A Poem A Day, Week Four Plus Two Days

Welcome to the end of National Poetry Month! I wound up reading hundreds of poems, I'd say at least three hundred, in this project of reading "one a day." Made me kind of miss being an English major, sitting in a classroom discussing them.



Living In The Body - Joyce Sutpen (Tuesday)
Maybe because I'm almost almost forty or because of dance and working out at the gym - which was a direct result of the car wreck - I'm much more attached to my body than I ever used to be.


The Iceberg Theory - Gerald Locklin (Wednesday)
Truth be told, iceberg is the only lettuce I really like. I've only met one other adult who will admit to liking it; a lot of people I know profess to hate it. Water, fiber, crunch: What's not to like?


The Walloping Window-Blind - Charles Edward Carryl (Thursday)
I've never seen this poem before. It sounds like Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky, including the made-up words. What fun!


The Jabberwocky - Lewis Carroll (Friday)
When I was in eighth grade I played the Mock Turtle in a version of Alice In Wonderland that traveled from school to school. We might do two performances a day, sometimes on a stage and sometimes at one end of a classroom (one time we performed in a space that was eight feet long and six feet wide). At the end we performed this poem, reciting in unison and acting it out. In my Mock Turtle costume, I was part of the beast.


Sweater Weather: A Love Song to Language - Sharon Bryan (Saturday)
Another silly word poem.


Romeo And Juliet, Act II, Scene iii -William Shakespeare (Sunday)
Specifically the speech in which Juliet dreams about having sex with her new husband just before learning Romeo has been banished for murdering Tybalt. My favorite lines are

O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy'd. . .

Whew!


Filling Station - Elizabeth Bishop (Monday)
While there are never any people around, this poem makes me think somehow of the gas pumps in front of the general store in Twin Lakes, Colorado.


The Snow Man - Wallace Stevens (Tuesday)
My Norton's calls Wallace "a third great imaginative force" since the deaths of Yeats and Eliot. I think I need more education, or at least more immersion, before I will be able to understand his poetry.


Tulip Field, MacLean Road, Skagit Valley - Sam Green (Wednesday)
Bink suggested I check out Washington State's Poet Laureate, who lives on an island neighboring her island. This is the only poem of his I could find online, and it makes me wish that I had had an interest is looking at flowers when I lived in the state.

The Village, In My Life

There is a story in today's SF Chronicle Magazine about a man whose wife died last year. She was also the mother of two little boys six and four years old. Despite the lame (and misleading) title, the story is actually about how his wife had created a community and how this man is able to lean on those folks for help with raising his kids and keeping his life together.


My brother and I were those two little kids in 1974 when our father died. People stepped in to help with us, too. We didn't know that they were helping Mom; they were just there.

More Mystery Plants

A couple months ago Zirpu planted a yam that was starting to grow in the produce basket. We do not know which one of these, if any, are from the yam.

A Poem A Day, Week Three

Prayer for A Marriage - Steve Scafidi (Tuesday)
A friend of mine is getting married Friday and another friend is getting married Saturday. Each couple has a different story and a different set of circumstances, but they both deserve the same wish.

Happiness - Raymond Carver (Wednesday)
I got home around 5:30 this morning. The sun had not breached the hill to the east of the house. The air smelled damp, and the birds' chirps sounded exactly like the alarm my brother had when we were in high school. Those recognitions were the "early morning stuff/that passes for thought" today.

Alphabet - Seamus Heaney (Thursday)
The more the child learns, the more complex the poem becomes. I especially like the way Heaney describes the way to make a letter in the first part.

The Possessive Case - Lisel Mueller (Friday)
When I was growing up, there was a clipping from the New Yorker on the bulletin board at our house. Mom had hung it up. I studied it and studied it, following the long line of the poem, which I did not realize was a poem at the time (I'm not sure I see it as a poem now, though it is clever). I thought it was just something silly that caught Mom's eye - then I found it in Good Poems.

We Real Cool - Gwendolyn Brooks (Saturday)
This is as clear as a photo, in 24 words. It could be a rap - that's how clear it is.

