Praying Day: Decisions, Decisions

"To write is to right things." Julia Cameron

"Prayer is praise, is paying attention." Pamela Parker

I have a hard decision to make, an opportunity for which I am grateful but not unaware of its risks. It would be so easy to decide if I had the wise counsel and especially the love and support of Harvey. I'm in a fix in my life. I need to fix things. How is the best way to do it?

I'm broke and exhausted. Working 2-1/2 jobs is 1-1/2 too many. I'm afraid for my health and sanity. I need the money from Harvey's estate and the Commonwealth of Kentucky is not following through with its promises. My husband is dead. It is a natural death. Why won't you pay me? What possible documentation do you need, other than a death certificate, a marriage certificate, etc?

I have managed without Harvey's pension or insurance so far, but I don't know how I'll pay my taxes, and how I'll survive the summer. This is money owed to Raleigh, Dan and me. I have had to make some radical changes with the loss of his paycheck; without that extra income I might even have to give up my house. What do I do? How do I hire a lawyer when I have to decide among pantyhose, a cup of coffee and a newspaper, and lunch with a friend at the cheapest restaurant in town? (I can pay my bills right now--but just barely). Do I find an additional summer job and work myself into another stroke? Do I sell everything and start over--which I cannot do because I have children, in college, starting high school? Do I quit trying to write? Harvey would be so disappointed in me if I gave up after going back to school and trying so hard to be someone who writes every day. Do I remarry? Do I put comfort ahead of love and friendship ahead of adoration--can I? Am I a person who can forget about "romantic love big love fancy love" as Radish King so succinctly words it? I know it's unfashionable to talk about needing someone else to survive...but then I'm unfashionable, too.

I want my house. I want my kids to have what they need and most of what they want. I want to have what I need and most of what I want, too. I want my husband to be proud of me. I want to get a good night's sleep. I want to make it through the summer with no crises. I want an hour in the day when I'm not too tired to pick up a magazine I drop because my hands go numb from typing or grading 10 hours.

I adore Harvey. I miss him. I'm dreadfully angry with him for dying and leaving me under this waterfall.

I have faith in God and in myself, but that faith is faltering...I believe; help my unbelief. Thank you. Help me.

______
UPDATE: I found these 5 steps on LIVESTRONG. COM. These are pieces of advice for thinking positively. Maybe they'll produce a better effect on me than scanning my "bytes in bad sectors" for gratitude today.

Step 1

Concentrate on the facts. More often than not, according to a report by Blue Cross and Blue Shield, we are doing better than we are feeling. Unwarranted fears about the future and worrying about unforeseen consequences keep you from enjoying the positive things that are going on in your life.

"DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY" by Bobby McFerrin is the way to go.

Step 2

Stay in touch with friends and family members who love you. Isolation is one of the behaviors that can trigger negative feelings and loneliness. Participate in activities that allow you to make new friends. Look for volunteer groups that attract positive people and get involved. In addition to making friends, you'll feel good about the works you are doing to help others.

"ELEANOR RIGBY" shouldn't be my theme song.

Step 3

Plan enjoyable activities that will help you remain in an upbeat mood. If you enjoy walking through the woods, set a time each week to go out walking. Schedule pleasant activities ahead of time so that you can have something to look forward to keep your spirits up until you actually do them.

"I went out in the woods today, and you know, it made me feel kind of religious." William Matthews, on nature poetry/pastoral.

"ANTICIPATION" by Carly Simon--it's more than a ketchup jingle.

Step 4

Work on developing your stress management techniques. Researchers at the Arizona Cooperative Extension Center found that people who are more resilient and bounce back from adversity enjoy better mental health. They report that those who exercise regularly, eat healthy and have a strong spiritual dimension tend to think positively and live healthier lives.

"TIME AFTER TIME" by Cyndi Lauper would allow enough time in my 70-hour work week to accomplish all these!

Step 5

Focus on the better things in life. Celebrate your accomplishments and the talents that you do possess instead of concentrating on the lack in your life. Try to let go of those things that you cannot change and devote your energy to the areas over which you can exert some control.

"CONTROL" by Janet Jackson should be on continuous loop.

_____

Please take these hits that fit with a shovel full of sarcasm. (Well, maybe not #1, because that's a valid argument).

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/17272-think-positively/#ixzz1IDE7TRMH

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ENVOI

BOOK, LITTLE BOOK, or HOW MY BODY BECOMES THE TEXT

“There is no Frigate like a Book” Emily Dickinson, #1263

You always read in bed, belly down, the covers of the book you hold
like shoulders

(poof)

GRATITUDE JOURNAL:

1. That I wrote a happy little priapic poem.

2. That Harvey would have absolutely loved it.

3. That it's not necessarily about Harvey.

4. That he would have loved that, too.

5. That if I am going to have bad hair and a bad attitude, I can at least write a poem in the persona of a seductive little vixen. (Everyone knows that in real life I am the second Mrs. De Winter with no real name, but sometimes I long to be Miss DuMarier's bad girl Rebecca).

Turn and Face the Change....Changes

GRATITUDE JOURNAL:
1. Time may change me, but I can't trace time. I once thought that I would do anything to bring Harvey back. Now I know that he didn't suffer, that his death was instantaneous and he wasn't in pain when he died. And I know that losing him again would kill me. I can't trace time or trade time or barter with death. I must work with and through memory if I'm going to revise my life.
2. I'm grateful for the time we had together: 23 years, 7 months, and 6 days. I could probably pinpoint it to the hour, if pressed. That sounds as though it's a long time. In heart time, it's too short.
3. I found out during that nearly 2 dozen years how rare it is for a man to put his relationship first. In every picture I have of Harvey, his wedding ring is evident. He put as his status on all his artist biographies and all of his credits in magazines, shows, and museums that he was in a successful relationship with another artist. That was the first line. That was his line in the sand--we came first. I am really sorry for all the silly times I didn't put him first when we were newly married. I did learn better, and I learned it from him. That's a turning point in my understanding of what's important.
4. Love at first sight does exist for men. I've never met a woman who's felt it. (If you have been smitten/bitten by love at first sight, please let me know). I believe Harvey felt it. I believe I'll never feel it.
5. All you need is love. Which is better defined in a George Harrison song as patience and time/To do it/to do it/to do it right.

