December 21, 2023
Let Evening Come
I was doing a photo dump from my phone this evening and reread the poem I took this picture of, part of the painting “Zion” by Jeremiah Jossim at the Wassaic Project this past summer.
(It reminds me just slightly of the lyrics of the Bright Eyes song “I Must Belong Somewhere.”)
Happy longest evening, everyone.
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through the chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up the chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
-Jane Kenyon
April 10, 2023
Easter Hike
One of my emerging personal traditions is to take a hike by myself somewhere for Easter, since I don’t live near family, and usually most of my nearby friends are either working or with families of their own for the day. Here are some snapshots from my hike in the Rockefeller State Park Preserve this year (as well as through nearby Tarrytown)!
December 1, 2022
Iron Horse Park
I go wandering through Iron Horse Park in Tucson on a brief diversion from another errand, and it is simply one of the most liminal spaces I have ever encountered. It’s not a pretty park (indeed, it seems to be scheduled for a significant upgrade and redesign), but I think it’s weirdly beautiful.
It contains probably my new favorite piece of public art, about which I can find virtually no information whatsoever online. On maps it tends to be identified either simply as “public art” or “existing artwork.”
I honestly don’t know what to call this other than…it feels like some kind of a tiny sanctuary.
I am dying to know what happened here but the internet’s not giving me anything.
Thank you for your service.
On another plaque I encounter the work of poet Genevieve Taggard for the first time.
Train: Abstraction
The steely train in the stupid green
Of sleepy, sleepy summer tore
An even rent in the placid clean
Cloth of the air with an onward roar.
Above the sharp diagonal, -the two
Lines either side the rended cleft—
The air closed in, the green stuff grew
Almost together—until the train tore left.
I saw this happen daily and watched both:
Saw the air mend, and the round earth pinch the crack-
After the train sprung them both open with an oath,
A massive pressure. Until the train came back:
Dark spot of these rails—lines laid merely for speed-
Dark clot of speed on pure line, to assert:
Idea the line; the dark acceleration, the deed,
Passing along the line to kill the inert.
-Genevieve Taggard (1894-1948)
Her writing reminds me just a little bit of Ray Bradbury or Ogden Nash. Sadly, most of her books are out of print, but I found a link to a free download of one here.
February 6, 2018
A poem on the underground wall
[Image is part of Langston Hughes’s “Let America Be America Again,” printed on a black sticker in orange text, stuck on vertical beam on the 59th St. subway platform, that reads:
O, let America be America again-
The land that never has been yet-
And yet must be-
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain-
And make America again!
Langston Hughes]
November 1, 2014
When I hear you say
When I hear you say that we have no language,
it’s as strange and sad to me as if you had said
There are no stars, because you’ve never
been out in the country at night. Never lain out
in predawn dark in a frozen roadside field
to see the Leonid showers.
That the pulsing lights of fireflies
are meaningless chemical blips,
not love songs in Morse code.
It makes me think you’ve never known
the easy comfort of reading together,
sharing a porch filled with morning sunlight.
Not known the thrill of the first time
you realize you’re sharing a thought
without even a glance.
Never spent a Friday night looking up
radio interviews for the pleasure
of hearing your own accent,
your own native dialect of metaphor,
spoken for just a few minutes.
It’s like hearing you insist that the feeling of walking
barefoot through soft grass can’t exist
because you’ve never done it.
That you’ve never gotten a letter in the mail, only catalogues and bills.
You’ve never read poetry; your school library had only textbooks.
There are no fairy tales in Icelandic, because you don’t speak it.
Never heard the soft fractal murmur of breeze
in oak and elm and walnut boughs in August,
the heartbeat drone of cicadas.
It’s always been winter.
May 19, 2014
Miranda
Is the Neapolitan night too quiet for her now,
Does she lie awake listening still
in vain for the melancholy thing’s watchful singing
in her cowslip bed
Watch her young husband’s slumber untroubled by memory
of ocean winds in the reeds,
squalls across the wild sand.
Will she ever be able to sleep not sensing
the gaze of a thousand feral and delicate voices.
Her feet are growing soft.
Her ladies dress her in the gray morning.
