Panorama Practice under the Summer Sky

Yes, my angel, it really is that beautiful here in summertime! Meadow, trees and clouds, clouds, clouds! I stitched many shots together on my iPhone this afternoon to get this, And it is blessedly quiet, too. I feel very lucky to have spent time in such different parts of the country. Today I was putting more books away in the guest room which will soon have guests that need to walk where some boxes were. One box was all poetry books from a former neatening. It's been hard to find good large bookshelves any more. When I go into furniture stores, there are many TV stands and so forth, but actual books seem to be out of fashion. But I was delighted to find a copy of Road-side Dog, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1999, with an actual dog drawing on the front cover. This is a book of short pieces by Czeslaw Milosz, who is a great, great, great poet who writes in Polish, and lived in California for many years. I heard him read many times. He grew majestic eyebrows, the most spectacular I have ever seen on a person. He is the author of my all time favorite poem, "Encounter" which I put into this post. And also the compiler of The Book of Luminous Things, which is the source of many of the poems I have featured this year. Road-side Dog, seems to me the perfect size for a book of prose poems and short pieces like this; it is about 5.5 x 6.5 inches, which is ideal for a coat or jacket pocket. The paperback covers are softly flexible, not brittle; it is pleasant to hold in the hand. This is the very first piece in the book, on page 3, and explains the title.


Road-side Dog

" I went on a journey in order to acquaint myself with my province, in a two-horse wagon with a lot of fodder and a tin bucket rattling in the back. The bucket was required for the horses to drink from. I traveled through a country of hills and pine groves that gave way to woodlands, where swirls of smoke hovered over the roofs of houses, as if they were on fire, for they were chimneyless cabins; I crossed districts of fields and lakes. It was so interesting to be moving, to give the horses their rein, and wait until, in the next valley, a village slowly appeared, or a park with the white spot of a manor in it. And always we were barked at by a dog, assiduous in its duty. That was the beginning of the century; this is its end. I have been thinking not only of the people who lived there once but also of the generations of dogs accompanying them in their everyday bustle, and one night--I don't know where it came from--in a pre-dawn sleep, that funny and tender phrase composed itself: a road-side dog."


One of the great things I love about this is it takes me to a landscape where I have never been, traveling in a manner I have never traveled, and yet it is perfectly simple and easy to understand because of the clarity of the description.

Tonight I am also trying a bigger font; if it is too awful, I can always change back, and as Scarlett O'Hara once said, "I'll think about it tomorrow."

Nighty-night.

Last night's sun leaving the great bowl of sky

You can just barely see the house on the right. This is taken with my much-longed for new Olloclip iPhone fisheye lens. I just love the sky here and this is another swell way to say so.

Stanley Kunitz is back tonight from his book The Wild Braid; a poet reflects on a century in the garden.  This book is illustrated with lovely color photos of Mr. Kunitz in his garden and is a true delight. Copies are still available; I would recommend this a a great book gift for writers or gardeners or just for anyone who loves the natural world.

This is the first part of the section called, The Wilderness:

"One of the great delights of poetry is that when you're really functioning, you're tapping the unconscious in a way that is distinct from the ordinary, the customary use of the mind in daily life. You're somehow cracking the shell separating you from the unknown.
There's no formula for accessing the unconscious. The more you enter into the unconscious life, the more you believe in its existence and know it walks with you, the more available it becomes and the doors open faster and longer. It learns you are a friendly host. It manifests itself instead of hiding from your tyrannical presence, intruding on your daily routines, accomodations, domestications.
The unconscious is very much akin to what, in other frameworks,, I call wilderness. And it's very much like the wilderness in that its beasts are not within our control. It resists the forms, the limits, the restraints, that civilization itself imposes. I've always felt, even as a a child, that there was the decorum of the social structure, and so forth, and then there was the wild permissiveness of the inner life. I learned I could go anywhere in my inner life."
(page 87)
It was hard to stop typing, and I will probably share more of this passage this week.

Lavendar Filaments of the Campion flower

I got my Olloclip 3 in 1 lens for the iPhone yesterday. Tonight I used the fisheye for wonderful cloud photos. It is sort of like a toy, with tiny parts to lose. The lens caps are the size of small coins. You are supposed to carry it in a little sack in your pocket, but because it is the size of about two of those big gum balls that seems like a silly idea to me. After I took a zillion cloud views with both the fisheye and the wideangle, I decided to try the macro again, since my in-house trials had not been very good, except one that shows how coarsely bristled the dachshund nose is.
This is a campion, which blooms at this time of year, and which I always think of as a dainty little wildflower. I have forgotten if it is the bladder campion, or the white campion. I was trying to pin this down to be accurate here, and still can't quite be sure, but what I found out is that it is a noxious weed and a great trouble to farmers in Oregon.
I also found out tonight that macro photography with this setup requires a very steady hand, and most likely a tripod. And naturally, there was a slight breeze. This is the best photo I got and it isn't really sharp. But how otherwise, an such a small flower, would I know that the filaments are such a delicate shade of reddish purple. I also think the foremost anther is almost in focus. Tomorrow!

