Here's The Word - My New Poetry Podcast

After a few years hiatus, I'm finally making my way back into poetry appreciation and analysis.  Critical Point Theatre, http://www.criticalpointtheatre.com/, was generous enough to offer me a spot in their rotation of podcasts under their new podcast wing.  It probably helps that the Head Honcho of Podcasts for Critical Point (that is the official title for the position) is my brother, Andrew Kaberline.  If you've stumbled upon We Convince By Our Presence and enjoyed some of the written content now or in past years, then I encourage you to swing by Critical Point Theatre's podcast wing, https://theatrecpt.wordpress.com/category/heres-the-word-2/.  There you'll find a number of wonderful podcasts worth your time, including Here's The Word with me, Matt Kaberline, as the host.  The first episode focuses on Oranges by Gary Soto.  Episode two, which delves into Naomi Shihab Nye's poem Famous, should be posted sometime this week. And future episodes will feature poems I've written about on this blog in past years, as well as brand new poems.  

In the meantime, I wanted to share with y'all the mission statement for Here's The Word...

Poetry… So much can be accomplished with a single word. 

Some of you just heard that word that begins with a p and shivers traveled down your spine at the speed of light. You had flashbacks to high school and the English teacher who repeatedly asked, “but what does the poem mean?” as if it was a rubik cube and you could somehow twist your way to a solution, to a meaning. 

Others heard poetry and got all warm and fuzzy inside. You were read Dr. Seuss from an early age. Shakespearean sonnets are your thing. A boyfriend gave you a book of Neruda’s poems and read them to you, maybe in bed. You were Emily Dickinson in another life. You would subject yourself to driving through a tropical storm just to hear Billy Collins read his newest collection of laugh-out-loud reflections or Mary Oliver cradle you with her words as she lulls you into nature. 

And then there is you, the intended reader of this blog post and the intended listener of our new program, Here’s The Word. For you, poetry doesn’t incite PTSD, but it also is not likely to immerse you in joy…yet. You see, that’s where we come in. We are determined to make poetry a little more fun for all of us. It’s been tried before, in fact every modern Poet Laureate has been tasked with helping poetry become more accessible to the non-poetry reader. It’s not that these efforts have failed, but we figured that any effort to bring poetry to the masses is a noble pursuit, so we decided to throw our hats in the ring. 

For your listening enjoyment, we present Here’s The Word, a fresh take on poetry, featuring poems from near and far, old and new, on all sorts of topics, written by all sorts of poets. While the structure of the program will remain relatively stable, the content will vary greatly, all with the goal of introducing you to poetry that you should read. Why poetry? For thousands of years we have written, read, spoken, and listened to poetry. Stories were told legends were shared, news was passed along, lives were celebrated, loves were sealed, and histories of whole peoples were disseminated through poetry. Poetry remains an essential means of communicating the human condition in all its intricacies and various stages. 

Wallace Stevens once observed that, “the purpose of poetry is to contribute to man’s happiness.” When we sing a drinking song in a pub with friends or ramble our way through a favorite nursery rhyme with our kids, we are using poetry to stoke our own happiness. Salman Rushdie’s view on poetry veers in the opposite direction; he notes that “a poet’s work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.” Through Rushdie’s lens, poets are responsible for keeping the world vigilantly aware of conflicts and appropriately weighed down by the scales of justice. Both of these writers are correct in their assessments, and because they are both correct we can see the diverse beauty of poetry. It’s an all-encompassing form that allows the silly and the serious to exist together, peacefully, in the same world. This is the world we will explore, with you as our guest and co-pilot, on Here’s The Word. 

Join us as we invoke Billy Collins and “waterski / across the surface of poems / waving at the author’s name on the shore.” 


INTRODUCTION TO POETRY


I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.


---Billy Collins. “Introduction to Poetry” from The Apple That Astonished Paris. Copyright � 1988, 1996 by Billy Collins.
   

 

National Poetry Month Presentation at a high school

 
Earlier this past spring, I gave a National Poetry Month Presentation to the whole student body (high school) at the school I teach and counsel at.  I figured that I might as well share parts of the presentation here.

