Friday, April 30, 2010

Heather McHugh












Wednesday night, the Poetry Society hosted a conversation with the brainy poet, Heather McHugh.  The evening was billed as a

NEW SALON: READINGS AND CONVERSATIONS
Heather McHugh, with Robert N. Casper

A reading and conversation in an intimate format.

Robert Casper introduced the poet as a former teacher of his, and it was clear how much respect and awe and admiration he had for her.  However, when he asked her to start the evening with a reading, she was expecting conversation, and her post-it note laden notes on topics showed that she was prepared for an interview more than for a poetry reading.

McHugh was good-natured and even joyous throughout her remarks, which were many and beautifully spoken in perfect English about what has meaning to her in her writing.  " I write in order to find what I mean," she said at one point.  She read the poem that was provided for those of us who did not come with books in hand, "Fastener,"

Fastener

One as is as another as.
One with is with another with;

one against's against all others and one of
of all the ofs on earth feels chosen.  So the man

can't help his fastening on many
(since the likes of him like

look-alikes)...When the star-shower crosses
the carnival sky, then the blues of the crowd

try to glisten, to match it; and the two
who work late in the butcher-house touch,

reaching just the same moment
for glue and for hatchet.

When I heard her read it it made sense.   Reading it on the page I struggle with the meaning and the sounds crashing into each other.    Those first four lines trip me up with their use of conjunctions and prepositions as nouns.  But McHugh's playfulness and lightness of touch made it all clear.  She was almost apologetic about how she got expressive after the first four lines, as if it were the weakness in her writing, when in fact it is the part that I like best.

She was very at ease riffing on ideas, pulling snatches of poems by Emily Dickinson out of her fecund brain by heart, and she quoted Borges, and Wittgenstein ("Our lives are endless precisely in the ways our visual lives are endless.")

Here is what I remember:

--We live in our senses.  All five senses have verbs that can be used either in the transitive or intransitive case.

--It is important to entertain both sides of every question, consider opposites, to not just go for the knee jerk response or emotional simplicity of things.  Dare to be complex.

--The root of skepticism is in looking. 

There is a beautiful more accessible poem on the poets.org website,

What He Thought. 

For Fabbio Doplicher
We were supposed to do a job in Italy
and, full of our feeling for
ourselves (our sense of being
Poets from America) we went
from Rome to Fano, met
the Mayor, mulled a couple
matters over. The Italian literati seemed
bewildered by the language of America: they asked us
what does "flat drink" mean? and the mysterious
"cheap date" (no explanation lessened
this one's mystery). Among Italian writers we

could recognize our counterparts: the academic,
the apologist, the arrogant, the amorous,
the brazen and the glib. And there was one
administrator (The Conservative), in suit
of regulation gray, who like a good tour guide
with measured pace and uninflected tone
narrated sights and histories
the hired van hauled us past.
Of all he was most politic--
and least poetic-- so
it seemed. Our last
few days in Rome 
I found a book of poems this
unprepossessing one had written: it was there
in the pensione room (a room he'd recommended)
where it must have been abandoned by
the German visitor (was there a bus of them?) to whom
he had inscribed and dated it a month before. I couldn't
read Italian either, so I put the book
back in the wardrobe's dark. We last Americans

were due to leave
tomorrow. For our parting evening then
our host chose something in a family restaurant,
and there we sat and chatted, sat and chewed, till,
sensible it was our last big chance to be Poetic, make
our mark, one of us asked

"What's poetry?
Is it the fruits and vegetables
and marketplace at Campo dei Fiori

or the statue there?" Because I was
the glib one, I identified the answer
instantly, I didn't have to think-- "The truth
is both, it's both!" I blurted out. But that
was easy. That was easiest
to say. What followed taught me something
about difficulty, 

for our underestimated host spoke out
all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said:

The statue represents
Giordano Bruno, brought
to be burned in the public square
because of his offence against authority, which was to say
the Church. His crime was his belief
the universe does not revolve around
the human being: God is no
fixed point or central government
but rather is poured in waves, through
all things: all things
move. "If God is not the soul itself,
he is the soul OF THE SOUL of the world." Such was
his heresy. The day they brought him forth to die

they feared he might incite the crowd (the man
was famous for his eloquence). And so his captors
placed upon his face
an iron mask
in which he could not speak.