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Monday, Monday

After aubade, the rest of the day goes so slowly. Office, grading. Office, planning lessons. Office, revising a poem. I finally have a form for "Housewifery: An Annotation."

Gratitude Journal:

1. Seeing the dawn come up from the porch on a chill morning. Hot white chocolate in red stoneware mugs. Fog over the atomic-fireball tips of the peonies.

2. My favorite Batman t-shirt fits again. I am so happy to wear it. Nearly everyone in the English Department looked at me as though I were insane, because usually I dress up. They don't know that when I'm happiest, I wear sloppy jeans and t-shirts, or pajama pants and oversized sweatshirts. (And why should they know that? I have been rarely happy this year. I try to find and spread joy, but until very recently there's been none. I don't teach on Mondays, so why should I look professional? I look like The Scream no matter what I do).

3. Since July 14, I have written and revised 38 pages of poetry. This totals only 14 poems (one is 6 pages long, and the others are usually 2-1/2 to 3). I think most of them are keepers. I'm very worried about the chapbook into which they've shaped themselves. It wants to be longer than chapbook length.

4. My amazing friend Sally has been such a joy and confidante. I can tell her anything--old boyfriend stuff, missing Harvey stuff, poetry stuff, girly stuff--and she will offer me wise counsel and many giggles. I am happy that she is in my life and should tell her how much I love and appreciate her. She's also a wonderful teacher and role model for me on how to handle comp, literature, and humanities with a sense of humor and rigor.

5. My office partner puts up with me and my angst way, way more than he should. He gets my earliest drafts of poems hot off the printer and doesn't spit out coffee in disgust as he's reading them. He is Saint Will, Patron Saint of Widowed Neurotic Writers.

Secret Confessions I Made This Weekend:
1. I have missed kissing. Wouldn't you?
2. I have only had 6 boyfriends in my life. (See Munch, #4, above). That's over 40 years. At this rate, I'll be due in 2018 to end the drought.
3. I can shake my eyeballs. This is a skill that might be very useful should I take up speed dating.
4. I can hold a pencil between my toes and sign my name. This skill was demonstrated.
5. I have decided to get a tattoo. A bee or a dragonfly or a luna moth. Harvey has designed and drawn all three for someone else, who never picked them up. It would be nice to have his art with me at all times. If I can afford it, that's a good fall project.

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Sly & Robbie- D'yer Mak'er (Led Zeppelin cover)

This was originally posted on Facebook; I decided to save it here.

July 12, 1987, 4 a.m.--Like a Lead Balloon

Harvey and I go to a party after work at Heather's house.... John's down from Louisville with a few members of his band. (Finally, someone I know--other than Kim Pierce--shows up in Harvey's world). They don't have a singer, so they call out for volunteers from the audience to sing. After about 5 songs, Harvey strolls up to "D'yer Maker," that Led Zeppelin song from my high school days (when Pattie and I crawled through the ladies room window in Pennsylvania to get into a sold-out concert). Harvey sounds amazing! I had no idea he had a falsetto or could sing so well; I definitely didn't know that he could reggae (the way that JT's band riffed this song). After that we went home, and I tried to go to sleep, but I can't.

Harvey has been playing all night. Amazing, amazing stuff on his old Yamaha--country, gospel, early early rock stuff like Chubby Checkers and Chuck Barry. Right now it's the Beatles: "I've Just Seen a Face." "Oh, Darling." "In My Life." He's promised to teach Daniel to sing "Blueberry Hill." I knew I married an amazing sculptor and pen-and-ink person; I didn't know I'd married a musician, but it turns out that Harvey's parents are Carter Family on both sides. He gets it honestly if a little bit Deliverance-y.

Seriously, is there anything (besides laundry) that this boy can't do? Everything he turns his hands to do, he can do. Mad, mad hand skills....oh, every girl should marry a sculptor! An amazing artist, an amazing lover, an amazing father, and now an amazing musician. How did I get so lucky? I have only known him for 6 months and can't imagine being without him.

"There are places I remember, all my life." This night is going to be one of them. Well, better get a little sleep--it's 4 a.m. and I have to be at work by 8 at that hospital.

PS Do you think that "D'yer Maker" is slang for Jamaica? That's what I've always thought.

GRATITUDE JOURNAL:
1. Someone who brought me joy: Music, art, tenderness, concentration, curiosity. Someone whose memory I'll do my best to keep alive.
2. Salt and light. Be salt--have value. Be light--illuminate. Taste and see...
3. Black velvet. Its textures, its shimmer, its erotic feel against bare shoulders. Madame X.
4. Reggae. Sway of a hammock, sway of a palm tree, sway of braids as you walk down the street.
5. Michael Phineas McPherson, the latest character who's speaking to me. Maybe a 208-line poem is in the works again.

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Green: Spring, Envy, X-Ray (and Other Visions)

Gratitude Journal: (Not really grateful today, but at least alert enough to think of five things to keep my Lent promise)

1. Honesty: Today I'm honest and confess that I hate spring. Everything buzzing and blooming and branches on the cherry tree heavy under blossom, shadows and scents shifting with the breeze's inconstancy, clouds clotting the cerulean skies, redbuds and star magnolias with their incessant purples and pinks and reds, cardinals courting and calling purty purty purty from the newly budded branches of the water maple--and nothing is calling to me. I can see things but I cannot see past things. This part of grief is a new load of gravel in the driveway, unfamiliar, not yet flattened by rain or the familiar passage over and over (water finds its level, weight smooths things over...if this is true why are these rough edges not smoothed over by the weight of my grief, as I go over and over all the ways that I am changed)? And I want my hour of afternoon darkness back! From what are we saving daylight?

