I talk a little more in this one. Weber’s Concertino is a major staple of the clarinet repertoire. When it’s done right, it’s so much fun to listen to/watch. Even practicing this is a lot of fun. It’ll be nice when this piece sounds better.
Kay Ryan’s imagery has always made me think. I’ve enjoyed her poetry, and she knows how to describe the human experience. And then her poems become a part of the human experience. She’s definitely made my life more robust.
I just finished a book of poems by Joy Harjo, called An American Sunrise. She adds commentary to her poem “Story Wheel”: “Until the passage of the Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978, . . . to write or create as a Native person was essentially illegal.”
Sometimes I work on passages of various clarinet pieces.
I’m thinking of starting a video series that includes my playing clarinet and talking about poems. This is the pilot, haha. Unfocused, yes. But two things I love.
I was scrolling my Twitter feed yesterday and came across this article, which happens to discuss one of my favorite poems, WS Merwin.
To participate in Mental Health Awareness Month last month, I read a biography of Sylvia Plath. This month I read a revised edition of her Ariel. What I did not know was that Merwin and Plath were contemporaries. And since I had the amazing opportunity to meet Merwin in 2011, transitively I also met Plath. It counts, right?
I digress.
The article analyzes one of Merwin’s shortest poems, “Elegy.” And author Devin Kelly hooked me with this gem:
I’ve learned things from poems for the same reason people learn about anything: because they’ve spent quality time with it. When you sit with a single poem for a long time, when you type it out, when you speak it, when you try to unpack a line or feel the way a phrase fills your mouth, you begin to notice more about what the poem offers outward. When you pay attention — to anything, really, that has also been paid attention to in its creation — then the act of attention does not serve as an act of narrowing. Rather, it’s an opening — a givingness, to use that word again. All these doors open up the more you pay attention. They open out to light. They open to other rooms, other floors. They open to a hidden staircase. Another door.
Quality time is one of my love languages. Sitting with someone or something and letting it unravel, or actively unpacking it is one of my favorite things to do.
And I haven’t come across a single poem in my very limited experience with them that hasn’t invited me to spend time with it. I wouldn’t call them friendly nor aloof, but perhaps … alluring. And there hasn’t been a single poem I haven’t learned from.
Poems offer a chance to choose your own adventure. Or at least to hang on for a ride.
Read the whole article. Pay attention. You won’t regret it.
In late 2011 WS Merwin visited BYU and read some of his poetry to students in the JSB auditorium. He said that after 9/11 books of poetry could not stay on the shelves. He said people needed poetry in those dark times. It helped them cope and understand and feel understood and less lonely. It reached deep and endless. It touched hollow and unrelenting. It was like pockets of fresh air displacing the billows of dust and sorrow and hate.
I was in a poetry class the semester of Merwin’s visit, trying to write poetry; trying to get it. Trying to learn things way beyond my grasp from my immensely talented classmates. It was a wonderful class. The semester happened to coincide with the 10-year anniversary of 9/11. I wasn’t there, but I have friends who were. Today always makes me mournful, melancholy sinking my gut. This poem was my attempt to express an aspect of that tragic event.
It is 9/12/11
nine twelve eleven
nine one-two one-one
as if my fingers
swollen and sweaty
slipped while dialing
and starting over never crossed my mind.
No one will come
until I hang up
and think more carefully
to push
finger pads to keypad
with motions that should be automatic.
My penultimate semester at BYU I took a poetry class as a complete novice. Along with the curriculum and the professor, a couple of classmates awakened me to the vast and diverse world of poetry. It blew me away, intimidated me. Our class would have weekly workshops and while they did have nice things to say about my poetry, classmates were often brutally honest and mercilessly constructive. It was hard not to feel discouraged.
I read a poem every day. Occasionally I’ll write down a tentative idea for a poem. I’ve fallen out of practice; it’s easier to read than write. It hasn’t always been that way. But it’s always been easy to write crappy poetry. Here, let me whip up a gross haiku for you right now:
vulnerable brain
months of oxidizing then
flaking rust matter
See? That took less than a minute. And not something I’d be proud to show even Stephenie Meyer.