That is how they burned him.
That is how he died, 
without a word,
in front of everyone. And poetry--

(we'd all put down our forks by now, to listen to
the man in gray; he went on softly)-- poetry

is what he thought, but did not say.






Sunday, April 25, 2010

The Good, The Bad, The Weird

The Good, The Bad, The Weird takes a spaghetti western, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly and sets it in Manchuria during World War II when the Japanese have occupied Korea, and perhaps bandits would want to get an ancient Chinese dynasty's treasure to fuel a nationalist movement.   Or is the movie just an excuse to use horses again in a way that is bound to be thrilling as they are seen galloping across a huge expanse of horizon in the desert?

There are three main characters, a man who seems to be a doofus (be careful about your preconceived stereotypes), a psychopath, and a handsome cowboy who can shoot with a rifle while riding a horse at top speed.

The most interesting thing to me about this movie is the strain of nationalism running through it, though the stunts are amazing and the action is good when it doesn't go on too long.  The three main actors are captivating.  I know it isn't a great movie, but I have been hearing about Korean movies and this is my first brush with one.  I find its joy in the cinematography.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Connie Wanek, Duluth poet

 Connie Wanek's book, On Speaking Terms, is reviewed in the NYT Book Review this week, and the short excerpts appealed to me, so I found more about her, and these two poems posted on the Minnesota Arts website.


Checkers

Red was passion, black was strength.
Yet one checker always had gone missing.
a deserter discovered eventually
cowering under a chair cushion.
What was there to fear?
Only time itself would be killed.

I was one who never planned ahead,
who sent my infantry into any open field.
Under my command they aspired
merely to be captured,
jumped and hauled off, bearing the smiles
of the successfully defeated.

Who really wanted to be kinged?
To stagger under a crown
heavy as a headstone,
to wander the board without a court
or even the escort of a fool?
What was glory? I never understood the word.

Often some idle soul of a certain age
taught checkers to the young,
offering stratagems
continually overruled by blind luck.
Then came snacks and naps
and afterwards, the balance of the day.


Hartley Field

The wind cooled as it crossed the open pond
and drove little waves towards us,
brisk, purposeful waves
that vanished at our feet—such energy
thwarted by so little elevation.
The wind was endless, seamless,
old as the earth.
Insects came
to regard us with favor. I felt them alight,
felt their minute footfalls.
I was a challenge, an Everest …

And you, whom I have heard breathe all night,
sigh through the water of sleep
with vestigal gills …

A pair of dragonflies drifted past us, silent,
while higher up two bullet-shaped jets
dragged their roars behind them
on unbreakable chains. It seemed a pity
we’d given up the sky to them, but I understand so little.
Perhaps it was necessary.

All our years together—
and not just together. Surely by now
we have the same blood type, the same myopia.
Sometimes I think we’re the same sex,
the one in the middle of man and woman,
born of both as every child is.
The waves came to us, one each heartbeat,
and lay themselves at our feet.
The swelling goes down.
The fever cools.
There, where the Hartleys grew lettuce eighty years ago
bear and beaver, fox and partridge
den and nest and hunt
and are hunted. I wish I had the means
to give all the north back to itself, to let the pines
rise in the hayfield and the lilacs go wild.
But then where would we live?

