Day Thirty - A Movie Version of A Blessing by James Wright

We've reached the end of another April. I've tried desperately to keep up as I've posted a new poem or poetry related feature every day this month, but life has gotten in the way a few times. Still, I hope you've enjoyed the new poems, found something fresh in the old poems, and taken insights and questions away from We Convince By Our Presence this year. It is my intention to continue on a for a fifth year in 2012. I will occasionally post new content (probably more of these movie versions of poems) throughout the year. As always, your comments and ideas are greatly appreciated. Here's to the many ways that poetry makes our lives better!

Day Twenty Nine - You Reading This, Be Ready by William Stafford

YOU READING THIS, BE READY

Starting here, what do you want to remember?

How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?

What scent of old wood hovers, what softened

sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world

than the breathing respect that you carry

wherever you go right now? Are you waiting

for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this

new glimpse that you found; carry into evening

all that you want from this day. This interval you spent

reading or hearing this, keep it for life---

What can anyone give you greater than now,

starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

---William Stafford

William Stafford's You Reading This, Be Ready

I, like the other 7 billion people on earth right now, have moments where life dazzles and delights me, where I'm in awe of everywhere, everything, and everyone around me. These are the moments I live for...but these moments are special because they are rare. They naturally arise without expectation or anticipation and they just as naturally recede into the minutiae of routines and normal daily life. After reading William Stafford's poem You Reading This, Be Ready, I noticed that the greatest trait we, as human beings, can possess just might be contentment. To be content, truly content, requires a sense of awareness, purpose, and focus that for most people is unattainable. Contentment is hard work! You have to assess your life and the metrics of the world with the most honest vision. This quest takes us into our greatest desires, hopes, and dreams, and while these possibilities can be invigorating the honesty part is certainly a buzz kill. For example, contentment means accepting that because I'm 5 feet 8 inches tall there is very little chance that I'll ever play power forward for the Chicago Bulls. Coming to grips with this realization and other far more traumatic ones is the hard work of finding contentment. The grind continues when you take stock of the good in your life, because conversely you must consider the horrors you've avoided. I might have gripes about my apartment, my car, and my job, but at least I haven't weathered the atrocities of civil war, battled against malaria without proper medicine, or suffered through tsunamis and hurricanes that wiped all I'd accumulated in this world to the bottom of the ocean. I'll repeat it because it bears repeating: contentment is hard work. So what is the payoff? If you asked William Stafford that question I'd bet that this poem would be his answer. Contentment is "sunlight...along a shining floor" and "the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now." Contentment is the peace that Stafford implores us to hold onto, the peace that he wants to breathe through us and fortify our souls. It is fresh and new, it is sparkling and joyous, and because it is these things and so much more, Stafford's words should stay with us: "carry into evening all that you want from this day. This interval you spent reading or hearing this, keep it for life." It would be easy to let this calm cover your surface and because it is easy most people will ingest it in this way. But remember, contentment is difficult, even the pay off is difficult. The payoff, if you accept the challenge, will overwhelm you. The payoff happens when no one is looking "when you turn around." I say all of these things as if I'm an expert, but I've just as guilty of the surface contentment as the next guy or gal. Maybe I should take up the hard work of contentment, maybe it's time to ask Stafford's question: "Starting here, what do you want to remember?"

Day Twenty Eight - A Man In His Life by Yehuda Amichai

A MAN IN HIS LIFE

A man doesn't have time in his life

to have time for everything.

He doesn't have seasons enough to have

a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes

Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,

to laugh and cry with the same eyes,

with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,

to make love in war and war in love.

And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,

to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest

what history

takes years and years to do.

A man doesn't have time.

When he loses he seeks, when he finds

he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves

he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul

is very professional.

Only his body remains forever

an amateur. It tries and it misses,

gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,

drunk and blind in its pleasures

and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,

Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,

the leaves growing dry on the ground,

the bare branches pointing to the place

where there's time for everything.

---Yehuda Amichai

Day Twenty Seven - Sonnet Of The Sweet Complaint by Frederico Garcia Lorca

SONNET OF THE SWEET COMPLAINT

Never let me lose the marvel

of your statue-like eyes, or the accent

the solitary rose of your breath

places on my cheek at night.

I am afraid of being, on this shore,

a branchless trunk, and what I most regret

is having no flower, pulp, or clay

for the worm of my despair.

If you are my hidden treasure,

if you are my cross, my dampened pain,

if I am a dog, and you alone my master,

never let me lose what I have gained,

and adorn the branches of your river

with leaves of my estranged Autumn.