2. Whittling: My favorite dress from 1992 now fits. I wore it on Thursday. I would much rather be married than fitting in a 19-year-old dress. I would much rather be 19 years old, too. But it's a start, being the right size again. Now for exercise, to get stronger. I started walking and will continue, when I can drag myself out of bed to greet the dawn. There is nothing, absolutely nothing like walking into the sunrise. I doubt there's going to be a moment in my life when I walk off into the sunset, just as I think that happily ever after for me now is just after.

3. Medusa Cameos: I have three--one pink, one coral, one tortoiseshell and brass, all three gifts from Harvey. He used to tease me that I had something in common with Medusa--You froze me in my tracks. The snaking waves of my hair remind me of Medusa. Time to get out the straightener and look more like Miranda McGonagall.

4. Green Flares: Fireworks. Fluoroscopy. Absinthe. Cupric flames. Jealousy when I see a man opening the door for his wife, when I notice she doesn't even thank him, when I see the wedding ring glint on her finger. (I can't wear mine any more; it doesn't fit; it hurts too much to see it on the wrong finger; I am not married any more). Ivy's constancy has turned into kudzu's consumption. Green hearts swallow a landscape.

5. Starstruck: Montgomery Clift. How beautiful he was. I wonder at the coincidence that my favorite actor, my favorite relative, and my husband all had exactly the same irises...Green with gold and sometimes kaleidoscoping to other colors (copper, hazel, sea green with blue). Was there something about my grandmother that made me feel safe? Was there something about Montgomery Clift that made me feel both safe and stirred? Was there something about gazing into Harvey's eyes that made me feel both at home and challenged to travel? In Harvey's eyes were golden spokes, like the petals of sunflowers. When I looked closely into them, it was as though I'd fallen into a Van Gogh.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence

The Temptations "Get Ready" My Extended Version!

Gratitude:
1. I received the most wonderful gift this week that I have ever been given, other than the births of my children. I hesitate to post it, not because it's sleazy or illegal (or even fattening), but because the generosity and potential of this gift haven't sunk in. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. You have created a miracle for me.
2. The Temptations. The Four Tops. Smoky Robinson and the Miracles.
3. My cat's affections, fickle though they be.
4. I am not nor will ever be on American Idol , so I don't have to wear glitter anywhere, including under my arms (a la J-Lo).
5. Get Ready. Cause here I come.

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"The Ear Is a Great Editor"

Fearless Laughter: Yusef Komunyakaa’s Advice to Young Poets from Rattapallax on Vimeo.

Gratitude Journal:
1. My children. Dan and Raleigh are beautiful, smart, kind, stubborn and sometimes just plain ornery. These are amazing humans, and I cannot believe I was privileged to be their pod person.
2. Harvey. He taught me that love IS the answer. I learned to reciprocate.
3. No more mortgage.
4. I was recently told by by an old boyfriend that the loves you had when you're 19 are the ones that you'll have forever. I'm starting to believe this. When I was 19, I wanted to be married (which I have done), read books (which I have done and still do), and have two children (see #1 for my success rate at that). Poetry and I fell in together at 19; after decades apart, we've been keeping company for 5-1/2 years now.
5. Kissing. It's my superpower. Ask #4, or read about Harvey's car wreck here: http://chisenbop.blogspot.com/2005/06/kiss-off.html


_________
Daily Tarot Image in my E-Mailbox:



The Five of Pentacles reversed is about an end to difficult times. As the Five of Pentacles in the upright position is about loneliness, despair, loss, rejection, hardship and abandonment, the reversed Five of Pentacles signifies that this difficult period is coming to an end. You may be starting to feel as if life is worth living again and starting to regain your self-confidence. If you have experienced severe monetary problems or illness, these situations, too, are easing. A time for relief and breathing easier are at hand.

From isolation to restoration. From out in the cold to in where it's warm. From forced bulb to blossom. Oh, this is so good.

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Rest in Peace, Elizabeth Taylor

I know of no one else who did so much to help awareness of AIDS, especially during its early years, when so many of my California friends were suffering from the disease's devastation, the stigma of difference, and the machinations of a government determined to marginalize their rights. I am grateful to Ms. Taylor for rallying to this cause and know that among her most beautiful adornments were the smiles and stubborn love she had for others.

Richard Burton called her "beautiful beyond pornography." I call her Saint Elizabeth. May her hagiography grow.

And in the photo above, she's pictured with Montgomery Clift. Just look at those profiles! How can humans be so divine?

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Okay, You Win, I Give In: My Heart Is Red

The Man on the Dump--Wallace Stevens

Day creeps down. The moon is creeping up.
The sun is a corbeil of flowers the moon Blanche
Places there, a bouquet. Ho-ho … The dump is full
Of images. Days pass like papers from a press.
The bouquets come here in the papers. So the sun,
And so the moon, both come, and the janitor’s poems
Of every day, the wrapper on the can of pears,
The cat in the paper-bag, the corset, the box
From Estonia: the tiger chest, for tea.
The freshness of night has been fresh a long time.
The freshness of morning, the blowing of day, one says
That it puffs as Cornelius Nepos reads, it puffs
More than, less than or it puffs like this or that.
The green smacks in the eye, the dew in the green
Smacks like fresh water in a can, like the sea
On a cocoanut—how many men have copied dew
For buttons, how many women have covered themselves
With dew, dew dresses, stones and chains of dew, heads
Of the floweriest flowers dewed with the dewiest dew.
One grows to hate these things except on the dump.

Now, in the time of spring (azaleas, trilliums,
Myrtle, viburnums, daffodils, blue phlox),
Between that disgust and this, between the things
That are on the dump (azaleas and so on)
And those that will be (azaleas and so on),
One feels the purifying change. One rejects
The trash.

That’s the moment when the moon creeps up
To the bubbling of bassoons. That’s the time
One looks at the elephant-colorings of tires.
Everything is shed; and the moon comes up as the moon
(All its images are in the dump) and you see
As a man (not like an image of a man),
You see the moon rise in the empty sky.

