New York, New York

Female photographer Helen Levitt died yesterday. Before her obituary, I had never heard of her but am eager to see more of her work. If you are curious here is the link to the NY Times obit: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/arts/design/30levitt.html. She is best known for her depictions of New York street life. I love this kind of candid, almost snap shot photography.

I loved this photo in particular because it reminded me of everything that is great about New York (the vitality, the character) and everything that is vile (the humidity, the heat, the hairyback-ness of it all....especially in the summer time). You can almost smell this photo. It's a city you either love or hate. And sometimes it's both!

The Simple Truth

by Philip Levine

I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes,

took them home, boiled them in their jackets

and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt.

Then I walked through the dried fields

on the edge of town. In middle June the light

hung on in the dark furrows at my feet,

and in the mountain oaks overhead the birds

were gathering for the night, the jays and mockers

squawking back and forth, the finches still darting

into the dusty light. The woman who sold me

the potatoes was from Poland; she was someone

out of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglasses

praising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetables

at the road-side stand and urging me to taste

even the pale, raw sweet corn trucked all the way,

she swore, from New Jersey. "Eat, eat" she said,

"Even if you don't I'll say you did."

Some things

you know all your life. They are so simple and true

they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,

they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,

the glass of water, the absence of light gathering

in the shadows of picture frames, they must be

naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.

My friend Henri and I arrived at this together in 1965

before I went away, before he began to kill himself,

and the two of us to betray our love. Can you taste

what I'm saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch

of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious,

it stays in the back of your throat like a truth

you never uttered because the time was always wrong,

it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken,

made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt,

in a form we have no words for, and you live on it.

This poem is from Levine’s 1995 collection of poems with the same title. What I love about this poem is the “hinge” in the middle. On a first reading it seems like second stanza is the explanation for the first and the poem moves from a pure description of an experience to its deeper meaning. Reading over it again though, the two parts are very similar, describing even the same cooking and eating of potatoes. Still something changes. The deeper meaning of all these stories (the woman from Poland, Henri, the seasons, “the absence of light gathering / in the shadows of picture frames) is simple, yet inexpressible. I think I’ve turned to this poem again and again because it captures the strange complexity of living. We know things and we know others know things and we know others share those things what we know, but we never really know what those things are. The kindness of others, the melting butter, even our memories are real and important, but mysterious and unknown. We share so much, but still we don’t know each other and find ourselves asking somewhat nonsensical questions like “Can you taste / what I’m saying?”, hoping to get at something we can’t even describe. The simple truth isn’t simple, but still, it is.

(submitted by s. sharma)

Paul Auster from The Invention of Solitude

I thought this might resonate with those of you with young children. In The Invention of Solitude, Paul Auster describes his relationship with his mother:

I was my mother's boy, and I lived in her orbit. I was a little moon circling her gigantic earth, a mote in the sphere of her gravity, and I controlled the tides, the weather, the forces of feeling.

Good night, sweet prince

Eulogy for Donny by Walter Sobchak

from The Big Lebowski

Donny was a good bowler, and a good man. He was one of us. He was a man who loved the outdoors... and bowling, and as a surfer he explored the beaches of Southern California, from La Jolla to Leo Carrillo and... up to... Pismo. He died, like so many young men of his generation, he died before his time. In your wisdom, Lord, you took him, as you took so many bright flowering young men at Khe Sanh, at Langdok, at Hill 364. These young men gave their lives. And so would Donny. Donny, who loved bowling. And so, Theodore Donald Karabotsos, in accordance with what we think your dying wishes might well have been, we commit your final mortal remains to the bosom of the Pacific Ocean, which you loved so well. Good night, sweet prince.

Just a bit of fun!

Philippe Aries via Joan Didion

A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty. But one no longer has the right to say so aloud.

In "The Year of Magical Thinking," Joan Didion quotes Philippe Aries from his rather blandly titled, "Western Attitudes toward Death." The title's bland but the quote is surprisingly romantic. Or am I morbid?