---Frederico Garcia Lorca

Sonnet of the Sweet Complaint by Frederico Garcia Lorca


With some of these essays I try to provide back story on the poet, the poem, or the technique(s) exercised in the poem. This will not be one of those essays. No, in fact, I've included this poem with no knowledge about it. I know a smattering about Lorca and have read about his time in New York, but overall I'm also undereducated on him, compared to some of the other poets featured on We Convince By Our Presence. So, then, the question is why have I included this poem and poet? Sometimes it's refreshing to stumble upon a poem that dazzles you in the moment and engages your own consciousness in a way that is devoid of context. Sonnet of the Sweet Complaint is one of those poems that seems to have refreshed my poetry palette.

The first stanza rings my comparison alarm bells and fills my mind with images of Apollo and his archaic torso, as described by another triple-named poet (Rainer Maria Rilke). The life-like statute that, in it's solid state, still convinces Rilke that he must seize his own fate and change his life is slightly more intense than the "marvel / of your statue like eyes." Still, Lorca is clinging like Rilke, to a "hidden treasure" of a love that allows him to avoid being "a branchless trunk...having no flower." Lorca's testament to love, in the form of powerful metaphors, sweeps through his fears and regrets, only to reach a unique kind of promise.

"If you are my cross, my dampened pain, / if I am a dog, and you alone my master," this litany of burdens and pains that seem to rule and control Lorca is a confusing mixed metaphor if I've ever seen one! Sure, a hidden treasure is a compliment, I guess, although hidden implies an understated quality that could also be seen as downplaying or diminishing his beloved's appearance. Then he compares his love to a cross and dampened pain. It's tough to argue that a cross is a positive comparison, but I'd venture to say that dampened pain implies an easing of pain where it has once been excruciating. And as if it wasn't confusing enough, Lorca caps the stanza off with a strange dog to master analogy that I might expect to see on an old SAT question. Viewed en mass, these comparisons construct a clear mixed message that Lorca hints at in the title of the poem with the ironic choice of "sweet complaint."

Lorca concludes in a continuation of his ironic, wishy-washy style that just might be the most impressive portion of the poem. The metaphors he built into the bedrock of the poem now have a chance to support each other in what appears to be a winding mess, but is actually a carefully orchestrated stanza of chaos. After a tercet of "ifs," if you are like me then you are expecting Lorca to launch into a pretty big "then" to wrap things up. Instead, he issues something that falls between a request, a prayer, and an ultimatum. "Never let me lose what I have gained," transfers the power back to the loved one who he fears might leave him a branchless trunk with no fruit or fauna for his worm of despair to wallow in. Instead, he wants a presence on the branches of his love's river, a presence that is perplexing and illuminating at the same time. The word choice of "estranged" as a descriptor of his Autumn is a fantastic mind bend and one final twist to send us reeling, just as Lorca himself is throughout this poem. The Sweet Complaint is unnerving and disorienting, not just for Lorca, but also for his audience. Interestingly, his most skillful accomplishment in this poem is creating this unnerving and disorienting pendulum that he himself is feeling in the minds of his readers.

Day Twenty Six - Life Lines

Over the last decade, actually even further back, there have been numerous public initiatives to increase the visibility and viability of poetry. Some of these attempts were commercialized and rather artificial tries to stave off the oft proclaimed death of poetry. Other attempts rang true because they were natural and encouraged everyone to embrace poetry, not just the upper crust of the poetry world. One of the programs that I would like to bring some attention to is Life Lines through the Academy of American Poets (http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/339#rfros). A cross section of accomplished poets and attentive readers of poetry, Life Lines are fun to read and provide many personal connections to poems we know and love, as well as poems we might have never encountered before.

Here's an example of lines from a poem I've previously featured on this blog (Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost) with the corresponding mini-essay coming from a poet I've previously featured on this blog (B.H. Fairchild):

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

—from "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost

One night late on my way home from college for Christmas, I was caught in a blizzard without the company of an intelligent guide (I was driving, instead of a horse, a '62 Buick Special). I had passed through the last small town and was halfway between nowhere and Dodge City, Kansas when the road vanished beneath snow and my little car foundered badly. Realizing that no one was going to be passing by until the next day, I got out and started walking. Nothing. Nobody, no thing anywhere. At last the distant light of a farmhouse appeared, the only one, I discovered later, within miles. And if it hadn't been for the family inside that farmhouse, I might simply have frozen to death. As I was walking toward it, I thought of this poem, and I knew that I would be able to keep my promises, and I felt ecstatically liberated. Never have I seen these last lines in "Stopping by Woods" read as liberating rather than duty-bound. So boring for students: oh, this is a little lesson about obligations and responsibility. No time to ski, you've got chores to do before sleep, and you always will, and that's the way life is, suck it up and live with it. But the misunderstanding here is not in the specific explanation; it's in the very attempt at explanation. I hope they continue to teach in high schools the most over taught poem in America; I just wish they would stop explaining it.