One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail.
One beats and beats for that which one believes.
That’s what one wants to get near. Could it after all
Be merely oneself, as superior as the ear
To a crow’s voice? Did the nightingale torture the ear,
Pack the heart and scratch the mind? And does the ear
Solace itself in peevish birds? Is it peace,
Is it a philosopher’s honeymoon, one finds
On the dump? Is it to sit among mattresses of the dead,
Bottles, pots, shoes and grass and murmur aptest eve:
Is it to hear the blatter of grackles and say
Invisible priest; is it to eject, to pull
The day to pieces and cry stanza my stone?
Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the.

_____
GRATITUDE JOURNAL:

1. Wallace Stevens. Every time I need him, he's there. (I know that sounds all State-Farmish, but it's true). I was discouraged by my writing, which seems to lack heart, and here he is:

One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail.
One beats and beats for that which one believes.

This is the spell of the shaman; this is the incantation of the poet with her caesura and stress. I am half-heartedly back to being wholehearted.

My heart beats, for I believe, and it beats for you, because I believe in you. You and you and you and you. All of you.

2. The first violets: Humility, that low sweet root/From which all heavenly virtues shoot. This was the one thing I wanted from my grandmother that I didn't receive, that sampler. Maybe I should stitch it myself.

3. The first tulips in my yard: The cream of a cambric handkerchief. I love tulips, especially the yellow ones.

4. The pink-into-mauve of star magnolias. The sweater that I'm wearing is exactly this color.

5. I am otherwise engaged and am very glad about it.

Not Lot's Wife. And not a spouse, but maybe a midwife.

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We Now Return You to Our Regularly Scheduled Tarot Broadcast

"Would you like to drop your reserve and let your feelings show? The Ace of Cups tells you that your time is coming. This card also suggests inner attunement and spirituality. Cups are the suit of the heart, and the Ace stands for the direct knowing that comes from the heart. Trust what your feelings are telling you. Seek out ways to explore your consciousness and your connections with Spirit. Allow the power of your emotions to guide you in a new direction. Embrace the love that is the Ace of Cups."

Oyster, cloister, moister, roister-doister, foister.

Boy, stir!

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Stevie Wonder I Just Called To Say I Love You

Gratitude Journal:
1. THE ROMANCE WRITER'S PHRASE BOOK. This may be the best gift ever--as it keeps on giving fits of uncontrollable laughter. Sample phrase: Sorrow had etched her face with character. Pentameter never sounded so hokey.
2. IMITREX. If you've ever had a migraine, you know that a drug that stops one in its insidious eyeball-popping tracks is a miracle.
3. STEVIE WONDER. An American treasure, an ambassador to the world.
4. GREEN APPLES. Granny Smith, tart taste and tight skin.
5. THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART: Which is sharp and pointy like the Grinch's. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

PS Another one, from the sex chapter: Blood leapt from her heart and made her knees weak . This sounds more like Sinclair Lewis' Oil, known better as--wait for it--There Will Be Blood. Now we know!

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Cue Ball, Blue Chalk, Rotation, and Rack 'Em

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Gratitude Journal:
1. Thankful for the Leo in my life.
2. Thankful for the cue ball moon and the carom and click of pool balls, the dead thud of them in the leather pocket.
3. Thankful that my first eyeshadow was straight from cue chalk. (That taught me an important life lesson way before my friends knew it).
4. Thankful for getting to watch my friend T. play pool--economy of motion, geometry and line.
5. Thankful that when I was on a roll, I kicked his ass at 9-ball. I don't know that I could ever do it again, but I did it once.

Let's Just Call Her Clothesline Moon

Gratitude Journal:
1. Raleigh's beautiful new haircut--loose curls and waves that she can do herself, and maybe practice on me.
2. The Calvert City Drive-In. Hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, kids running around with balls, dogs, lawnchairs, movies via radio and big old screen. A Karmann Ghia isn't the best car for the drive-in so a special thanks to lawnchairs and 2 quilts.
3. That moon. Oh, she was lovely and low, and we moved around to see her better.
4. Remembering that hands have hills and rills and ridges and valleys and caldera. I had forgotten....
5. With whip and chair I have tamed Miss Doris Holbrook into submission and sent her out to Blackbird. All 208 lines of her! (Doris is in good company with another short poem of only 72 lines. They're couplets, though, so it looks like more).

Recent Thrift Store Finds:

After watching Pickers, I became inspired to go out and take a look around.
Here are my best finds.

1. Waterford crystal vase. Bought for 50 cents, sold to a crystal collector I know for $50. (Good good percentage!)
2. A set of Bavarian canisters with pink flowers and Flour/Sugar/Tea/Coffee/Rice across their fronts. $15--and not going anywhere but my kitchen.
3. A 25 cent china/18K gold place card marker that holds my fountain pen perfectly.
4. Another three pressed-glass tumblers for my 1950s set. I now have 11 and am looking for elusive #12 plus the sherbets. I refuse to pay more than $1 a stem so it's going to take a while.
5. Not one--but two--lettuce green, tested by me, Bakelite necklaces. Saw them as I was walking out the door, despairing of finding anything at my favorite shop. She shoots, she scores.
6. Two beautiful new dresses--one in lettuce green linen, which matches the necklaces. One is vintage black with an ecru lace waist. I love it!
7. First edition Ben Hur. No idea what this is worth but has to be better than the dollar I found it for. Waiting for a call from my book buyer.

Lust item: $300 giant iron head. Art Nouveau woman, beginning to rust oh so achingly beautifully. ($300 is the friendly price, as the tag puts her at $500). I wish, I wish, I wish she could be mine, but I cannot even lift her, much less pay for her and haul her home. Maybe some day, as I think she is an acquired taste. (Raleigh and Dan hate her).

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Tom Waits - Grapefruit Moon

Gratitude Journal:
1. La lune de pomplamoose!
2. Perigee and apogee--great words. Tonight's moon is the perigean moon, and it will be so romantic.
3. Turning back time, if not the tide. I'm sporting a ponytail and capris today.
4. The Calvert City Drive In. True Grit in a Karmann Ghia? We'll see.
5. Tom Waits. Sheer genius. "Now I'm smoking cigarettes, and I strive for purity." (Less accurate words have never been spoken. I don't smoke, am pure only by sheer default, and want to make even the stars sit up).