There’s so much to love about poetry: taking it apart, slathering the language all over me, listening to it, reading poets’ advice. I support people who are good at it, who devote their lives to capturing beauty, tragedy in such a specialized way.
From my experience in the class, it seems some of the best poets also make the best academics. They think about issues from multiple and often-rare angles. With intense focus, they express themselves with clarity and power. I covet them so, so much.
But I also want to brag about my poet friends and acquaintances, because they’re brilliant.
My poetry professor, Susan Elizabeth Howe:
Imagination, as I have experienced it, can be part of and lead to spiritual growth, and imagination is the natural province of the poet.
Someone I knew as a computer person before he became a poet, Neil Aitken:
Neil Aitken is a poet of consummate grace and skill. His poems are acutely observed, unerring musically, sensual and lyrical. Filled with longing and subtle epiphanies, his poetry plumbs the depths of the human heart, and hints towards the heights of the human spirit. His writing accomplishes what Wallace Stevens suggested—that, in the best poems, “description is revelation,” for each of Aitken’s poems reveals the world anew for the reader. — Maurya Simon
A friend I worked with at church in New York City, Javen Tanner:
. . . he thus takes up his poetic cross and wills us to follow as he forges a path through variations on these ambiguous realities to the end of preparing us for more lasting psychological and spiritual connections and consolations.
Former classmate and also a BYU soccer player, Conner Bassett:
When reading poetry out loud, you see the poem for what it is; half of the poem is the words, but the other half is the sound of it,” Bassett said. “Reading and hearing it out loud is a completely different experience.”
Another classmate, Kylan Rice. He seems to have a relatively new tumblr:
…Stop looking so
shocked at the grammy fat. Are we not
all a tapestry of garbled hearts?
I have a few other poet friends, but I’m having trouble finding stuff about them on the internet. Which usually doesn’t happen. You’ll just have to believe they’re also talented and incredible and very awesome.
Look these people up. During any time of crisis, these are some of the people you can listen to.
So I’m reading the Book of Mormon
and it’s the Rameumpton scene.
And I’m just so thankful that I’m not like that
looking down from that tower up
so high, thanking God
that I’m better than
everyone else.
That I’m more righteous,
that I have more.
People at the top of that tower
are so stupid and pious.
Pie? Yes, please.
I know friends who struggle with mental illness / gay friends who’ve found success after getting kicked out of BYU / friends who’ve had their hearts broken trying to have or adopt children / those who’ve had their hearts broken trying to find love / friends with children who have limb differences and other special needs / friends who mourn and grieve all manner of loss / soldiers who have died in military service / those who know sign language / friends who’ve had sexual trauma / friends who don’t have “traditional” parents / homeless people / creative people / angry|bitter friends / friends and family whose feelings I’ve hurt / dying friends / lost friends / people who are easily offended / loved ones who don’t care about the church / introverts / friends who have helped with tsunami relief in Japan / and who have survived 9|11 / and hurricane Katrina / and hurricane Sandy.
My great and spacious building
faces the tower,
and we go around the table
with our abundant plentiful
copious many blessings
or list something every day
this month
that we are just so thankful for.
Guilt arrives,
awkward, familiar guest.
Help yourself to some stuffing,
turkey.
I remember the sick feeling I got the day after this past election / what it’s like to be “chee-choh-ching”ed at / what my own prejudices are / talking with African college students on a dilapidated campus about their dreams to teach their children and give their country hope / being at a drag show / my own sexual abuse as a child / being with my mom the first time she returned to the temple / the outhouse that my Filipino grandpa built that reminds me of the one the the beginning of Slumdog Millionaire / the trailer that I lived in as a kid / my barefoot cousins in a bamboo village / seeing friends who’ve been separated by distance and time and contention become reunited / a constant feeling of helplessness for this world / watching Muslims in Africa as they kneel in prayer / playing with malnourished, licy children who don’t care that my French is horrible / yelling at a homeless man / ordering another round / sweat.
This feast won’t settle. I wipe
the cranberry sauce and spleen
from my face. I excuse myself
and walk out of the room
and down the stairs.