I wanted that hour with you all winter—
I thought of it while I worked,
before I slept and when I woke,
a time when the tangled would straighten,
when contrition would become benediction:
the positive hour, shining like mica.
At last the wind brought it to us across the pond,
then took it up again, every last minute.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Obituaries

I read the obituaries every day.  I think many people my age do.  What I notice is that the New York Times publishes obituaries of men mostly.  When a woman is featured, in the exalted company of the men selected to have a free obit (not the paid death notices that loved ones buy at a very high price), I pay special attention. 

Recently, there was an obituary of an actress I never really followed but I liked her name: Dixie Carter.  What I look for in an obituary is the whole narrative thread, the beginning, middle and end of the story.   Somehow seeing it all laid out in chronological order makes sense of the life.   Aren't we trying to make sense of the stories of our lives?  Obituaries lay it all out  and you can follow along with the subject's passions, their successes, their final illnesses, what their next of kin said.  To me, obituaries are short short stories based in real life.

The obituary of  Dixie Carter (who was married to Hal Holbrook, the esteemed American actor) included a quote that explained a phrase I was unsure about, "bless her heart." Here are the last several paragraphs of her obituary:

Although Ms. Carter long ago moved to California for her television career, she and Mr. Holbrook also kept a home in McLemoresville. In 1999, she told The Palm Beach Post that she treasured the courtesy and kindness she found in Tennessee, a welcome contrast to the backstabbing and sniping of Hollywood. 

“Of course in the South we talk about people too,” she said. “But if you end your comments with ‘Bless her heart,’ you’re off the hook.”


Today, two more women got obits in the Times, two women whose careers are important to me, film and poetry.

Dede Allen, an important film editor died.  She edited Bonnie and Clyde, and Reds, and sort of changed the rhythm of how we want to watch movies.  She punched things up quite a bit.







And Carolyn Rodgers, a black poet, died. 


She wrote these lines:


I’ve had tangled feelings lately
About ev’rything
Bout writing poetry, and otha forms
Bout talkin and dreamin with a
Special man (who says he needs me)
Uh huh And my mouth has been open
Most of the time but
I ain’t been saying nothin but
Thinking about ev’rything
And the partial pain has been
How do I put my self on paper
The way I want to be or am and be
Not like any one else in this
Black world but me



Sunday, April 18, 2010

The Secrets in their Eyes (movie from Argentina)



A retired lawman (lawyer? policeman? -- I never figured out how the Argentinian justice system worked  -- people kept calling each other counselor and dottore, and other forms of address that I couldn't translate into American equivalents) decides to write a novel based on a most haunting murder/rape case that ended without resolution.  In the process of raking through his past, and his role in the case, he comes upon all of his relationships in the office where he worked, especially a certain  supervisor named Irene.  Irene is beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished.  She is obviously the object of his affections.

She helps to crack the case, while subtly breaking the heart of would be writer.  The stories of the love between the two court employees and the chase to bring to justice the vicious killer are intertwined in a most intriguing way. 
I enjoyed the seventies decor and styling.  The whole subject of memory is profound, and treated in a sophisticated way.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Bronzino

Study for a Portrait of a Seated Man, ca. 1535


Comparing the original drawing of a nude man crawling on his belly with the copy side by side took a lot of time.  The placard tells you to notice that the line of the thigh in the true Bronzino shows many false starts where the fake only has one confident line throughout.  But there are other differences.  The muscle of the thigh is bigger in the Bronzino, and there is  more tension in the way the man is crawling, all coiled ready to spring.  The composition of the leg cut off before his ankle adds to the tension.  These differences are slight.  I admire  Bronzino's  subtle shading, the tiny cross hatches in the contours.   All around me, museum goers were murmuring, "technique, technique." One detail of a leg with its velvety shadows in the curves near the shin is breathtaking.  

I loved best of all the emotional content in the hands and feet.  The biblical figures of Jacob's feet next to Joseph's  clearly express the aged next to youth.  Hands wringing each other in jealousy are all snarled up in agony.


