To Preach or Tell the Truth?

Recently a Colorado TV station, KBDI, aired a wonderful program titled "Polis Is This"--a biography, in essence, of poet Charles Olson. If you are already familiar with his work, this film takes you back and features a host of his compatriots from Black Mountain College, some of whom I have met or heard read, so I was nostalgic about that aspect, as well as the clips of his home town in Massachusetts, the fishing town of Gloucester. As a fellow New Englander, I get his drive to explore the history and nuances of that place. Place--the great challenge for many of the poets whose work I turn to for guidance and example. How to get at the heart of one's experience with place, when I come from a family of vagabonds and immigrants? Our attachments to place are brief and, at times, mythic. We create a memory and grip it like a life preserver when we feel lost and alone. "If only I could have stayed in Happyville, where everybody knew my name." No wonder Cheers was so popular. Even the idea of having a regular pub appeals when, in fact, we have little to call our "local" and every place looks like a chain-store franchise.

What Olson felt and espoused was the particularity of his community, its mythic connections, its impact on his unique life, and his effect on that place. Olson was a big man, physically and emotionally and intellectually. He knew poetry in a deep and useful way. It filled his head and his days. He has a reputation for having taught classes (he probably would not have accepted such a regimented label as this) that lasted for hours when the discussion was vital and the people engaged. One time he went on for 24 hours, talking, talking, listening, listening. Makes the fifty-minute hour seem like chump change, doesn't it? What I came away with was a thirst for his poetry--very different from what is heard today--and a determination to serve this muse with more devotion. I don't want to preach, though I see that tendency in myself. I want to offer to anyone who can use it the truth of my unique experience in whatever place I find myself. Let them make use of it as they wish. That's the best that I can do, knowing the limitations of language and selection, the need to replace nostalgia for a burned out farm in Maine with insight into the Front Range and suburbia where I now live. To be a poet, really, is not fun, or not only fun. It's a responsibility to "notice what you notice," as Ginsberg says, and to report back with all possible honesty.

Books Matter

Like many tightwad readers, I often buy books at yard sales, thrift stores, and any cheap outlet I come across. Recently I brought home, among others, Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, a detailed case study and history of a Hmong child born in the US who developed a devastating seizure disorder. The child, Lia, had multiple admissions to a hospital in Merced, where the whole staff did their best, given an almost insurmountable divide between her parents and those who neither spoke Hmong nor understood the deeply held cultural beliefs that forbid surgery, invasive procedures, or ongoing Western medication. The Hmong, having suffered horribly during their escape from S. E. Asia, rely on their shamanistic blend of health care and spiritual advice--pretty much one and the same. No surprise, in retrospect, that Lia's doting parents never understood or approved of the treatment their daughter received. It all came to a sad end in which the child lived, but without any perceptible brain function beyond the brain stem. She breathed, her heart beat, she digested the food patiently spooned into her by a mother who ended up never leaving her daugher's side, she no longer seized because most of her brain was inert, but she never again spoke or knew what was happening to her.

What impresses me, in addition to the detailed and well written text, is the need for such books. As a nurse, I often faced language barriers and struggled to understand cultural difference. One has to in order to care for people who are, almost inevitably, different from oneself. I don't work as a nurse now, and I have no experience with Hmong culture, probably never will, but the book has given me what I need to try again and again to understand the diversity that is increasingly a part of being an American. The book holds that experience in place, makes it available for me to return to it, to share it with friends, to treasure the knowledge. Imagine that, a significant lesson in decency and its limits in the face of ignorance. All for a couple of dollars. Ah, books.