After a front page and introductory slide or two, we launched into the important question you see above.  I've asked this question of college seniors, kindergartners, and students of all ages and grades in between.  Unfortunately, the answers often indicate that poetry is a chore.  Many students have a negative association with poetry in the way it was first taught and presented to them at a young age.  So I collected some of the answers I've heard and put them in a wordle.

 

 At this point I broke the responses down for students.  There are technical replies (metaphor, rhyme,

iambic pentameter), there are forms (sonnets), there are famous poets (Whitman, Dickinson, Shakespeare), and of course there are emotional reactions (boring, hard-to-understand, I-don't-get-it).  Sure, these are valid replies.  But I don't think they help me driving home my point: poetry is accessible!  We make it inaccessible, whether we are scared off by it at a young age, or because we scare ourselves off from it by feeling like we have to discover a poem's ever elusive "point."

So how did I turn the tables on the students? I asked them the same question I asked about poetry, but this time I asked it about music (When you hear the word music, what words and images appear in your brain?).  Hands shot up, minds churned, ideas were shared.  This was exactly what I wanted.  I showed the wordle responses on the poetry question again.  I told the students, think about the answers they just came up with for music (Rap, Grunge, Drake, Rihanna, MTV, Palladia, radio stations, and lots of types of dances).  The answers on the poetry wordle would be the equivalent of Bach, Gregorian Chant, Oboes, and Elevator Music to the same music question.  We need to give poetry a chance, starting with the poetry that is written today, otherwise we are focusing on the history of poetry, as opposed to its vibrant and dynamic present. 

There are many reasons we don't give poetry a chance: disinterest, lazy, fearful, too busy, thinks it's only for smart people, feels it's not accessible.  So the question then becomes, how do we make poetry accessible?  This is certainly a larger and longer discussion that I couldn't have with the whole school (I'd love to revamp some of the ways that poetry is presented in elementary and middle school).  Instead, I focused on what I could control---why not urge all students to buy/rent a single book of poetry.  I asked the audience to raise their hands to the question of how many of you have a television in your house?  Some of them have multiple televisions in their home.  I then asked them to keep their hands up in they have a book of poetry in their house.  The hands rapidly dwindled.  I finally asked how many of you have a book of poetry written in the last fifteen years.  The remaining raised hands were few, but proudly shooting up to signify their attachment to poetry.

It was now time to turn to some examples of poetry in the form of audio and video clips of poetry.  I started with Frost (audio), then moved on to Angelou (video), and ended with some spoken word from Lemon Andersen by way of Reg E Gaines (video performance).  The idea was to show a progression of poetry, a natural movement through the last century that continues with what is being written and performed today, including anything these students in the audience might contribute.  

  

The presentation ended with some specific opportunities to get move involved in poetry at our school and in our local community.  In my allotted 12 to 15 minutes, I tried to pack in as much as possible to get students (and faculty) thinking deeply about poetry and their own personal relationship (or lack thereof) with poetry.

A Poem Worthy of March Madness - Old Men Playing Basketball by B.H. Fairchild

We've reached my favorite time of the year!  The first two days of the NCAA tournament induce the same pristine excitement, anticipation, and joy as Christmas eve and morning did during my childhood.  How can you not love a bracket full of teams, all with dreams of their one shining moment.  As of 12:15 pm yesterday, every team (minus the new-fangled play-in game participants) had a chance to win.  The smallest schools rising to the national stage for the very first time.  The largest powerhouses with arenas on their campuses full of banners symbolizing their past successes.  And the in-betweeners, the schools who have won a game or two, made a run through the tournament that galvanized their fans into believing it could be their year, only to lose shortly after in some heartbreaking or, even worse, boneheaded fashion.  There is a certain beauty to March Madness; the way that team members sacrifice all of their own ego and importance for a shot at victory, the way seniors respect the game and their final moments in it, and the way underdogs come to believe they can take down the Goliaths of the world (especially when a partial crowd rallies behind them).