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Cyndi Lauper - She Bop 2005 (Acoustic)

Think again if you've only heard the 1984 version of this song. This is from The Body Acoustic (2005). I find this so beautiful, so haunting, and so damned sad: the bees without the birds, the screen door, and the shadow of the church over the lawn....

GRATITUDE JOURNAL:
1. My wonderful poetry mentor, Nickole, for her help with my Widows and Orphans poems.
2. James Dickey's "Cherrylog Road," for ticking me off enough to write a 6-1/2 page poem in the voice of Doris Holbrook. It's not very good, but it is very long.
3. Trout from my dear friend Dale. Raleigh and I will dine well tonight on trout almondine cooked in parchment paper.
4. McCann's Oats. Who knew? They are divine.
5. The 64 daffodils blooming today in my front yard. It's like a floral gift from Harvey, who loved them so (and who was born in 1964).

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Eartha Kitt 'Ain't Misbehavin'' 2008

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St. Patrick's Day

The Lover Tells of the Rose in His Heart--William Butler Yeats

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,
The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,
The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,
Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;
I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,
With the earth and the sky and the water, re-made, like a casket of gold
For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

______

Happy St. Patrick's Day. May you drink deeply from St. Brigid's lake of beer.

GRATITUDE JOURNAL:
1. The Beatles. "In My Life" is today's favorite.
2. Green-tipped roses and carnations every year for 23 years. This year I'm buying them for myself, in his memory.
3. Reubens.
4. Irish boys. I married one (Harvey) and dated another Ire-talian one.
5. Eavan Boland, who gave me the guts to write about being a wife and mother. William Butler Yeats. James Joyce (author of my favorite soliloquy of all times--Molly Bloom, big with seed). Oscar Wilde. Edna O'Brien. Lawrence Sterne. Jonathan Swift. Claire Keegan. Frank O'Connor. William Trevor. Many, many others. If there weren't Irish whiskey, the Celts would rule the world.

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"What If the Beatles Were Irish?"

This is a great pre-tuner for tomorrow's St. Patrick's Day festivities.

Gratitude List:
1. Laughter. Yours. Mine. Ours.
2. New haircut. (Okay, it's the same haircut, but it looks good today. I should straighten it more often).
3. August 6. Tentatively, V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N.
4. Guinness and chocolate cheesecake--a day early.
5. My friends from the MFA program. I love you all and hope that writing is going well.

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Talking Pictures

Thanks to one of my wonderful students, Derrick, for this link. I too collect photographs like these, especially the real photo postcards. What images, what back stories.



Gratitude Journal:
1. Riding in a convertible this weekend. I felt like a girl on a float, wearing a tiara and practicing her traffic wave.
2. White sheets--paper to fill, percale newly folded.
3. Walking in the drizzle, daydreaming a new poem.
4. Reading Toni Morrison. I love her novels. Jazz and Beloved are my favorites.
5. Every day, in every way, my son and my daughter. I just incubated them and take no credit for their marvelous wit, looks, brains, and musicality (though, dear hearts, I can be bribed with chocolate to extend these accolades).

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Beware!

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IN PERSPECTIVE: Gorecki's Symphony No. 3 "Sorrowful Songs" - Lento e Largo

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Today's Card: The Star (Victorian Deck)

The Star: Something to live for, somewhere to move, someone to love – even if it is myself. Especially if it's myself.

Staying the course, for it's the right one. Look up in perfect silence at the stars.

Pour it out. Pour it all out. There will be plenty left.

(I wish I knew where these came from. Maybe it's enough that they come, once or twice a week).

Daily Gratitude Journal:

1. Cashmere sweaters.
2. The scent of the just-fallen rain in the cup of a daffodil.
3. My crazily unbraided hair--corkscrews and waves and all sorts of shimmer.
4. The sky last evening at twilight: slate, cornflower, cadet, midnight blue.
5. A ring on my finger and time on my hands. (adapting a George Jone zeugma).

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For Flynn: As in Crinoline (not as in Chopin)

Inspire: To breathe in. A beginning.

"The purpose of art is to stop time." Bob Dylan (quoted in Kim Addonizio's Ordinary Genius)

"Above all....the excitement of the 'new thing', of the experiment - that peculiar floating sensation of not knowing what's going to happen next." Stop-time, Frank Conroy
_____

Breathless: What art costs.

Breathtaking: What art does. What I inspire to do.

Caught breath: I come from a long line of glassblowers.
_____

I cannot answer you yet. Uncertainty is a part of it, sure. But so is certainty: This is what I was put here to do. Not knowing what every time. Knowing that every time.
______

Stop. Center. Deep breath. Dive in.
______

Colette, propped up in bed, in her boudoir, writing, writing writing. Bedbound. Bed bound. Adjective or phrase?
______

I fall in love and focus on the beloved. I learn to know him.

"Do I repeat myself? Very well, I repeat myself." Walt Whitman (who has it right)
______

Making book:
1. to engage for a performance;
2. to record a charge;
3. to set down in written form.
______

Crushed grass. The scent of new sheets. Sprawl. My hair a shawl. I want to hide my face.
______

Cupid shoots arrows. Each arrow's an annotation.

Anno--year. Notation--setting down the musing.

Setting down the music of this year in words.
______

Crushed grass. Again. Again. Again.
______

"I prayed one word: I want," writes Sappho.
______

A simile is like an arrow. Each points one way--toward the beloved.

A compass needle isn't an arrow, but it will bring us home.