* * *
Such a very small flower I felt required a small poem, so I looked in the latest Acorn; a journal of contemporary haiku  #30 and found this one on page 48::

into a sky
all spent reed and burdock
a burst of goldfinches

                                   John Barlow
* * *

I am happy for Mr. Barlow, my goldfinches have been very scarce this year. Although there is plenty of reed and burdock at the other end of the meadow in the new Hymas Woods Nature Preserve.

* * *

In redoing a bookshelf today, I found Stanley Kunitz's choice small book, The Wild Braid; a poet reflects on a century in the garden, W.. W. Norton & Co., 2005. Here is just a taste of prose from page 97.

"The poet is an anomaly in our culture. The goal of our culture is money and power. And that's not exactly what poetry is about. What is it about? That's a hard question. It's about anything the human mind can produce. And that's infinite.
Some people think being a poet is like being, say, a bluebird. It's hardly that. But then, why not? I wouldn't mind being a bluebird for one day! It certainly would be fun to be perched in my garden, at the top of this spruce here, singing like mad and pursuing another bluebird,"

Bluebirds, goldfinches, campion and  burdock! Be sure to get outdoors tomorrow, even for a few minutes, if the only growing thing you can see is a potted petunia! Good night!

My sisters at the haymow door

This is another of my mother's photographs. (A single click will enlarge it.) I love the skewed viewpoint and the light on those fresh rosy faces. I also like the hands and the knees. What my brother, Robert, used to call our FOO (family of origin) was in many ways a family of brothers--four of them born in less than 5 years! This wolf-cub group was flanked by these two girls. I am the oldest child, four years older than the older girl here.

Tonight here is another poem from The Book of Luminous Things, which I have described at the end of this post. Again the headnote is by the editor of the anthology, Czeslaw Milosz.

Wayne Dodd 1939-  (Click his name to go to his web page.)
[This poet was born in the same year as the older girl in the photo, my sister, Susan.]

Rural America persists in the consciousness of city inhabitants, for after all many of them come from families with a rural background. Here, the news of a farmer's death brings members of the family from a distant city.

OF HIS LIFE

Beside the gravel pile, the lizard

warms himself in the dazzling greenness 

of his life, watching us casually

through half-lidded eyes,

It is May.

Next week he would have been 57.

My daughter holds my hand, 3 years old

and ignorant, the airsickness forgotten,

and the hurried trip

and interrupted sleep.

Below the road

the whiteface cattle graze

in the morning peace

The house is quiet.

Inside, his daughters stare unbelieving

into coffee cups, unable to imagine

the future.

My child throws some gravel

and the lizard fixes us

with both eyes, but does not

run, unwilling to leave

the warmth of the sun.

I can hear everything so clearly.

Years later, she will ask

what he was like, her grandfather/

And I will try to remember

the greenness of this lizard,

he loved the sun so.

Wayne Dodd, from The Book of Luminous Things, page 247.

This poem follows a process of thought that seems completely believeable. The use of numbers, not words, for their ages. calls attention to the age disparity between the daughter and her father's father. The very shortest lines deal with time. And the figure of the lizard holds the whole thing together.  A simple, elegant poem. that deals with elemental matters. Sleep well.

Stuffed Marten in Window LIght

     This marten has probably been dead for a long time, but he still can manage quite an arrogant stare as he stands near the door in the R & R Cabin breakfast and lunch eatery in downtown Alanson, Michigan. He's not so much a greeter--one doesn't notice him on the way in---as a sayer of goodbyes. You cannot miss him on the way out.

I have gotten used to the amount of taxidermy on view in restaurants in Northern Michigan through 20-some years of summer visits here, but it isn't common in other places I have lived. I was caught by the shaft of sunlight on his face, and by how much he resembled a very small bear. I've never seen a marten, even in a zoo. It's haunting, thinking about life and death.

Here is another poem from The Book of Luminous Things, one of my favorite anthologies, which I describe at the end of another post here.

The editor, Nobel Poet Czeslaw Milosz, writes a headnote for each poem, which I include here. In this case he has written about the poet, Kenneth Rexroth.

Kenneth Rexroth 1905-1982

Kenneth Rexroth, who used to live in Japan, wrote toward the end of his life a parable on Buddha, a poem of far-reaching nonattachment.

Buddha took some Autumn leaves
In his hand and asked
Ananda if these were all
The red leaves there were.
Ananda answered that it
Was Autumn and leaves
Were falling all about them,
More than could ever
Be numbered. So Buddha said,
"I have given you
A handful of truths. Besides
These there are many
Thousands of other truths, more
Than can ever be numbered.
                                                        ---Kenneth Rexroth, page 287

I like the formality the use of capital letters gives this poem.  I also like the way  the phrase "more than can ever be numbered" is used twice and spread across two lines in two different ways.