The men in B.H. Fairchild's Old Men Playing Basketball don't strike me as veterans of the NCAA tournament.  Certainly they've watched many of the classic match ups and plays, just not from a bench location or on-court vista; no, they've been in the comfort of a bar, their own couch, or possibly in the cheap seats at the top of the stadium.  Still, they carry the same respect for the game of basketball that makes March Madness a yearly phenomenon.  The game of basketball, at a certain point, exposes all of our flaws, wrinkles, and inequities.  Most short guys will never know the surge of power that comes with dunking a ball.  Most old guys will never again feel the curtain of bravado drape over them after a reverse, 360 layup.  And most former players will continue to carry an image in their brain of what they were, not what they have become.  This is the point that B.H. Fairchild illustrates in his wonderful poem. 

Even if the game exposes who we are, when all we want to is return to being who we were, there is still a familiar beauty in revisiting the past in our present forms.  "In love / again with the pure geometry of curves," these men recover some part of themselves in the movements and mannerisms of their youth.  They may be "heavy bodies" now only capable of "the grind of bone and socket," but the nostalgia soaks over them and stirringly permeates the current versions of themselves.  Fairchild wonders if they still make love to their wives with the same artistic and majestic moves of their youth, if they still sing their silly songs on the walk home, if they are still equipped with the aura of opportunity and possibility when they cuddled with their girls "in the Chevy's front seat" under the "light of the outdoor movie."  The moments of our past are never lost, as long as we have triggers that breathe life into them in our present.  For many men and women, basketball is one of those triggers. It will be a lifelong trigger for all those March heroes on TV over the next few weeks.  It is a lifelong trigger for Danny Ainge, Tyus Edny, Christian Laettner, and all the fans who cheered and cried as they had their game winning turns.  It is a lifelong trigger for the Butlers, George Masons, and VCUs of the world, as much as it is for the Duke, North Carolina, and Kentucky.  Why is basketball a trigger that sparks the feelings and skills of the past into our present selves?  I'm not exactly sure, but I think it has something to do with the magic of nostalgia.  Magic might be the key word.  Look no further than the final stanza of Fairchild's poem and you'll find magic: "A glass wand / of autumn light breaks over the backboard. / Boys rise up in old men, wings begin to sprout / at their backs. The ball turns in the darkening air."  Here's to boys rising up in old men, here's to girls rising up in old women, here's to basketball.   


Old Men Playing Basketball
By B.H. Fairchild

The heavy bodies lunge, the broken language   

of fake and drive, glamorous jump shot   

slowed to a stutter. Their gestures, in love   

again with the pure geometry of curves,

rise toward the ball, falter, and fall away.   

On the boards their hands and fingertips   

tremble in tense little prayers of reach   

and balance. Then, the grind of bone

and socket, the caught breath, the sigh,   

the grunt of the body laboring to give   

birth to itself. In their toiling and grand   

sweeps, I wonder, do they still make love

to their wives, kissing the undersides

of their wrists, dancing the old soft-shoe   

of desire? And on the long walk home   

from the VFW, do they still sing

to the drunken moon? Stands full, clock   

moving, the one in army fatigues

and houseshoes says to himself, pick and roll,   

and the phrase sounds musical as ever,

radio crooning songs of love after the game,   

the girl leaning back in the Chevy’s front seat   

as her raven hair flames in the shuddering   

light of the outdoor movie, and now he drives,

gliding toward the net. A glass wand

of autumn light breaks over the backboard.   

Boys rise up in old men, wings begin to sprout

at their backs. The ball turns in the darkening air.

   

Update on 2012 National Poetry Month

After a great four year run of Aprils filled with favorite poems and corresponding essays, I'm taking a year off. I wish this wasn't the case, but sometimes life's complications have a way of interrupting the best laid plans. I have every intention of continuing with the blog next year. In fact, I'm exploring the option of converting the blog from an annual National Poetry Month format to two featured posts a month throughout the year. This type of change would allow me to deliver the same volume of content, but in a spaced out manner, which is far more conducive to a person with a busy schedule. Keep your eyes peeled for updates on when this new format will roll out. Thank you for your continued support, comments, interactions, and readership!

All the best,
Matt

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."