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco


I am an American aquarium drinker
I assassin down the avenue
I'm hiding out in the big city blinking
What was I thinking when I let go of you

Let's forget about the tongue-tied lightning
Let's undress just like cross-eyed strangers
This is not a joke so please stop smiling
What was I thinking when I said it didn't hurt

I want to glide through those brown eyes dreaming
Take you from the inside, baby hold on tight
You were so right when you said I've been drinking
What was I thinking when we said good night

I want to hold you in the Bible-black predawn
You're quite a quiet, domino, bury me now
Take off your band-aid 'cause I don't believe in touchdowns
What was I thinking when we said hello

I always thought that if I held you tightly
You'd always love me like you did back then
Then I fell asleep in the city kept blinking
What was I thinking when I let you back in

I am trying to break your heart
I am trying to break your heart
But still I'd be lying if I said it wasn't easy
I am trying to break your heart

Disposable Dixie cup drinker
I assassin down the avenue
I've been hiding out in the big city blinking
What was I thinking when I let go of you

I'm the man who loves you

Comment:

You might be seeing a lot of Wilco lyrics from me. Their songs to me are the perfect marriage of great melody/music and lyrics. Jeff Tweedy really has a gift. I love this song because the narrator really does sound quite drunk. Drunk enough to say things like "I am an American aquarium drinker" but coherent enough to express heartfelt emotion like "I always thought that if I held you tightly. You'd always love me like you did back then".

Maybe he's not meant to be drunk at all, but for some reason I just picture someone stumbling home after a long night of drinking and writing this song. Kind of like drunk dialing but a song comes out of it instead of an embarrasssing phone message.

I love trying to picture a "Bible-black predawn". So many of Jeff Tweedy's lyrics are mysterious at first but then when you really think about them they make perfect sense. He has a very unique and poetic way of remembering things and portraying them. This particular song is from the album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. If you're interested in seeing how really good band music is made there was a documentary made on Wilco called I am Trying to Break Your Heart. It actually focused on the production of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It was an excellent documentary and really captured how much hard work and talent Wilco put into their music. They are the real deal.

If anyone else knows of great lyricists, please share! It's hard enough writing great poetry. I can't imagine setting it to music!

March 26

by David Lehman

I just heard a very fine
piano player described as
the General Motors of jazz
now why didn't I think of that
"but what does it mean?" you
ask who the hell knows the
sunlight's streaming through
the frayed yellowed curtains
in this flat that has grown
dear to me because I was sick
here and recovered as winter
is huffing and puffing its way
into spring the piano is playing
"Mona Lisa" in honor of the
Academy Awards last night I
stayed up for the whole dopey
thing and here's the light
of midday when the phone rings
I say "poetry headquarters"
making Hamilton laugh it's time

About this poem:
This is from a book of David Lehman's called The Daily Mirror: A Journal in Poetry. It's always fun to see if he included one for the day you're living and to see what was going on in his world. It's like peeking through the window of your neighbor's apartment and seeing people moving around or watching t.v. To be honest, this poem doesn't blow me away. The thing that struck me most about it was that the Academy Awards used to be at the end of March. But I like the premise of this book of poetry and you can't be William Shakespeare everyday, no?

April is not only the saddest month, it's National Poetry Month!

Just an FYI that April is National Poetry Month. There's usually lots going on at bookstores, libraries and literary-oriented organizations during this time of the year. A great website to check out is the Academy of American Poets website www.poets.org to see if there is something interesting going on in your area. They also have a function where they send out a poem a day during the month of April.

April is The Saddest Month

by William Carlos Williams

There they were
stuck
dog and bitch
halving the compass

Then when with his yip
they parted
oh how frolicsome

she grew before him
playful
dancing and
how disconsolate

he retreated
hang-dog
she following
through the shrubbery

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

by E.E. Cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Why I love this poem:
It is difficult NOT to love this poem. I first heard this poem in the
Woody Allen movie Hannah and Her Sisters. It's probably the most
beautiful scene in the movie. Michael Caine's character reveals to his
wife's sister that he's in love with her by buying her an anthology of
e.e. cummings and dog earring this particular poem. The parentheses
at the end of the poem give it this touching intimate quality. I'm
surprised more poets don't steal the idea. Whenever I read this
it breaks my heart a little bit. I don't know if it's the poem
or the scene in the movie. I guess it'll always be a little bit
of both. It's raining here in Dallas (which it rarely does) so I
thought instantly of this cummings classic.