I trip across the threshold
onto packed snow,
into fog.
The well-cloyed see me and scoff
because I keep slipping
away from the tower and the building.
I slide into a canyon of people
who slid there too,
better than anyone else
without knowing it.
You help me up.
It’s warm here.
A month is not
twenty-eight days.
On time is always
early.
The fifth of September means
October third then
thirty-first.
Whites of my eyes can bleed
twice in October.
Excuse for swinging moods.
Pressure that only
caffeine and a nap
lessen.
Excuse for insecurity,
inferiority, opportunity
missed.
Weakness.
Just an excuse.
Logic, charm, work, love,
strength,
with the clock
and her bell to chime
every twenty-eight
days as
a reason.
Indicate my sex–
XX marks the spot.
Eggs float
hot,
flow
red, unused.
Almost too eager,
never late.
—
Patience and Fortitude wait outside. Still.
Who takes a tour of a library? Tourists? Bibliophiles?
Newlyweds?
Polished marble, dark wood, vaulted ceilings.
Shelves lining walls. Tomes packing shelves
For miles.
We walk through noncirculating corridors.
The man leading us with his Ben Stein voice
Brings us to the periodicals room, where
One can read newspapers or other journals from
Time to time. Periodically.
I take a picture of Reilly underneath
A painting of the Hearst Building
Citizen Kane-ing
Me
About freedom of speech.
Somewhere near the history hall or the Great Reading Room
A woman from France talks about how the Google Maps team
Can’t take pictures of her street.
I want to parler but
The tour runs long and
Unlike the books here I am
Checked out. But the tour ends eventually and we go down
Into the Children’s Library and take pictures by original
Winnie the Pooh dolls that came from the 53rd Street branch.
The now-closed Donnell Library Center.
Basement smells like kids and mildew
Waft us back onto the main floor.
We come out of revolving doors
Onto descending stairs and in front
Of those steady lions waiting
To devour us
Other triumphant victims,
Library lovers.
BEFORE THE AIR BECAME THE JOURNEY
It is Good Friday
and I am seven.
I don’t understand the priest
who speaks in Latin
or in Polish,
but I like the hopeful smell of
candles burning.
Inching forward
on our knees,
we sway and shuffle towards
the giant crucifix
propped at the railing.
The men’s heads are bare.
The women wear bubushkas.
Everywhere I look
there are soles of shoes.
My turn. I stand
and stretch to reach
the bleeding instep.
An altar boy
wipes away my kiss
with a white handkerchief.
I bow my head
to imitate the old man
who on Sundays stays
for all the Masses,
locked in place
at the altar rail, face
buried in his hands,
hunched over and sad
as if, like me,
he’d done everything wrong.
Someone like him, I think,
could stop the nails
from going in.
HOME TO ROOST
The chickens
are circling and
blotting out the
day. The sun is
bright, but the
chickens are in
the way. Yes,
the sky is dark
with chickens,
dense with them.
They turn and
then they turn
again. These
are the chickens
you let loose
one at a time
and small–
various breeds.
Now they have
come home
to roost — all
the same kind
at the same speed.
–Kay Ryan
From her interview at NPR at the time she became the poet laureate:
First of all, it comes from the thing we say to other people when they’ve done a lot of stupid things, and now they’re getting their comeuppance. We say, well, your chickens are coming home to roost, and I have no doubt that when I wrote this, I was chastening myself, and I was telling myself this, but unfortunately, this poem was sitting on the desk of an editor in New York at the time of 9/11, and it suddenly took on this terrible added significance, and I had to withdraw it because it seemed cruelly appropriate. . . . Now right after 9/11, that sounded, you know, the blue sky in here, the clear sky, sounded just like the beauty of that day, and those chickens sounded much too much like airplanes.
In relation to the beautiful day it was 10 years ago, here are a friend’s sentiments.
You can view this interactive map from the New York Times to see where people were on that day. You can click on it and write where you were and how you felt/feel.
This is an NPR interview with John Adams and his commission to compose a piece to commemorate the one-year anniversary of 9/11.
This is the first third of the composition:
10 years.
Still healing.
A Little Thinking 