Day Twenty Three - Teaching Poetry to Children - Rose, where did you get that red

I admire Kenneth Koch and the tireless work he did to inspire joy and foster creativity in elementary school students in New York City. Koch, a talented poet and college professor, tackled the "problem" of poetry's inaccessibility by taking it to children. The question that bugged Koch was how do you teach children great poetry that the world believes is too advanced for them and more likely to be understood by adults? It's a tough question indeed, but answering it thoroughly and thoughtfully could alter the way that a whole population of children approach poetry, and on a larger level, approach all art. In Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?, Koch details his experiences teaching the reading and writing of poetry to elementary schoolers. Koch believed that: "The problem in teaching adult poetry to children is that for them it often seems difficult and remote; the poetry ideas, by making the adult poetry to some degree part of an activity of their own, brought it closer and made it more accessible to them. The excitement of writing carried over to their reading; and the excitement of the poem they read inspired them in their writing." If any of this sounds interesting to you, I would highly encourage you to check out Koch's book of the aforementioned title, or at least to check out an excerpt of a related article at this website: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/17152

I'll leave you today with a poem by one of Koch's talented students:

Giraffes, how did they make Carmen? Well, you see,

Carmen ate the prettiest rose in the world and then

just then the great change of heaven occurred and she

became the prettiest girl in the world and because I love her.

Lions, why does your mane flame like fire of the devil?

Because I have the speed of the wind

and the strength of the earth at my command.

Oh Kiwi, why have you no wings? Because I have been

born with the despair to walk the earth without

the power of flight and am damned to do so.

Oh bird of flight, why have you been granted

the power to fly? Because I was meant to sit

upon the branch and to be with the wind.

Oh crocodile, why were you granted the power

to slaughter your fellow animal? I do not answer.

-- Chip Wareing, 5th grade, PS 61

Day Twenty Two - Poems I'm Glad I Know

I know I'm not the only National Poetry Month Blogger out there. In fact, I derive just as much pleasure in checking out the writing of some of my fellow poetry bloggers as I do in constructing my own essay and entries. One blog I've been checking out recently is The Southern Review's Lagniappe, which has featured entries titled "Poems I'm Glad I Know" from a select group of writers and editors. It reminds me of the playlists that celebrities post on Itunes with their words on why certain songs resonate with them. Sadly, one of the editors and driving forces behind the site and TSR in general, Jeanne Lieby appears to have passed away recently. In tribute, TSR posted Lieby's choices for "Poems I'm Glad I Know." Here is that posting: http://www.thesouthernreviewblog.org/

Here's my five selections for "Poems I'm Glad I Know":

1. Body And Soul - by B.H. Fairchild (This remains my favorite poem. It is mesmerizing like few other poems and pieces of art that I've ever experienced. The images are enchanting, the story and characters are authentic, and the language rolls off the tongue in establishing a folksy, yet all-knowing tone. It might be a long poem, but it's worth every second you spend with it.)

2. One Art - by Elizabeth Bishop (You want to read the perfect villanelle, well here it is. Bishop's pain is on display in this poem and by the end it is a tangible anchor that she takes from her neck and transfers to the reader as a weight they must bear. Like Fairchild, Bishop's mastery of tone and language is spellbinding.)

3. Tonight I Can Write - by Pablo Neruda (I've long wondered if anything new can be written about love because Pablo Neruda seemingly wrote it all! In what might be his most famous poem, Neruda exposes his longing, love, and loss with such bittersweet truth that well after reading the poem Neruda's words will still ring through your body like the tattering on cymbals during a drum solo. And if you ever want to hear this poem read dramatically, then you should search for the soundtrack to Il Postino, where Andy Garcia gives a powerful reading.)

4. Oranges - by Gary Soto (The snap, sway, and sweetness of youth is nowhere more evident than in this poem from Soto. Image driven and fueled by figurative language, Soto's poem, like the young boy who serves as the central character, "knows what it's all about." Read this poem and you'll be swimming in memories from childhood, possibly of your first crush, first kiss, and first love.)

5. Song Of The Open Road (Section 5) - by Walt Whitman (This poem could very well be my private prayer and the mantra I live by. Whitman's words are like a heartbeat challenging us to beat along with it, to never give up or deviate from who we are and who we should be. I repeat this poem to myself when I need to center myself or be reminded of what I can do to make the world and myself better. I can hear the words now..."I am larger, better than I thought, / I did not know I held so much goodness."