I'm a Fool to Love You

by Cornelius Eady

Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman,
Some type of supernatural creature.
My mother would tell you, if she could,
About her life with my father,
A strange and sometimes cruel gentleman.
She would tell you about the choices
A young black woman faces.
Is falling in love with some man
A deal with the devil
In blue terms, the tongue we use
When we don't want nuance
To get in the way,
When we need to talk straight.
My mother chooses my father
After choosing a man
Who was, as we sing it,
Of no account.
This man made my father look good,
That's how bad it was.
He made my father seem like an island
In the middle of a stormy sea,
He made my father look like a rock.
And is the blues the moment you realize
You exist in a stacked deck,
You look in the mirror at your young face,
The face my sister carries,
And you know it's the only leverage
You've got.
Does this create a hurt that whispers
How you going to do?
Is the blues the moment
You shrug your shoulders
And agree, a girl without money
Is nothing, dust
To be pushed around by any old breeze.
Compared to this,
My father seems, briefly,
To be a fire escape.
This is the way the blues works
Its sorry wonders,
Makes trouble look like
A feather bed,
Makes the wrong man's kisses a healing.

This poem is in an anthology edited by Billy Collins called Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry. I'm reading through it right now and am enjoying it. Collins purposely selected poems that are immediately gratifying and accessible. This poem interests me for several reasons. First is the urgent and introspective voice. The narrator constantly asking: what is the blues? There is probably nothing more heartbreaking than the realization that someone you love existed in a stacked deck. I think we all look upon our parents or grandparents and see the differences between the choices they had and the choices we have today. This poem actually reminds me of some of the themes brought up in that passage from James Joyce's Araby. We are creatures driven by forces that are sometimes beyond our control.

The poem also brings up compelling social issues. For a generation of women, and I would argue not exclusively black women, marrying the wrong man was a pretty devastating thing to do. And even if she didn't marry the wrong man, if something were to happen to that man (e.g. death, abandonment), she too would have to look in a mirror and wonder "if a girl without money is nothing, dust to be pushed around by any old breeze"?

I was struck by some of the comments Eady makes about black culture: "She would tell you about the choices a young black woman faces./ Is falling in love with some man/ A deal with the devil/ In blues terms, the tongue we use/ When we don't want nuance/ To get in the way." This just begs a lot of questions. I wonder if he is purposely vague or if he can't really explain it or doesn't want to. Or would black readers only understand what Eady is trying to say? I don't know how I feel about that.

"How can I pretend you do not exist?"

This quote is from the book, What is the What, by Dave Eggers. The book is a slightly fictionalized account of Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee who is a member of the Lost Boys of Sudan program. I went to see Valentino at Kepler's when the book was out - he had been doing quite a lot of speaking engagements. I was shy to meet him because after reading his life story, it seemed so improbable that he was just standing there with us, telling us his story, being so personable and sincere in wanting to know us.

And here's my favorite quote from the book:

I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don’t want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.

This passage is from the end of the book on why Valentino has decided to go public with his story. I printed this passage out on a note and tacked it to my desk because it reminds me of the kind of courage it takes to tell a story, and how we must keep writing if you believe you have a story to tell.

The Lanyard

by Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Why I love this poem:

It makes me laugh through its sheer randomness and its sweet truth; an ode to of all things a lanyard. Or, perhaps more accurately, motherhood...and childhood. I love the word rueful in the poem; it captures the mood entirely.

(posted by Robin R.)

The Naming of Cats

by T.S. Eliot

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey--
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter--
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum-
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover--
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

Why I love this poem:
How can you not love "ineffable effable effanineffable"?

(posted by Robin R.)