B.H. Fairchild

Claremont, California

Day Twenty Five - Four Civil War Paintings By Winslow Homer by Ted Kooser

FOUR CIVIL WAR PAINTINGS BY WINSLOW HOMER

"...if the painter shows that he observes more than he reflects, we will forget the limitation and take his work as we take nature, which if it does not think, is yet the cause of thought in us." ---The Evening Post, New York, May 31, 1865

1. SHARPSHOOTER

(A Union sniper in a tree)

Some part of art is the art

of waiting---the chord

behind the tight fence

of a musical staff,

the sonnet shut in a book.

This is a painting of

waiting: the sharp crack

of the rifle still coiled

under the tiny

percussion cap, the cap

poised under the cocked

curl of the hammer,

and this young man among

the pine needles,

his finger as light as a breath

on the trigger,

just a pinpoint of light

in his one open eye,

like a star you might see

in broad daylight,

if you thought to look up.

----Ted Kooser

Ted Kooser's Four Civil War Paintings by Winslow Homer (1. Sharpshooter)

I'm cheating a little bit by only including this one section of Ted Kooser's examination of four Winslow Homer Civil War paintings, but I'm including this specific section for a reason. Like Ted Kooser, Winslow Homer's Sharpshooter painting spoke to me. Years ago I encountered the picture at the top of this blog post. It was frighteningly real, made all the more unsettling because Homer was observing this soldier waiting for his next kill to wander into sight. Homer's eye for detail made the painting vivid, but also cemented in my mind that he watched this soldier steady himself in his perch and patiently do his job. My mind raced when I stared at this painting, and even now I'm still swimming in backstories for this soldier, the soldier he will shoot at, and their combined families. Homer captures the situation in the midst of the action, filled with tension that only grows as the sharpshooter is always on the ready. I tried my hand at writing a persona poem of Winslow Homer's sharpshooter and I still think the poem is pretty good, but Ted Kooser beat me to it by a bunch of years. If I'm being honest with myself, Ted's poem is probably a little bit more stirring than my own. Why is that so? Well let's see...

With his hard enjambment of the first line producing a symbolic pause and wait for the next line, Ted Kooser launches us into the world of Winslow Homer's Sharpshooter. Homer took his subject and perfectly depicted him at his patient and focused best; Kooser provides examples where similar waiting must take place in the world of art: the musical chord hidden behind a pause and the sonnet trapped in a book waiting to be opened and explored. Just as the action is supposed by Kooser, Homer has taught him how to do this with his Sharpshooter painting. Kooser notes this in a list that builds sequentially backward from the "sharp crack of the rifle" to the "young man among / the pine needles." At this moment, after all the planning and setup, Kooser delivers the goods. He describes the soldier's finger "as light as a breath / on the trigger." This simile folds into another that is so intricately constructed that it comes off as natural as the breath Kooser just described. "A pinpoint of light / in his one open eye" is filtered from Homer's canvas through Kooser's mind to become "a star you might see / in broad daylight, / if you thought to look up." This is such a clever, fitting, and abrupt ending. Notice how Kooser has kept us aware of the event in the painting and the art of capturing this action, but now he finally shifts the readers into the minds of the prey. We are left as the soldiers walking along the path home or the path to the next battle, only to meet our swift demise. Kooser knows there is beauty in the Sharpshooter's eye, that is why he compares it to a star. Still, the Sharpshooter and his eye are also elusive, a quality that is essential to his survival and success. Purposefully, Kooser has kept our vision focused on the Sharpshooter up to this point, but in the end he shakes us with the final line of "if you thought to look up." This disorienting closure throws us back into the role of the soldiers walking the trail. We have just studied the hunter and now, without warning and not by choice we become the hunted. It is primitive and painful, it is masterful and measured, it is emblematic of many struggles that develop in war, but most of all it is great art rising from the carcass of our country's greatest prolonged tragedy and spurring on a chain of great art in years to follow.

Day Twenty Four - Losing The Game by Diane Ackerman

LOSING THE GAME

On the face of this midfielder,

a saint’s passion.

Sweat brilliantines his hair

flat as a seal pup’s fur.

Thorns rake one knee, and fatigue

is a train whistle that never quits.

In his mind, the falcon of defeat

slips off its own hood

and sails into the vapory cold December,

hangs like a crucifixion over the field,

then slants down the wide thermal

of his shame. Today 2 + 2 is algebra,

and nothing will transmute

his base metal to gold leaf.

