Vincent, Walt, Jesus and Joseph

On this date in 1890, Van Gogh shot himself, dying on July 29. Here's a poem about one of his paintings.

The Starry Night

by Anne Sexton

That does not keep me from having a terrible need of — shall I say the word — religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars.

— Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother

The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.
It moves. They are all alive.
Even the moon bulges in its orange irons
to push children, like a god, from its eye.
The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry.

______________
I like this Sexton poem--but it's not really accurate. Van Gogh painted this painting indoors, in an asylum, and after reading Walt Whitman. It's no coincidence, I think, that Van Gogh was reading Whitman at the time he decided on this subject for a painting. Here's an excerpt from one of his letters to his sister.

Have you read the American poems by Whitman? I am sure Theo has them, and I strongly advise you to read them, because to begin with they are really fine, and the English speak about them a good deal. He sees in the future, and even in the present, a world of healthy, carnal love, strong and frank— of friendship— of work— under the great starlit vault of heaven a something which after all one can only call God— and eternity in its place above this world...

Here's what Whitman has to say about a starry night in Leaves of Grass:

Press close bare-bosom'd night--press close magnetic nourishing night!
Night of south winds--night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night--mad naked summer night.

Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!

I can remember studying Whitman as an undergrad in college, and studying Van Gogh, and never making any connections like this. It took a poetry workshop to point this out.

I know that there's a requirement for every creative writing minor/major to have a required number of literature classes, but wouldn't it be equally good for literature students (such as I was) to take at least one class in intro to creative writing, to see how a thing is made? I've taught as an adjunct at two colleges and am familiar with the curricula at many more. This has never been a requirement. Interestingly, my husband, who studied art, was required to take a class in creative writing.

Anyway, the 11 stars have always fascinated me most in this painting. They're like 11 good disciples around the tree. Or Joseph and his dream in Genesis about the sun, the moon, and 11 stars bowing down to him--which leads to his being cast down into the pit.

I'd better stop--I have much work to do and very little time to think.

from "My Message" by Anwar Chairil

...and yes, yes, i want my poems
to leap out from the page
rip off the covers of my books
and march forthrightly to
that sea of somnolent humanity
lay bare the verbs, vowels
syllables, consonants . . . & say
"these are my sores, my wounds:
this is my distended belly:
here i went ragged and hungry:
in that place i bled, was tortured;
and on this electric cross i died.
Brothers, sisters, HERE I AM."

Notes from All Over

Re-Reading Bobbie Ann Mason (fellow Mayfield resident): "A New-Wave Format" and "Shiloh" are two of my all-time favorite short stories.

Stuck on My Own Fiction: Cannot figure out how to hide in the back of a VW Bus. Guess I will have to find one and check it out for myself.

Only in a Small Town: At 7:00 a.m., the meter reader from the electric/water company knocks on my door, and I think there's some problem with my meter or my bill. Instead, he is gallantly retrieving a letter that I dropped off with my payment. "We didn't know if you would want us to go ahead and mail it, so we're bringing it back to you." Emily, your check is in the mail. I swear. The electric guy's trustworthy!

Verse Daily: Great poem by Carol Frost, "Manatee."

Word of the Day: oneiromancy (o-NY-ruh-man-see) noun--the practice of predicting the future by interpreting dreams. This sounds onerous. Wonder if they have the same root???

Feeling really nervous about orthopedic appointment--going to pick up my x-ray films today. It's weird to see your own vertebrae lined up (or in my case, staggering like alphabet blocks).

Oneword: Inconsistent

In-con-sis-tent: It's summer, and my sister and I are in a tent we put up in our backyard for camping--the tent was unsteady, its back bowed like a horse ready for the glue factory--the pegs were driven in shallowly, and we took our bandana-print sleeping bags (hers blue, mine red) and were real bindlestiffs--we had towels on sticks--I stayed outside looking up at the sky most of the night, but K. went in the house about midnight--she is so inconsistent...
July 22, 2005 05:36 AM

Written Inside My Mother's Day Card

The Velveteen Rabbit:

The Skin Horse Tells His Story

"It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.... You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
_______________

Well, at least, I still have my hair, and my eyes haven't dropped all the way out.

A Definition of Parenting

The Velveteen Rabbit:

"It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.... You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Well, at least I still have my hair.

Jar Poems

Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.

TS Eliot, "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets

______

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Wallace Stevens, "Anecdote of the Jar"
______

Blogoview--Unplugged

I write my stories and poems first in pen and ink. My habits predate personal computers, and since I use a computer all day long at work, I don't like it carrying over to my craft.

And writing is a craft, and it has tools, and pen and ink are the traditional ones for writing. (I never wrote on a typewriter first, either).

With the aforesaid disclaimer, I have written my last two poems directly on the computer and I like the heck out of the drafts. So maybe I should play more.