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Ted Hughes

"Here in this poem, is one of my prize catches. I used to be a very keen angler for pike, as I still am when I get the chance, and I did most of my early fishing in a quite small lake, really a large pond. This pond went down to a great depth in one place. Sometimes on hot days, we would see something like a railway sleeper lying near the surface, and there certainly were huge pike in that pond. I suppose they are even bigger by now. Recently I felt like doing some pike fishing, but in circumstances where there was no chance of it, and over the days, as I remembered the extreme pleasures of that sport, bits of the following poem began to arrive. You will see by looking at the place in my memory very hard and very carefully, and by using the words that grew naturally out of the pictures and feelings. I captured not just a pike, I captured the whole pond, including the monsters I never hooked.”
_____

Pike

Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
They dance on the surface among the flies.

Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,
Over a bed of emerald, silhouette
Of submarine delicacy and horror.
A hundred feet long in their world.

In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads-
Gloom of their stillness:
Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards.
Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds

The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date:
A life subdued to its instrument;
The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.

Three we kept behind glass,
Jungled in weed: three inches, four,
And four and a half: red fry to them-
Suddenly there were two. Finally one

With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.
And indeed they spare nobody.
Two, six pounds each, over two feet long
High and dry and dead in the willow-herb-

One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet:
The outside eye stared: as a vice locks-
The same iron in this eye
Though its film shrank in death.

A pond I fished, fifty yards across,
Whose lilies and muscular tench
Had outlasted every visible stone
Of the monastery that planted them-

Stilled legendary depth:
It was as deep as England. It held
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
That past nightfall I dared not cast

But silently cast and fished
With the hair frozen on my head
For what might move, for what eye might move.
The still splashes on the dark pond,

Owls hushing the floating woods
Frail on my ear against the dream
Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed,
That rose slowly toward me, watching.

Ted Hughes

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Gratitude Journal, Day 4: Klaus Nomi - Samson and Delilah (Aria)

1. Mon coeur....voix.
2. Coffee.
3. Butterflies.
4. Turbinado sugar.
5. On the road in 15 minutes.

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Across the Universe - I've Just Seen A Face - Jim Sturgess

She's got a boyfriend.

S'okay. I've got a girlfriend.

Love this movie--see y'all on Monday. Going to try to sleep before the weekend of lethargy begins.

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Gratitude Day 3: Incidentals Including Oxygen

Gratitude Journal

1. New sheets, high thread count. So cool, so slippery.
2. Hagiography: The whole idea of a halo, of a patron saint.
3. A perfect black dress.
4. Silence without strain or stress.
5. Tomorrow and tomorrow night and Sunday morning: No cigarettes no sleep no light no sound. (There better be food to eat and books to read, though).

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Day 2: A Rosary of Gratitude for This World

Gratitude Journal:

1. William Carlos Williams--for always inspiring me to strip down language and focus on image. "No ideas but in things."
2. Charles Demuth--American Precisionist, whose work I wouldn't know except for the poems of William Carlos Williams.
3. Poetry: The Blood Jet. The Cure for What Ails You. The Incantation to Get the Guy or Curse the Fates that Tore You Apart. The Word. No definition suffices. After God and my family, and in praise of them.
4. My Rumi-engraved ring. Every day, it reminds me that I have poetry on my finger and waiting in my hands. It also reminds me that I'm in remission from lupus and its corticosteroids. I am getting back into shape. The Rumi ring is becoming, well, roomy. It once fit my ring finger and now slips onto my left thumb.
5. Flynn. Last because you're newest, not because you're least.

Love Song

What have I to say to you
When we shall meet?
Yet—
I lie here thinking of you.

The stain of love
Is upon the world.
Yellow, yellow, yellow,
It eats into the leaves,
Smears with saffron
The horned branches that lean
Heavily
Against a smooth purple sky.

There is no light—
Only a honey-thick stain
That drips from leaf to leaf
And limb to limb
Spoiling the colours
Of the whole world.

I am alone.
The weight of love
Has buoyed me up
Till my head
Knocks against the sky.

See me!
My hair is dripping with nectar—
Starlings carry it
On their black wings.
See, at last
My arms and my hands
Are lying idle.

How can I tell
If I shall ever love you again
As I do now?

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The painting is Demuth's Rue du singe qui peche (street of the monkey who fishes); the gold light reminds me of the William Carlos Williams poem. Williams wrote that the poem was inspired by Demuth's use of yellow light in the sky.

Ash Wednesday: Thinking of 40 Days

Beauty instead of ashes.

What you offer to me is so tempting. I want to shake off the widow's weeds, the sackcloth and ashes of a burned-out fire. I want to have peace, and I crave beauty. I want a life that's beautiful again.

I don't think I'll burn again, but maybe I can shine.

_____
Gratitude Journal

1. Hands that can make me a living--supple, strong, fine-boned ones, without (so far) those earthworm blue veins).
2. The Earl Grey scent of my cat's fur.
3. My gazillion Bakelite bracelets: butterscotch, black, multi-color, and the newest one, scalloped aqua.
4. Harvey's picture. I see this first thing each morning when I open my eyes. I am grateful for him every day. (And Merwin's "A Birthday").
5. Each and every new scrap of information I get for my fiction project. Today it was Purell and the Traffic Stop.

________

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Remembering You Through The Righteous Brothers

UNCHAINED MELODY: THE STUDIO VERSION

"I've hungered." Bobby Hatfield, of The Righteous Brothers

Cashmere sweater slung over the arm of a sofa,
grey beard of dust

(feather dusted the rest of this). Let me know if you want to see it.

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Rob Brezny: Lotus Go Then, You and I

CANCER (June 21-July 22): The roots of the lotus are anchored in muck
at the pond's bottom. Its leaves float on the water and its dramatic
flower rises above on a thick stem. It's an evocative plant that is featured
in many ancient myths. For Buddhists, it was an emblem of
enlightenment: beauty ascending from the mud. In India, a thousand-
petaled golden lotus symbolized the miracle of creation. To the Egyptians,
it represented rebirth. Even modern science has contributed to building
the mystique of the lotus, having determined that its seeds can remain
viable for many centuries. It's not a fragile marvel! In the 16th-century
Chinese folk tale "Monkey," a teacher instructed the hero on how to
achieve a long life. "Even amidst fierce flames," he said, "the Golden
Lotus can be planted." For the foreseeable future, Cancerian, the lotus is
your power object.

