giving? Are we all not here to learn how to give from the heart? Some are born knowing how to give the shirts of their backs. Many, however, have to learn it. And many never achieve giving to that degree but rather give when it’s convenient or advantageous. They are still giving. Period.

It is fine with me if slactivists are coming out of the woodwork now to help Haiti when yesterday they might not have been able to find Haiti on the map. And it is fine with me if these slactivists are suddenly moved to give some money or volunteer their time when normally they would not. There is a chance they will never give again, yes. There is that chance. But there is a chance they will.

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Yes, these dollars and volunteer efforts to help Haiti survive this devastating earthquake are not intended for lasting, long-term change. Current conditions-—the need to rescue and provide water, shelter, comfort, and medical care-—completely trump any past lack of long-term planning and aid intended to raise Haiti from its extreme state of poverty. Save that for another, new day. Complaining that we are suddenly there for Haiti now when in the past we haven’t been is like complaining while someone is trying to keep a child, who’s had an accident, from bleeding to death that no one has given much yet toward the child’s college fund, and how dare that be the case?

Tragedy makes us humble. Tragedy can make us strong. But like anything, I learned today through this word ‘slactivism’ that tragedy can also make us bitter and smart-assy. We cannot—-should not—-strike a bitter chord when tragedy strikes. Rather, we should strike a chord of deeper compassion, deeper unity. We should not divide our ranks and waste our energies wondering who is giving, who is not, and why. We should rise together and trust that we are all doing our best, and ring the bells of unity when doing so. For now, bring on whatever help you can, for whatever reason. Help Haiti.