At breakfast she is learning
the weight of porcelain, silver,
brocade and whalebone, and ceremony.
Is the very silence of their desertion like freedom
to the spirit, she wonders, like peace?
Or does Ariel also not know
what to do with her own hands anymore?
***
(You ever suffer that experience when looking through old writing, when you cringe and go “I can’t believe I wrote that?” I just had the opposite experience finding this. I wrote it a few years ago. I was working on a production of The Tempest at the time. I found it while looking through old writing for various submissions, and loved it so much all over again I couldn’t believe I wrote it.)
March 25, 2014
Unintentional spam-trap poetry
As I skim through my WordPress spam trap every couple weeks and delete dozens and dozens of obviously spambot-generated ads to make sure that a genuine comment hasn’t been accidentally excluded, occasionally–very occasionally–I’ll find that one of the spambots has generated something unintentionally profound. For your amusement I thought I’d share a few of the more poetic efforts of the Louis Vuitton knockoff-selling robots…
For added enjoyment, I recommend reading in your head in the voice of either Carl Kasell, William Shatner, or Sarah Palin.
***
you cogitate roughly feat it in the many group can be a bit
writer roughly trend. Fashions are constantly
on the offbeat take. nigrify is a bless that it’s author of who
you are mistreatment the size is stolen. If you wish to get
all in one place. Michael Kors Handbags in lengthy touch with the body
structure. ball is one of a electronic computer to sales outlet, be doomed to talk
over wearable size charts to help the runners
by informing them when you favor the bottles upside kill, you will upgrade this financial gain for you.
Many online purchases purchasescarefully. Do not
***
When some one searches for his necessary thing,
therefore he/she wants to be available that in detail,
thus that thing is maintained over here.
***
I feel you’re aware methods to create
people hear that which you must state,
especially with an matter that is so essential
January 23, 2013
Danny Zuko, poetry fan
Speaking of characters who everyone gets wrong…
It’s always made me a little sad how few people appreciate that Danny Zuko is a great big poetry nerd. Specifically, that he’s a huge fan of e.e. cummings…but that, for instance (as far as we know), his English teacher never seemed to notice this, or harness it into keeping him more engaged with his academics.
Don’t believe me?
she being Brand
-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff i was
careful of her and(having
thoroughly oiled the universal
joint tested my gas felt of
her radiator made sure her springs were O.
K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her
up,slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell)next
minute i was back in neutral tried and
again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my
lev-er Right-
oh and her gears being in
A 1 shape passed
from low through
second-in-to-high like
greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity
avenue i touched the accelerator and give
her the juice,good
(it
was the first ride and believe i we was
happy to see how nice she acted right up to
the last minute coming back down by the Public
Gardens i slammed on
the
internalexpanding
&
externalcontracting
brakes Bothatonce and
brought allofher tremB
-ling
to a:dead.
stand-
;Still)
–e.e. cummings
April 13, 2012
Survival Skills
Keep a list
See what needs doing
Build a fire
Do my own taxes
Walk a long way
Stage manage a dance, a play
Read a map
Spring at a chance
Swim—well enough
Wait
Watch and learn
Listen hard
Endure
Make it up along the way
Write a poem, a letter, a research paper
Eat with chopsticks
Hold a grudge
Carry a torch
Carve a pumpkin
Type 80 words a minute
Fold a paper airplane
Love a broken thing
Travel by bus and train
Give first aid
Hide in plain sight
Take note
Pack light
Play “Blackbird” on the guitar
Brew coffee
Shelve books
Patch a shirt
Recite “The Fairy Reel”
Grow a window box of herbs
Cook comfort food
Wear out a pair of shoes
Draw
Use a scale rule
Rock a baby to sleep
Befriend a stray cat, a wary goose
Braid hair into pigtail buns
Knot a clover chain
Climb a magnolia tree
Look again
Read stage directions
Trust to intuition
Curse like a sailor
Name the phases of the moon
Find my own way home
Recognize edible wild things
Onions, wild carrots, crabapples, dandelion greens
And the calls of a mourning dove, robin, owl, chickadee
Keep warm
Sleep deeply
Kiss lightly
Dream little
Chavisory's Notebook 