Day Twenty One - Taxi by Elise Paschen

TAXI

Why don't we cruise

Times Square at noon

enjoy the jam

I'm not immune

to your deft charm

in one stalled car

I'd like to take

you as you are

---Elise Paschen

TAXI by Elise Paschen

Before anything else, our first impulse is to understand. In our search for answers, we often carry our own baggage with us and put it to work. With our baggage in tow, we attempt to find depth, or create depth where it doesn't exist. What a mistake this can be! Because we want something more, something more literary, something more high brow and challenging, we miss out on the art right before our eyes. It's like showering the prom queen with attention, but ignoring the girl-next-door who's loved you forever.

Taxi by Elise Paschen is a perfect example of a small, but powerful poem that loses some of its truth and beauty when we try to read more into it than actually exists. In this poem, Paschen has fun with words and their sounds. There are rhymes and slant rhymes all in a neat package of eight lines, each containing four syllables. Paschen establishes pace very deliberately with the structure and she's chosen. It's a single image of the poet and a friend, or presumably a lover, in a midday Times Square traffic jam that sets the poem in motion. There's irony in the poem rumbling to life with a traffic jam. But the traffic slows the outside world so that the world inside the car takes center stage. Paschen takes this deliberate moment to highlight that she is "not immune / to (your) deft charm / in one stalled car." She knows it is charm and there could be pretense behind it, but she also knows that it works on her. In fact, it works so well that she understands herself and what she wants. She'd "like to take / you as you are." Yes, this poem has clever line breaks and a fun rhyme scheme. I could break these down and show how Paschen creates something truly great in the short course of eight lines, but sometimes you just have to pause, take a breath, and remind yourself not to complicate a piece of art that is already great without me and my baggage.

Day Twenty - R&R By Brian Turner

R & R

The curve of her hip where I’d lay my head,

that’s what I’m thinking of now, her fingers

gone slow through my hair on a blue day

ten thousand miles off in the future somewhere,

where the beer is so cold it sweats in your hand,

cool as her kissing you with crushed ice,

her tongue wet with blackberry and melon.

That's what I’m thinking of now.

Because I’m all out of adrenaline,

all out of smoking incendiaries.

Somewhere deep in the landscape of the brain,

under the skull’s blue curving dome—

that’s where I am now, swaying

in a hammock by the water’s edge

as soldiers laugh and play volleyball

just down the beach, while others tan

and talk with the nurses who bring pills

to help them sleep. And if this is crazy,

then let this be my sanatorium,

let the doctors walk among us here

marking their charts as they will.

I have a lover with hair that falls

like autumn leaves on my skin.

Water that rolls in smooth and cool

as anesthesia. Birds that carry

all my bullets into the barrel of the sun.

---Brian Turner

R&R by Brian Turner

Everyone needs something to look forward to, a proverbial light at the end of the tunnel that keeps us focused and fuels us through our most challenging moments. Goals are what make the process worthwhile. For a soldier, like Brian Turner, the lack of a goal can be deadly. Without opportunities, possibilities, and the joyous love waiting at home, soldiers might be overtaken by the darkness around them. The rest and relaxation that Turner describes in R&R might be an illusion, but some illusions are necessary to the preservation of reality.

In a quiet moment away from the dangers and rigors of combat, the speaker in Brian Turner's poem R&R thinks of "the curve of her hip" where he'd "lay his head" and "her fingers / gone slow through (his) hair." The curve of his love's hip could just as well be the curve of his gun handle, but he needs an outlet from the violent world he resides in. That outlet, even though it's "ten thousand miles off in the future somewhere," is a peaceful place that resembles a utopian reward "where the beer is so cold it sweats in your hand, / cool as her kissing you with crushed ice, / her tongue wet with blackberry and melon." Turner's outlet is familiar, refreshing, and sweet, but he only seeks the outlet because he's "all out of adrenaline, / all out of smoking incendiaries." Crashing from his rough current reality, he seeks a comfortable place in a previous world that he hopes to visit again in the future.