Haiku

The legs of bees slice
through the pollen posited
inside the tulip







Photo by Jesse Hickman

Monday, April 12, 2010

Car Trip



I was  driving on the Palisades, trying not to go too fast or too slow, keeping with the traffic, veering to the right and left at every curve, when all of a sudden from the east came a long gangly skinny necked bird, bigger than a hubcab, smaller than a house, aiming right at my car, perpendicular to the windshield.  I didn't even have time to panic,  just prayed the glass would not smash.  Then came the heart sickening thud  as the creature made impact and disappeared.     I barely slowed down, I was so afraid to stop suddenly and cause a pile up.

It was a wild turkey.   It was not the first time I had hit a wild turkey on the highway.  Last time my friend said, why didn't you bring it home for dinner. 




Sunday, April 4, 2010

National Poetry Month

Here is a poem I know by heart, by Emily Dickinson.


We grow accustomed to the Dark –
When light is put away –
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye -- 

A Moment -- We uncertain step
For newness of the night –
Then -- fit our Vision to the Dark –
And meet the Road -- erect -- 

And so of larger -- Darkness –
Those Evenings of the Brain –
When not a Moon disclose a sign –
Or Star -- come out -- within -- 

The Bravest -- grope a little –
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead –
But as they learn to see -- 

Either the Darkness alters –
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight –
And Life steps almost straight.


The Scar Project

 Nadia Myre's work is on display at the National Museum of the American Indian.  Her Scar Project is nestled within the Hide exhibit.  For the past five years,  Myre has been teaching workshops about healing your scars.  She gives participants a ten inch square of linen framed like a small canvas, and then asks you to describe a painful event or wound that left a scar.  It can take the shape of a tear in the fabric which then might need to be sewn up or something to add to the surface of the linen.  I am thinking of a woven dress on top of the frame.

Some people write on the linen.  One piece of writing that spoke to me was "You should be here with me."

As Richard and I were exploring the different frames and there were many of them, some people with children came in and triggered  the alarm.  There was carpeting leading up to the wall where the work hung, and if you stepped off the carpet and got too near the wall the alarm would go off.

After I was gesticulating to Richard to read the what was written that spoke to me so directly "You should be here with me," the guard came up to me and said "careful."

What interested me about this show was the idea of healing behind it, that everyone has scars, and by creating something out of them you might be healed.

I had heard the story on the radio today about the Seattle area artist Michael Reagan: Fallen Heroes Project drawing portraits of dead soldiers based on their photographs.  These  portraits helped ease the pain of families who've lost loved ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.   It was a form of healing to get the pictures, and reconnected them in a way nothing else had. 








 Amanda Pinson, drawn by Michael Reagan




The guard said, " If you would like to know more about the exhibit I can tell you some things that I know since I am familiar with the work and what it means."  She explained how the artist conducted workshops, and how each work has an accompanying written piece that explains the back story behind the sewn or written word on the canvas.  Each of the mounted works has a number that corresponds to the entry in the book that lay on the table near the exhibited frames.  The one that the guard thought might interest us was 246, it was sad she explained.  The canvas had been sewn in three places, a star in the lower right corner, a diagonal line of stitches dividing the two halves of the frame, and a small dot in the upper left corner.

These three objects were explained in the writing.  "My sister had been addicted to drugs since she was 13.  When she killed herself she was 44.  She ran up the railing really fast, and the star is to show how she became part of the night sky.  The little dot is me."

 I could be misremembering this, but it was very sad, as the guard had warned.  A story.  The power of art to heal.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

The High Line

High Line

Friday morning, I went walking on the High Line with my friend Janet.  On our way to the elevated park, we passed many blossoming fruit trees.

Janet said it was like fireworks going off, all of the sudden flowers.  The magnolia blossoms in particular are spectacular, like someone who has opened her hand as far as possible, her fingers splayed wide.

At the highline itself, the young people sketching, the sound of foreign languages being spoken, the views out to the harbor, the fresh air and sun were all uplifting on my last day off.