Everybody

by Pablo Neruda

I, perhaps I never will be, perhaps I was not able,
never was, never saw, don't exist:
what is all this? In which June, in what wood
did I grow until now, being born and born again?

I didn't grow, never grew, just went on dying?

In doorways, I repeated
the sound of the sea,
of the bells:
I asked for myself, with wonder,
(and later with trembling hands),
with little bells, with water,
with sweetness:
I was always arriving late.
I had traveled far from who I was,
I could not answer any questions about myself,
I had too often left who I am.

I went to the next house,
to the next woman,
I traveled everywhere
asking for myself, for you, for everybody:
and where I was not there was no one,
everywhere it was empty
because it wasn't today,
it was tomorrow.

Why search in vain
in every door in which we will not exist
because we have not arrived yet?

That is how I found out
that I was exactly like you
and like everybody.

(posted by Eugenia C.)

The Luddite Requites

(Moonrise over Hernandez by Ansel Adams)

by Jack Martin


Pull the blue filter off
stars over the Great American Desert,
turn off the city, unhook industry,
and wait until some smoke clears,
I don't know why we didn't marry,
and I don't understand electricity.

Bring a cow in the living room
to keep things warm,
light a fire and an oil lamp or two,
put a hole in a plank of wood
over a hole in the ground
where we can relax and smoke.

We could grow a garden,
can tomatoes and pickle,
put saw dust in an ice house.

John Wesley Powell could feel his lost arm,
and I still speak to you.
The house remains full with shadow
and your cotton night gown.
The moon follows the moon.

Sputnik was artificial,
and could last a long time,
but the moon,
an orbit so full of orbit,
it falls and falls and falls and
sends its signal long past September.

Two Pennies

I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now completely dark.

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

-from the short story Araby by James Joyce

Why I love this passage:

The last sentence is so lucid. It's like the short story writer's version of a home run. It packs no punches. It says everything that has to be said in such a direct and passionate manner. I wish I could write such an honest sentence that I had really earned like Joyce. And you can feel it. You can feel the character's eyes burning with this recognition, this sea change. Its searing nature reminds me a lot of that scene in the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks. Hanks miraculously returns from years stranded alone on a deserted island, desperate to reunite with the love of his life, only to find that she has married someone else and started a family. Even though she still loves him she can't leave her family. And he just says, "I'm so sad that I lost Kelly." There's no "but" or sentence after that. There is no upside, no other way to look at it. It's just heartbreak.

I also love that line "I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity." I think of that line often. What kind of creature am I? What drives me? Or I think of people I know in terms of what drives them. It's such a unsparing and elemental way to think of people. Surprisingly, if you really think about people it's not hard to fill in the blanks.

Evening Star

I'm ready to become a floweret
Or a fat fly, but never, to forget.
And I'll turn down eternity unless
The melancholy and the tenderness
Of mortal life; the passion and the pain;
The claret taillight of that dwindling plane
Off Hesperus; your gesture of dismay
On running out of cigarettes; the way
You smile at dogs; the trail of silver slime
Snails leave or flagstones; this good ink, this rhyme,
This index card, this slender rubber band
Which always forms, when dropped, an ampersand,
Are found in Heaven by the newlydead
Stored in its strongholds through the years.

-Excerpted from Canto Three in Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire

Why I love this poem:

For some reason these lines from Pale Fire have always stayed with me. Perhaps because they are so easy to imagine. So many times I have looked up at the evening sky and thought about the claret taillight of a dwindling plane off Hesperus. This image in particular is a sad one. It's one of being left behind. Of watching something set off in the distance with only the trail visible. This poem has also taken on a new life for me ever since I started a family of my own. In the poem, the narrator and his wife have lost a child. Life is now always many things at once. It can never just be happy or miserable. It's the tenderness in smiling at dogs and also the melancholy of the newly dead. Having a child has taught me how precious and fragile we all are; how behind every great joy there is the fear that this could all end. Although, we get through the day thinking we can control most things, we know deep down there are things we can not control. Your child who you love so profoundly makes you vulnerable to these dangers. You want to control the world for their sake, but you know you can not.