Turner can thread images of joy together, but even he acknowledges they are "somewhere deep in the landscape of the brain." They are figments, but somehow they seem so real. In fact, they are imbued with such reality that Turner must confront the idea of lunacy. He knows how it looks and declares "And if this is crazy, / then let this be my sanatorium, / let the doctors walk among us here / marking their charts as they will." He doesn't care how it looks and he doesn't care if he truly is crazy because this diversion from the pain of his real, war-torn life is the key to his survival. It is the R&R that allows Turner to so beautifully tell the world, and remind himself, that he has "a lover with hair that falls / like autumn leaves on (my) skin." She is the goal, the reason, the reward. She...and the water...and the sun...and the world where evil can exist, but where beauty, truth, hope, and love are prone to "roll in smooth and cool."

Day Nineteen - Goose Population Gains High Level by Ogden Nash

GOOSE POPULATION GAINS HIGH LEVEL

Headline (New York Times)

Besides pollution and erosion

We now must face a goose explosion.

A glut of geese can play the devil

With national life on every level,

Especially in politics,

Where geese and government intermix.

This solemn thought I introduce:

The higher the level, the bigger the goose.

---Ogden Nash

Goose Population Gains High Level by Ogden Nash

Oh, how I chuckle nearly every time I read an Ogden Nash poem. It's often a challenge to fuse poetry with humor, but Nash embraced the challenge and made a fairly successful career out of witty words. Of his many worthy poems, I chose this one from Nash because I share his strong dislike for geese. Having worked at golf courses growing up, I've had my fair share of run-ins with these evil creatures. The angry hiss of a hard charging goose is one of the more aggressive displays I've seen in my life. Not only are geese mean, territorial animals, but they seem to procreate disproportionately and they have a propensity to poop everywhere. With those character traits in the back of his mind, Nash constructs a fitting metaphor between our political leaders and geese. Admittedly, I don't have much to say about this poem from a technical perspective, but I still think it's a fabulous poem and funny detour during this National Poetry Month. In fact, I bet you'll think of this poem the next time you step into a pile of slimy, sticky dark green goose poop.

Day Eighteen - Poetry 180

A few years back, Billy Collins devised a rather simple, yet wholly substantive way to reintroduce poetry to the mainstream. He looked at the public school calendar and realized there are approximately 180 days in the school year. At that point he set about collecting 180 poems to be read (some of them aloud) in classrooms by students on a daily basis. The poems would need to be humorous, interesting, intelligent, touching, and fun; after all, they would be for a very difficult audience of school aged children and teens. Collins collected a diverse set of poems into his first collection for Poetry 180. It is a stunningly addictive book that I would recommend to any poetry lover. Collins followed this first collection up with a second 180 poems to use in the classroom. Speaking of the classroom, I have used Poetry 180 with students and have noticed it to be quite engaging and stimulating. Students seem to respond to the relevance of the poems Collins has selected; instead of flowery, archaic verse, Poetry 180 delivers the in-your face modernity that students need to find poems to be real. If that isn't enough motivation for you, then I'll mention this: many of the poems featured on this blog over the last four years have come from the Poetry 180 collections. I encourage all of you to check out Poetry 180, and those of you who are teaching I would advise you to find a way to include it in your classrooms. You'll thank me, and Billy Collins, later!

http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/

Day Seventeen - Rain by Claribel Alegria

RAIN

As the falling rain

trickles among the stones

memories come bubbling out.

It's as if the rain

had pierced my temples.

Streaming

streaming chaotically

come memories:

the reedy voice

of the servant

telling me tales

of ghosts.

They sat beside me

the ghosts

and the bed creaked

that purple-dark afternoon

when I learned you were leaving forever,

a gleaming pebble

from constant rubbing

becomes a comet.

Rain is falling

falling

and memories keep flooding by

they show me a senseless

world

a voracious

world--abyss

ambush

whirlwind

spur

but I keep loving it

because I do

because of my five senses

because of my amazement

because every morning,

because forever, I have loved it

without knowing why.