What a Difference a Week Makes

Well, a week ago I was all fired up about the weak language I heard from a politico, and now I'm fired up about a conversation with a group of poets in a coffee shop. The difference? We talked to one another, listened, had specific things to say, especially to one of our group who asked for help and advice. And the useful information kept her pen moving as she made lists of things she could do to learn the slippery art of poetry. For what has been described by some as a dying art, poetry elicited enthusiasm, energy, openness--things I value in conversation. There's the word that works--conversation--a spoken exchange. Ah, when we exchange words, all parties have a say. That's nice. In the age of text and twitter, the sound of a human voice, modulated to reach only those who want to hear it, is precious. A conversation suggests closeness, geographical proximity--not a newsreader on the other side of the continent--reciprocity, multidimensional sound, complete with tolerable interruptions, hesitancy, clarification, and the unique tone and timbre of each human voice.

Poems and stories, wonderful as they are, don't allow for the immediacy of talking face to face. We read and reflect, maybe write a note to the author, but we tell our coffee klatch or dinner companions about what we read. Speech is the most fluid and spontaneous use of language. It sometimes uses the sculptured sounds of poetry, but it also allows for laughter and the low murmur of sadness. Conversation cannot be called back without converting it to dialog, in which the writer prunes and shapes the sentences to fit the page. Much as I love making poems and stories, I value as much the increasingly rare chances to talk with patient, open-minded people. We worry about what high-tech life does to reading; shouldn't we also be concerned about what it does to conversation?

Arrrgh!

Last evening a large group of people gathered to hear one of our senators speak on health care reform. Well, first of all, the senator sent in the JV's and showed himself at the tail end of the meeting. And I do mean the end with the tail on it. How do people--citizens--put up with the vague language out of political mouths? No, the right question is why do we tolerate being talked at, talked down to, talked to death with no tangible results? If any poet or fiction writer I know stood in front of an audience and blathered on about how pretty the scenery is and how we might take a stand on an important issue, IF others will go along--we'd be hooted away from the mike, given the vaudevillian hook, the gong, the raspberry. Sometimes I wonder about politeness. It just makes me want to scream.

But my mama told me to use my inside voice, so I wrote a letter to said senator, listed my specific aspects of concern over health care and threatened to vote the whole slew of them-there law makers and breakers out of office the very next chance I get, if I haven't by then come down with some pre-existing, expensive illness which any insurance agent can dodge. Somehow the doctors and nurses and pharmacists have been left out of the discussion, let alone the patient. So, I'm not a patient, and I'm impatient: I want real speech backed by action. Bah, humbug, I'm going to do the laundry and write. At least Congress hasn't screwed up these modest daily activities. And I know how to put together a simple declarative sentence.

My Favorite Things

I've been reading Thich Nhat Hanh's The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, a book that fell into my hands when a friend was disposing of yet someone else's books. Guess I was meant to read it. So far what intrigues me is that the chapter I read this morning--on the patio with coffee and the dog and quiet all around--was about recognizing what makes us happy. This came within an hour of my flapping shut the journal with the thought, this bores me. I had nothing to say worth saying. Not a happy response from a woman who has a dog, a cup of coffee, and a patio with clematis and tomato blossoms, peppers, strawberries, and lemon cucumbers sprouting. And, who did not have to plant any of these wonders, because her talented daughter does the gardening. Now that right there, those growing things, ought to be enough. But add the old-soul eyes of Duncan the Dog, the dog, and the list grows. Then the blond grandson, who just got his orange belt in karate and pitched out three batters this summer, at ten years old, who can read faster than a speeding bullet, who actually wears his glasses, well, need I say more?

Yes, of course I can say more, for sure: Frank Gregg's music, Billy Collins's poems, the little yellow roses in a pot on the windowsill in front of me, my desk and laptop, the lovely red box where I stash miscellaneous desktop stuff, the blue sky through the window, my healthy fingers on the keyboard, my black shoes and my new sneakers. The classical music pouring out of the radio, an orchid plant on the bookcase, the bookcase and its contents. You get the idea. Boredom is an act of inattention. In a few minutes I'll go brush my teeth and be glad to have them. Later today I'll go to friends and share a barbecue. Who cannot appreciate a Sunday afternoon on the porch with live music, good conversation and guacamole?