When crowd and players have gone,

he watches the sun set

under a tumultuous bruise of sky,

below the empty grin of the bleachers,

deep into the valley,

a ghastly, yellow bile draining out.

---Diane Ackerman

Diane Ackerman's Losing The Game

I've always found it inspiring to see young athletes expose so much of their physical and emotional selves in order to perform to their best ability. You've probably heard the same sports cliches that I have, phrases like "you can't win 'em all," "give it your best shot," "there's no I in team," and "leave it all on the field." Notice that last phrase, "leave it all on the field," and think about how those six simple words can propel teenagers to sacrifice themselves for the good of their team. Just this past week I watched a piece on ESPN's E60 that showcased a girls high school cross country team in the San Francisco area. This team is a perennial powerhouse and is coached by a highly respected leader in the field of running. Unfortunately, this gentlemen has been diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) and he is slowly losing his body to the disease. For a man who is used to running miles every day, it's now a struggle to walk step-by-step. His team of young women, realizing this might their last season with their coach, performed exceptionally this year, especially at the State Championship Meet. The E60 piece honed in on this meet and how the team's championship hopes hinged on the team captain's finish. With less than a 100 yards to the finish line her body shut down and with less than 10 yards to the finish she collapsed on all fours. Displaying that aforementioned trait of "leaving it all on the field" the young woman crawled the remaining yards with other runners passing her by. Severly dehydrated, she finished and placed high enough for the team to win another state championship for their ailing coach. It's stories like this that reinforce the thrill of victory and the epitome of why we compete. Diane Ackerman's poem Losing The Game is not about the thrill of victory. The agony of defeat is just as much a part of why we compete. If there is a winner then there has to be a loser. Learning to lose is just as important to savoring a win. The lessons gained from losing might not be immediately applicable, but with the distance that time provides we can gain much from our unsuccessful experiences.

Teenage athletes are admirable for the passion they display in their athletic pursuits. We've already mentioned "leaving it all on the field," and this mindset allows student athletes to view games as matters of life and death. In some athletes this brings out the worst, prompting cheating, unsporting behavior, and violence. In other athletes this brings out the best and they display perseverance, sportsmanship, and a selflessness that is rare in society. Older generations sometimes scoff at youthful exuberance for athletics, failing to remember that time in their lives when their team's performance meant the world to them. Yes, there is life beyond my JV soccer team's performance in tonight's game, but the high school sophomore can't see that life. The future is far off and as a result the here and now takes precedence. With that thought in mind, Diane Ackerman constructed an accurate depiction of what it is like to lose a game as a student athlete. There is an epic quality to her poem Losing The Game and if you can't see it, instead viewing the poem as melodrama, then you might be a part of that generation out-of-touch with youthful passion.

Diane Ackerman's poem Losing The Game is carefully constructed to reinforce the high school sporting event as an epic happening. The midfielder's face has "a saint's passion" and his hair is not just matted with sweat, but it dramatically "brilliantines his hair / flat as a seal pup's fur." The athlete, who presumably will go home to study for subjects like algebra and his driving exam, takes on the qualities of a battle weary warrior. As "thorns rake his knee" and Ackerman takes us into his mind, which is a creative and perceptive universe of thoughts, emotions, and reactions. In his mind, the game is not a fixed period of quarters or halves with a final outcome that sends everyone home in their cars to resume their lives afterwards. No, "In his mind, the falcon of defeat / slips off its own hood / and sails into the vapory cold December, / hangs like a crucifixion over the field, / then slants down the wide thermal / of his shame." His mind can't loosen its grip on defeat, but there is a beauty in his downtrodden nature. Passion exudes from his defeated shell, and although he may have lost, Ackerman's athlete equates his game with the more important things in his life. This is apparent in the overarching religious motif, where the athlete has thorns, crucifixion, saints, and a swirling symbolic falcon on his mind. Like many leaders, both religious and secular, throughout history, the athlete in Diane Ackerman's poem reflects in solitude after the "crowd and players have gone." His eyes and heart are open, the defeat has left him exposed and raw. As a result, the sky is a "tumultuous bruise," the bleachers are taunting him with their "empty grin," and the sun is not tinged in gold as it sets but it is a "ghastly, yellow bile draining out." Ackerman captures the mind of a young athlete in the grips of defeat so vividly that she doesn't miss a single truth or nuance. This is the temporary mental paralysis of defeat, but this is also the stage that will allow for life-altering growth. No one wants to lose the game, but everyone wants the long term benefits that come from losing and reflecting on that loss to improve yourself. Even the cross country team and their coach that E60 profiled recently knows they will not win every race, but I would guess that they let the taste of their losses linger in their mouths each time they approach a new race reminding them what could happen if they fail to "leave it all on the field."