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For Me, for My Baby, for the Road

This painting is entitled "Another Marguerite," another daisy that's been plucked up and out. She's so bedraggled in the heavy cloak that slumps her shoulders, and her wrists are shackled, not with gold bracelets, but with chains.

I don't want to be her mirror image, and lately I've been looking down, at the ground, or backward at the time Harvey and I were together.
_____

I take off the cloak, hang it up, put it back on.

"Something's missing."

"Nothing's missing.

"Ah, you forgot the--attitude."

(Karate Kid)

Attitude is everything. And it's only one thing.
_____

How do I improve my attitude? How do I go forward with joy? How do I stop being silhouette and move into sculpture? How do I move from automaton to aware, sentient woman again? Do I need another person, or am I "another person" myself? I'm ready to shake off the old cells, slough off the snake's skin and move forward, scales rippling and glinting in the light.
______

If everything is one thing, what is that one thing?

Strength: Flexing it without flaunting it.
Grace: Being aware of gifts without self-consciousness about those gifts.
Beauty: Showing one's most accurate essence, individuality.
______

If I am one thing--focus--then I can still, as Walt Whitman writes, contain multitudes.

If a multiplicity of rainbows waits inside a single prism--how many more are dormant in a chandelier, which is still one thing ? How many more wait inside the sun, striking the chandelier, and splintering through the prisms? And the sun, although the biggest thing in our solar system, is still one thing.

If one letter--A--contains many sounds, consider how that letter is only a smidgen (less than 4%) of the alphabet--which is still one thing. And from that one thing come all the poems, stories, novels, and essays I love and which I will love when I read--and write--them in the future.

I need to focus on origin--one, one, one--not one, two, three--because that's never completed. One, one, one--multiplying by one gives me a wholeness, an infinity, that addition won't.

Think of Tennyson repeating his name--Tennyson, Tennyson, Tennyson--as his incantation to write, to enter the one world of the poem.

Think of one God--three parts, three letters, one word. Think of the Word. Honor it. Love it as you love your neighbor. Love it as you love yourself.

One, one, one. Thrice. The charm's wound up.

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My Mammaw Loved This Song and So Do I

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Mystery in My Mailbox: Spinning My Wheels

Writer's block. Topsy-turvy. Ass over teakettle. Head over heels over head. Down the rabbit hole with Alice.

Maybe just stuck: Where do I go when my wheels are spinning?

Longing fades, luster dims.

I need a break, need hope, energy and desire.

I'm either spinning my wheels, or I've flooded the engine by trying too hard to start it. How in charge do I have to be? Do I control my life by micro-management, or do I control my life by refusing to move forward?

I have a feeling I should stay home--or walk--wherever I head next. This card suggests ditchwater to me.

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REMEMBERING YOU THROUGH LOUISE GLUCK

Summer--Louise Gluck

Remember the days of our first happiness,
how strong we were, how dazed by passion,
lying all day, then all night in the narrow bed,
sleeping there, eating there too: it was summer,
it seemed everything had ripened
at once. And so hot we lay completely uncovered.
Sometimes the wind rose; a willow brushed the window.

But we were lost in a way, didn't you feel that?
The bed was like a raft; I felt us drifting
far from our natures, toward a place where we'd discover nothing.
First the sun, then the moon, in fragments,
stone through the willow.
Things anyone could see.

Then the circles closed. Slowly the nights grew cool;
the pendant leaves of the willow
yellowed and fell. And in each of us began
a deep isolation, though we never spoke of this,
of the absence of regret.
We were artists again, my husband.
We could resume the journey.

___
I am trying my best to be an artist again, my husband, my beloved, my dearly beloved sweetheart. I never felt wanderlust till now.

Cavafy's "Ithaka"--and our translation of the Song of Songs--I want at my memorial service.

I want this poem to kick-start my life. I wish I didn't have to take this journey without you, and I will miss you till the end of my days.

And now I'm walking--not away from you--but in the direction you encouraged. Not west, but truly north. You will always be my touchstone, my compass needle, the legend to my map.

I will always know where I am, who I am, and who I could be, because of you.

(photo of Harvey's plaster sculptures taken by Sam Parker)

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Why I Will Always Love John Cusack

Harvey Parker

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First of the Widows and Orphans Poems

Thanks, as always, to Sam for including my work in his fine journal, Blue Notebook/Blue Fifth Review.

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Rob Brezney Strikes Again

CANCER: Jungian storyteller Clarissa Pinkola Estes says one of her main influences is the Curanderisma healing tradition from Mexico and Central America. "In this tradition a story is 'holy,' and it is used as medicine," she told *Radiance* magazine. "The story is not told to lift you up, to make you feel better, or to entertain you, although all those things can be true. The story is meant to take the spirit into a descent to find something that is lost or missing and to bring it back to consciousness again." You need stories like this, Cancerian, and you need them now. It's high time to recover parts of your soul that you have neglected or misplaced or been separated from.

I agree with the "holy story," and I'd like to write a story in which I find something that was wholly mine. It's myself that I've lost over the last half-year, when the oui/we has turned to non/none. I'm focused on reevaluating/rediscovering my soul (not in the biblical sense but in the creative sense--what's at the heart, what do I know, as Sylvia's speaker did in "Elm," with her great tap root)?

I would like to be singular in all senses of the word, for a while. I'd like to feel the breeze in my hair, the rain on my face. I'd like to feel possibility billowing, a sail in the wind.

3/11/11 UPDATE: Is the definition that Pinkola Estes offers for descent/bringing back what you need not the story of Persephone/Odysseus/Gilgamesh/Orpheus descending into the underworld?

I love these stories. We've been reading The Metamorphosis.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ROBERT LOWELL (From Today's Writer's Almanac

It's the birthday of poet Robert Lowell, born in Boston (1917), who twice won the Pulitzer Prize and whose work established the Confessional style of poetry in America. Among his most famous poems: "The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket," "Skunk Hour," "For the Union Dead," "Fall 1961," "To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage," and "Epilogue."