Rain by Claribel Alegria

Isn't it funny how rain stirs memories and gives us reason to pause and think. We've had torrential storms here in the Washington D.C. area these last few days, yet I've found time to open my windows and sit in the dark silence listening to the clip clap of heavy raindrops thumping the ground. I'm left, like Claribel Alegria, thinking and sifting through the memories that "come bubbling out." The "pierced temples" that Alegria speaks of are not so much an immediate pain, but more so a tunneling into the past that we hold in our fragile minds. In these gentle containers of time gone by, we carry "tales of ghosts." For Alegria the ultimate tale is when she learned her beloved was leaving forever. This pain reminds her that "a gleaming pebble / from constant rubbing / becomes a comet." In this example that serves as a much larger metaphor for what happens in life, the pebble is striped of it's gleam and beauty by the constant pressure and pain, only to find new life in a form of even greater beauty, strength, and rarity. The trade off is that the comet can't be touched, can't be predicted accurately all the time, and is perfectly distant in it's beauty, almost as a mythical creature is. A transformation like this is bound to remind Alegria, and all of us readers, that memories point out what we don't want to acknowledge about the world: that it can't be figured out. The "senseless world" is "abyss / ambush / whirlwind / spur," it's a place of confusion, disillusionment, and longing. Still, the world, with all its faults is also spread full with goodness, with reasons for holding those memories that can unlock our pasts we would rather keep hidden. Alegria enumerates these reasons the world is good when she closes the poem by saying "but I keep loving it / because I do / because of my five senses/ because of my amazement / because every morning, / because forever, I have loved it / without knowing why." The world eludes our understanding, even though the rain stirs memories and begs us to find purpose and clarity in our past and present. We may continue to seek understanding and we may continue to be frustrated as our quest leads us to dead ends, but there is a greater message. Do not lose the love of life, do not forget to greet each day with your senses that make something like rain so enchanting and mesmerizing, do not lose the ability to be amazed, do not lose the fresh starts of new days, and do not lose the past, even if it is tinged with pain, because all is prelude to now, and now you are ready to live.

Day Sixteen - Rememberance

Time heals most wounds, but it leaves a sliver of what existed before the pain. Tragedies come in all shapes and sizes, impacting individuals and whole nations worldwide, regardless of class, race, religion, and any other classification you can produce. No one survives a tragedy unscathed; all of us with some connection---even a thin, seemingly minor connection---are left to cope with the silence of lost voices, the vibrant lives so abruptly and unfairly taken from us. It doesn't help to wonder what could have been and there's only little comfort in remembering what was. The only positive we can take from tragedy is the rising triumph of the human spirit. Together, we acknowledge our sorrow and pain, but we also acknowledge the selfless strength of character our community possesses. Why am I offering this treatise on rememberance and tragedy? Because four years ago today a horrific tragedy occurred at Virginia Tech, my beloved alma mater, my favorite place on this planet, and the community that I most identify with. Today, I'm remembering the 32 lives that were taken violently and senselessly from our community and our world. I'm also remembering the triumph of the human spirit that circulated amongst us Hokies and all who joined us in support and prayer.

Here's a reposting of Dr. Giovanni's galvanizing chant poem that still shatters, then builds me back up every time I read or hear it.

WE ARE VIRGINIA TECH

We Are Virginia Tech. We are sad today and we will be sad for quite a while…We are not moving on. We are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly. We are brave enough to bend to cry. And sad enoughto know we must laugh again. We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it. But neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS. Neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory. Neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water. Neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy. We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open hearts and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibilities.

We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness. We are the Hokies!

We will …prevail! We will prevail! We will prevail! WE ARE VIRGINIA TECH!

---Nikki Giovanni

Day Fifteen - Pablo Neruda's Nobel Lecture

As we reach the middle of National Poetry Month 2011, I figured some words from the legendary Pablo Neruda might be a nice halfway marker. 1971 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, a cancer stricken Neruda accepted his prize in Stockholm, but would die a short time later. Here are some of Neruda's words delivered during his Nobel Prize lecture. Few poets have enjoyed the process of writing and helping others to delight in words as much as Pablo Neruda. Let's see what he had to say...

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I did not learn from books any recipe for writing a poem, and I , in my turn, will avoid giving any advice on mode or style which might give the new poets even a drop of supposed insight...Because in the course of my life I have always found somewhere the necessary support, the formula which had been waiting for me, not in order to be petrified in my words, but in order to explain me to myself..."

"And I believe that poetry is an action, ephemeral or solemn, in which there enter as equal partners solitude and solidarity, emotion and action, the nearness to oneself, the nearness to mankind, and to the secret manifestations of nature."

---Pablo Neruda