Writing Prompts

We know that anything can be a prompt--form, sound, feeling, deadline pressure--but which ones work? I believe it differs for each of us. Usually, I respond to a phrase that has a halo of possibility around it. It might be a couple of words: "300 page widget" or "speaking in earnest." Or it might be a visual image: our choir director sitting with her aching foot propped up on a hymnal. Rarely a prompt comes when I'm hunting it like a snark in a Lewis Carroll episode. (And, by the way, snark is not in my big dictionary, though snarky is, from snore or snort. See how words lure me from my intentions?) The prompt I used this morning came from my friend Bill, "imaginary visitors." I imagine Thomas Hardy on my front porch, amazed at suburbia. How I'll pull it off, I have yet to know, because a prompt is just a little jolt of electrical energy to the brain, a battery to start the engine, but not a predictor of where the vehicle will finally come to a stop.

Once prompted, I have to follow the leads that free association provides. In each brain, those associations will be unique. No one else has the exact experience with Thomas Hardy that I have. This is not to say that mine are better or worse than yours. But I have to make a dozen decisions as I compose--oh, there's a nice sound combination, here's a gnarly line break, there's an image that engages me, but oops! I mixed metaphors in that spot. All of this and more happens almost simultaneously if I let it. But the instant I strain for effect, imagining the reader or listener, whether that be my writing partner Larry, or a gang of poets at our local readings, I lose the trail and have to chase my mind back into that thicket of composition, reminding myself that I will revise, that the prompt may lead to a place I've never been. And that's fun. Was it Robert Louis Stevenson who said a book is "a frigate to take me lands away"? A writing prompt is a ticket to Terra Incognita, to the future, to the Thomas Hardy past. One of these days I'll start a prompt file, but for now I must answer the door and hear what the man from Dorset has to say.

Writing Retreats

Last weekend Duncan the Dog and I drove south and west to the old mining town of Silver Cliff. Well, I drove, and he navigated. From the back seat. We had our own food and personal stuff, my journal and a good read (Rolling Thunder by Doug Boyd). Everything else we would need was waiting for us at Bloomsbury West, a vibrant blue and yellow cottage with a fenced yard and a couple of wonderful reading chairs. No television or wi-fi. There is a radio, which I chose to ignore, and there is cell phone service, but I turned the phone off. We took walks in this mountain valley at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo peaks, admired the highly individual houses, chatted a bit with the neighbors, and ignored any suggestion that the world is round, small, and troubled. I read all of Boyd's book and Frank McCourt's Teacher Man, which I found on the generous book shelf in the cottage. I sat in the shade and admired the spring plantings in the many-colored pots that ring the house. Hawks and crows and anonymous small birds provided an almost constant air show.

Oh, yes, I also wrote a section of a book I've been playing with. That's the ostensible reason for going to the place. Writerly seclusion. How about a more realistic description: the time to do nothing I didn't want to do. I ate when and what I wanted, slept when I was sleepy, and nibbled in some of the books, devoured others. I went "downtown" to adjacent Westcliff for lunch, looked into some of the shops--little or nothing there smacks of big business--and bought an interesting stone to take home and a lovely necklace made from a mineral I had not seen before. When we left the cottage on Sunday morning, I took Route 69 toward home and marveled every hundred yards at the open fields, still green and full of new calves, a pair of stunning paint horses, then the drama of bare wild rock and the attention grabbing road that slithers through the land near the Arkansas River. I had a moment of envy over the number of rafters spilling down the river. But mostly, I felt happy to be going home after a restful and somewhat productive weekend. 

I've been to communal retreats, made friends with other writers, listened closely to the leaders of workshops and seminars, focused on the readings, and written like a mad woman, forcing each moment at the retreat to yield WORK. Not so at Bloomsbury. No one drives me to write anything. Even my critical self backs off and I really do relax. So when you look at the ads in writers' magazines for retreats that ask for your work in advance to see if you are worthy, or charge you a hefty sum for the privilege of being there, think hard about the word retreat: "the act of withdrawing." (American Heritage). Retreats that actually ask you to engage might be better called Advances. Not the same thing at all.