Tonight, I am thinking it probably doesn't matter if I approve of, or understand, hunting and the wish to preserve a simulacrum of an animal in this way. Things are the way they are, and here stands the marten in sunlight from the plate-glass windows in this particular small town in America. Where are you tonight? And have you changed your mind about anything, important or trivial???  Sleep well.

Children in red & gray

 Another image from my mother's slides. I do not recognize a single one of these children, nor the location, but think this would make a great painting in the manner of Velasquez? Vermeer? Bruegel? I am going to go with Bruegel after all. It's partly the presence of the large red shapes. I love the textures of the brick floor. It looks like there might have been moisture in the cracks between bricks.

I know it must be cold outside, because we always tied up the heads of the little ones in scarves like this when it was very cold. Their heads and necks are all swathed. Why the boards? What is the golden shape at the top center? If one of my brothers has a perfectly simple explanation for this pictorial event I will let you know. In the meanwhile, let's all write our own poems.

Here is a poem by Brenda Hillman that also has children and strangeness in it. It is from her book Fortress, which was published by Wesleyan University Press in 1989. It is on page 15.

Saguaro

Often visitors there, saddened   

by lack of trees, go out   

to a promontory.

Then, backed by the banded   

sunset, the trail   

of the Conquistadores,

the father puts on the camera,   

the leather albatross,   

and has the children

imitate saguaros. One

at a time they stand there smiling,   

fingers up like the tines of a fork

while the stately saguaro   

goes on being entered

by wrens, diseases, and sunlight.

The mother sits on a rock,   

arms folded

across her breasts. To her

the cactus looks scared,   

its needles

like hair in cartoons.

With its arms in preacher   

or waltz position,   

it gives the impression

of great effort

in every direction,   

like the mother.

Thousands of these gray-green   

cacti cross the valley:   

nature repeating itself,

children repeating nature,   

father repeating children   

and mother watching.

Later, the children think   

the cactus was moral,

had something to teach them,

some survival technique   

or just regular beauty.

But what else could it do?

The only protection   

against death

was to love solitude.

My Mother's Photographs

Tonight I unzipped and uploaded some more scans of the slides my mother took in the Fifties and Sixties. I love the effect in this shot of my sister at our place caused, I guess, by sunlight on the lens. It was nice that she was wearing a long red spring coat, so you can pick her out of the green expanses. And it looks like the trees are all leaning toward her protectively,
She is a widow, now, and her four daughters all live in the town where she does, and 12 of her grandchildren do, too. And the youngest of her sons. Three other sons live elsewhere. Quite a family! And quite a time, our last half of the Twentieth Century.

For tonight's poem, let's have one by the Canadian painter and poet Lawren Harris (1885-1970)  who did his work largely in the other half of the Century from my sister, who was born in 1939, (She was a premature baby and was saved from that eye problem  (I think it is called retrolental fibroplasia) caused by two much oxygen given to newborns by the fact that at Ellis Hospital in Schenectady, all the incububators were in use by preemies who needed them worse that she did. Still, before she came home, my mother had time to knit her an outfit, blanket, sweater, hat and booties of soft peach colored yarn. Later, her husband had it framed and it hangs in her home.)

Oops, back to Lawren Harris! He worked very hard at  modernizing his painting, and achieved striking results. He was also interested in what we now call Modern Poetry. I had heard of the Group of Seven, Canadian painters who banded together to promote a more modern style, but I didn't know their names. Harris was a founder of that group. In addition to the stark Lake Superior paintings for which he is known, he painted and wrote poetry about the urban life he knew. The source for this poem is Lawren Harris in the Ward; his urban poetry and paintings, edited by Gregory Betts. The poem is on page 32.

Look at All of Us

Here, look at me
Going along my little way --
Here, look at you
Going along yours --
There, look at you-him and you-her,
And me-her and me-him
Going along theirs --
Each knowing what he knows
Or not knowing --
But each
Dragging one foot along
Behind the other
Up hill,
Or down hill,
Or along the gutters --
Look at all of us --
Take a long look.

Modern as this poet was, notice that he still begins each line with a Capital Letter, uses commas and dashes and ends with a period. I find that it is very hard for me to think of capitalizing the first letter of each line of one of my poems. I also like to punctuate in the regular way, and bring things to a stop now and then with a nice, definite, period. I also like to break poems up into stanzas and I often prefer stanzas that have the same number of lines throughout the poem. I think many of these preferences are unconscious, and not really based on anything that has been carefully thought about. I also don't like poems with short lines at the end; they look to me unbalanced, as if they could tip over. I think it pays to examine these unconscious, or semi-conscious biases, and see if new ways can improve our poems. And I've preached enough tonight, here in the still-unfolding Twenty-First Century.  Good night!