Word Ladder--ONEWORD

I'm having a great time with this oneword site: Today's word was OWE.

I wonder--did you notice that own is just one simple letter away from owe, which is just one simple letter away from awe--these word ladders astound me, and I look at my bank statement with something like awe every month, surprised there is ever money left.

July 18, 2005 12:08 PM

Thesis Topics

These were posted on other people's blogs--here are mine (I had 2, because I had a double major in English and history).

Structural Transformation and Negative Capability: Titles in Keats' Odes

Lady Jane Grey: The Myth of the "Compleat Martyr" (this was the better work).

ONEWORD--Unfold

Like petals do,
like origami,
or like a sheet
shaken open to make
the bed, unfold,
unfold, open open

Backbone

I'm going to a spine specialist at the end of this month, who'll probably be jacking up my spine. This is pretty scary surgery, but the back pain I've been having and the results of the MRIs this week are pretty conclusive. Keep me in your thoughts.

One plus--At the end of the surgery I might be 5 feet 5 instead of 5 feet 3-1/2.

This poem is helping me keep my mind off the surgical risks. I don't know why but it's helping.

"Late Self-Portrait by Rembrandt"
Jane Hirshfield

The dog, dead for years, keeps coming back in the dream.
We look at each other there with the old joy.
It was always her gift to bring me into the present—
Which sleeps, changes, awakens, dresses, leaves.
Happiness and unhappiness
differ as a bucket hammered from gold differs from one of pressed tin,
this painting proposes.
Each carries the same water, it says.

Merwin, Merwin, Merwin

When You Go Away--W.S. Merwin

When you go away the wind clicks around to the north
The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls
Showing the black walls
The clock goes back to striking the same hour
That has no place in the years

And at night wrapped in the bed of ashes
In one breath I wake
It is the time when the beards of the dead get their growth
I remember that I am falling
That I am the reason
And that my words are the garment of what I shall never be
Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy

_______________________________________________________________________

A Birthday--W.S. Merwin

Something continues and I don't know what to call it
though the language is full of suggestions
in the way of language
but they are all anonymous
and it's almost your birthday music next to my bones

these nights we hear the horses running in the rain
it stops and the moon comes out and we are still here
the leaks in the roof go on dripping after the rain has passed
smell of ginger flowers slips through the dark house
down near the sea the slow heart of the beacon flashes

the long way to you is still tied to me but it brought me to you
I keep wanting to give you what is already yours
it is the morning of the mornings together
breath of summer oh my found one
the sleep in the same current and each waking to you

when I open my eyes you are what I wanted to see.

___________________________________________________________________

I love the images in the first one and the caesuras in the second one.

Pam Durban and Point of View

Pam Durban's reading was fabulous. Her story was called "Jap Club" and was riveting. I was spellbound for 45 minutes, as were my husband (not a writer), and my 7-year-old daughter. The rhythms were as beautiful as in a poem. Only a few fiction writers manage this--Faulkner, Welty and O'Connor, A. Gurganus (love him). (Interesting to note that most of these are SOUTHERN writers, although I can add James Joyce and especially Toni Morrison to the list).

She made one comment about the story, that she'd initially written the story in 3rd person, and the protagonist wouldn't be quiet till she changed the story to 1st person. I couldn't imagine the story told from any other angle, and that comment's really started me thinking about POV.

Here is my "will it hold water" theory on POV in fiction. At their respective bests:

First Person: Water over rocks, fast; provides momentum to the story; automatically propels the reader forward.

Third Person: Water in concentric circles (after a pebble's been tossed in a still pool); it's "pretty;" it's slower going; it's often more rhythmic and meditative; the reader is engaged.

Second Person: Spotting a reflection in the water (like Narcissus); can be surprising, spontaneous, and suspiciously tricky to write); distorts perception, the way things appear underwater; the reader may equal the "reflexic I."

Anyone out there write fiction? Does this make any sense? In the piece that I am working on now, I am trying all three points of view.

Blogoview

"With which dead poet would you most have liked to work? Why?"

At first, I thought, "Elizabeth Bishop--there's no other choice." Then I remembered what a former student of hers told our seminar--how she was aloof and ignored students and co-workers alike, unless she liked your poetry or thought you shared her superiority complex. I don't know for a fact that this is true, but this was told to our seminar while Bishop was still alive. (I'm dating myself here).

My choice is Donald Justice. He was a master of poetry and apparently a master teacher. I had two acquaintances who went to the MFA program in Florida--one who did well in Justice's workshop and one who did much less well and transferred to another course of study. Both of them lauded Justice's basic kindness, his breadth of knowledge, and his helpfulness in improving student writing, even if you weren't already an accomplished poet. And look at his students' successes! I can't even name them all. And read his poems!