His twenties were eventful. He got angry with his father and left home in Boston, dropping out of Harvard in the process. He moved to Tennessee, pitched a tent on the lawn of poet Allen Tate, and dined every evening with Tate's family. He converted to Catholicism, married the novelist Jean Stafford, and then renounced Catholicism. During World War II, he wrote a letter to President Roosevelt announcing that he would not be drafted. He then spent five months in federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, a jailed conscientious objector. He later summed up his youth in the poem "Memories of West Street and Lepke":

"Ought I to regret my seedtime? / I was a fire-breathing Catholic C.O., / and made my manic statement / telling off the state and president, and then / sat waiting sentence in the bull pen."

He studied with John Crowe Ransom at Kenyon College and wrote the poems that make up his first two collections. At 30, he won his first Pulitzer. That year he was appointed poet laureate of the United States. He was offered a teaching position at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. And it about this time that he was hospitalized for mental illness for the first time — in what would be the first of many, many times.

He had manic-depressive disorder, today called bipolar. He himself referred to his mania as "pathological enthusiasm." He once described a manic episode as "a magical orange grove in a nightmare." He was in and out of psychiatric hospitals through out his adult life, admitted on a couple dozen different occasions. He frequented McLean's psychiatric ward in Boston, a place where two of his best poetry students, fellow future Pulitzer Prize winners Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, would also spend time.

Lowell once said that whereas depression is an illness for oneself, mania is an illness for one's friends. Many of Lowell's writer friends penned anecdotes about his mania. Stanley Kunitz wrote about the time he visited Lowell at McLean's, and Lowell read him an improved version of the "Lycidas" that he'd written — firmly convinced that he, not John Milton, had written the original masterpiece as well. One friend who visited him at a London hospital told of how Lowell would entertain visitors with French liqueur he concealed in a repurposed aftershave bottle.

One of Lowell's Harvard poetry seminar students, James Atlas, wrote: "I had never witnessed one of these breakdowns, but I had heard about them in grim detail: Lowell showing up at William Alfred's house and declaring that he was the Virgin Mary; Lowell talking for two hours straight in class, revising a student's poem in the style of Milton, Tennyson, or Frost; Lowell wandering around Harvard Square without a coat in the middle of January, shivering, wild-eyed, incoherent. In the seminar room on the top floor of Holyoke Center, we waited nervously — perhaps even expectantly, given the status accorded anyone who had been present at one of these celebrated episodes — for it to happen before our eyes, watching eagerly for any manic soliloquies, references to Hitler, or outbursts of unnatural gaiety. These were the signs that Lowell had 'gone off' and would have to be put away."

After his episodes, when he'd regained his sanity, Lowell was inevitably embarrassed. He explained to a friend: "After the manic attack comes an incredible formless time of irresolution, forgetfulness, inertia, all the Baudelairean vices plus what be must never have known, stupidity." He spent a lot of time apologizing to people, making amends, attempting some damage control. In the spring of 1964 — age 47 — he wrote to poet T.S. Eliot: "I want to apologize for plaguing you with so many telephone calls last November and December. When the 'enthusiasm' is coming on me it is accompanied by a feverish reaching to my friends. After it's over I wince and wither." Recovering from a different bout of mania, he wrote T.S. Eliot: "The whole business has been very bruising, and it is fierce facing the pain I have caused, and humiliating [to] think that it has all happened before and that control and self-knowledge come slowly, if it all."

Graham Greene and many others found that Lowell's disease was also his material. When he was working on the poems for Life Studies, Lowell said: "I found I had no language or meter that would allow me to approximate what I saw or remembered. Yet in prose I had already found what I wanted, the conventional style of autobiography and reminiscence." So he began to blend genres, he said, and wrote his autobiographical poetry in a style he thought he got from Flaubert — one, he said, "that used images and ironic or amusing particulars." And he quit trying to "bang words into rhyme and count," instead doing "all kinds of tricks with meter and the avoidance of meter."

Life Studies won the 1960 National Book Award. It was a turning point in his own work, which had been highly formal and metrical until then. And it was a turning point in American poetry. A critic wrote a review entitled "Poetry as Confession," and described Lowell's poems as "confessional" — a cliché now, but brand new at the time. It's from this review of Lowell's work that we get the name "Confessional" to describe a genre of poetry, one in which the poet draws on his or her own life events in an often unflattering way.

His life was tumultuous and he once said, "Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing — I suppose that's what a vocation means — at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction." He was married to three writers, Jean Stafford, Elizabeth Hardwick, and then Lady Caroline Blackwood, with whom he moved to England for the last decade of his life. He was separated from his third wife, and in a taxi from JFK into New York City to visit his second ex-wife, when he had a heart attack and died, age 60.

His friend Stanley Kunitz once wrote about Lowell:
"When he slumped onto your sofa like an extended question mark, tumbler in hand, chain-smoking, dropping his ashes, spouting gossip or poetry, you knew that the moon would have to drift across the sky before he would be ready to go, leaving at least one memorial cigarette hole burnt into cushion or rug behind him. You were bleary with fatigue, but you cherished the rare electricity of his presence. And you would be desolate if he had not returned."

In his poem "Night Sweat," Robert Lowell wrote:
Work-table, litter, books and standing lamp,
plain things, my stalled equipment, the old broom —
but I am living in a tidied room,
for ten nights now I've felt the creeping damp
float over my pajamas' wilted white …
Sweet salt embalms me and my head is wet,
everything streams and tells me this is right;
my life's fever is soaking in night sweat —
one life, one writing!

Lowell's Collected Poems came out in 2003, and his Collected Letters came out in 2005. He was pen pals with poet Elizabeth Bishop for 30 years, and their letters were published in 2008 in the book Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (2008).

Here's a poem by Robert Lowell, "Epilogue":

Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme —
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter's vision is not a lens,
it trembles to caress the light.
But sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.

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