That Colorado Still Means Colored Stuns - Al Young (Sunday)
I learned more Colorado history reading this poem than I have in all my trips out there.

Soybeans - Thomas Alan Orr (Monday)
I've been thinking so much recently about food availability, about the intersection of grain as food and grain as fuel source, about the price of rice in the Philippines and the price of bread in the US. I've been thinking about the farmers, the bakers, the ranchers, the butchers.

Everywhere!

Saturday I picked up my very own copy of the previously mentioned Good Poems. On Sunday, there was an interview with California State Poet Laureate Al Young in the newspaper. I wasn't familiar with his work, so I Googled him. There was also a terrible review of a book about Allen Ginsberg in India, in which the reviewer can only praise the parts that quote Ginsberg. Furthermore, Seamus Heaney is discussed in the novel I'm currently reading, so I looked him up in my Norton's. When I went to look up some information about "Dayenu" on Prairie Home Companion yesterday, there were tons of poems right on the home page. I turned on the radio last night and Alice Walker was reading from Absolute Trust In The Goodness of the Earth on To The Best of Our Knowledge.


Bink sent me an email warning me that there was a piece on This American Life on "This Is Just To Say" in which they parodied my favorite poem. She said some of the parodies were quite dark. It has never occurred to me to parody it, which is probably why I got such a kick out of Erica-Lynn Gambino's version, though now that I've heard a few, it does seem to lend itself. I almost didn't listen to it ("act two" starts about 50 minutes in) because I thought it might ruin the original for me, but I couldn't resist. The one I like the best is the one least like the original, in which the narrator forgives her mother for everything.... including leaving.

Dayenu!

Definition: It is enough for us. . .


It is Passover, the springtime feast of thanks at which the story of God bringing the Jews out of slavery in Egypt is told. Because telling myself stories is how I make sense of the world, how, I think, a lot of people - and peoples - make sense of the world, this ritual connects me to others regardless of my personal beliefs, because I allow it to do so.


I did not organize attending a Seder this year. I was a little sad about this, though to be honest, this last week was so busy that I was very happy to not have to go anywhere this weekend (other than work, which was bad enough). This afternoon, I turned on the radio just as the intermission for A Prairie Home Companion was ending, and after reading the audience's greetings, Garrison Keillor had his musical guests go into a couple of Passover songs. The first one was a devotional song listing God's attributes alphabetically (much shorter than I expected, though the Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters). The second one was Dayenu, a clap-along rendition led by the twelve-piece swing band Kustbandet. Hearing that song made me so happy that it is enough Passover for me this year.

In For A Penny, In For A Pound

I celebrated my April Unbirthday at the Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge this week. Tuesday is my "late day" and it's close to work, and several folks showed up. When I got there, a couple people had already ordered me the traditional birthday drink, the Forbidden Island Mai Tai. As you can see, it came with a flaming sugar cube on top. This was good since I forgot my "4" and "0" candles. It also came with a Forbidden Island Tiki Mug, which I'm considering using at the food bank as a coffee cup.


Three-quarters of the way through the drink I realized I shouldn't drive home. Zirpu couldn't come to the party because he is at a conference this week, so some strategizing followed about how to get back to Alameda in the morning if I left my car there. Once I knew one drink was too much to drive home on, I kept drinking. In for penny, in for a pound. With BART and cabs I knew that I would only be incoveniencing myself, though everyone was very kind about offering to drive me from BART in the morning or a place to sleep over that night. One of the things I was aware of was that some of the people at the party are volunteers at the food bank, so I felt like since I'm their "manager" I had to be extra careful to show good judgment, to not reflect poorly on myself.


I went to a 21st birthday party on Saturday, which I think is the first one I've attended since I was in my mid-twenties. I was joking with a friend about "showing these young'uns how it's done" but somehow I was on the BART and on my way home before 11pm that night. It must be said that we had dinner at 6pm, so the party had started early, but still. . .


I guess Wednesday night, when I wound up sleeping for a few hours at MA's place and getting home at 5:30, I did show 'em how it's done. Of course, no one was watching.