March 26: A Very Big Circle, Wonder Business, Lines and Feet

Santiago knows the fish is weakening . . . 

The sun was rising for the third time since he had put to sea when the fish started to circle.

He could not see by the slant of the line that the fish was circling. It was too early for that. He just felt a faint slackening of the pressure of the line and he commenced to pull on it gently with his right hand. It tightened, as always, but just when he reached the point where it would break, line began to come in. He slipped his shoulders and head from under the line and began to pull in line steadily and gently. He used both of his hands in a swinging motion and tried to do the pulling as much as he could with his body and his legs. His old legs and shoulders pivoted with the swinging of the pulling.

"It is a very big circle," he said. "But he is circling."

Then the line would not come in any more and he held it until he saw the drops jumping from it in the sun. Then it started out and the old man knelt down and let it go grudgingly back into the dark water.

"He is making the far part of his circle now," he said. I must hold all I can, he thought. The strain will shorten his circle each time. Perhaps in an hour I will see him. Now I must convince him and then I must kill him.

When I read this passage, even though the reader is supposed to be on Santiago's side, I can't help rooting for the fish.  Any creature that has survived long enough to be bigger than a boat deserves to live out the rest of its days eating, swimming, and mating without threat.  In some ways, Santiago killing the fish is akin to killing the last wooly mammoth for its hair or tusks.  It's the extinction of wonder.  

Poets are in the wonder business.  The poems I love--the ones that leave me breathless and stunned--are the ones that tap into this wonder.  Robert Frost and his bending birches.  Emily Dickinson and her feathered hope.  Gwendolyn Brooks and her pool players at the Golden Shovel.  These poets somehow bottle moments where the veil is pulled away from our limited eyes, and we are able to see the beautiful ugly of the universe.

I think that's why the idea of Santiago killing that 18-foot marlin bothers me so much.  I know that the point of the novella is this struggle of man versus nature.  I learned that in high school.  However, I know that Hemingway doesn't see beauty in the same way poets do.  It's all about human struggle for Hemingway.  That's where he finds wonder and astonishment.

Me?  I've never been much into fishing or hunting or trapping.  I am not opposed to these activities, having lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for the majority of my life.  My father, brothers, and sisters treated opening day of deer season like a religious celebration.  I get my adrenaline rushes a little more organically.  For instance, driving into work one morning recently, I saw a huge wild turkey strutting on the side of the highway.  I slowed down because I wasn't sure if the bird would saunter into oncoming traffic.  As I slowly drove past, I could see its whole body shiver and inflate, as if it was getting ready to charge my car in anger or consternation.  It was an amazing sight.

Turkeys aren't necessarily beautiful creatures.  In fact, I would probably say they are homely birds, looking more like fat buzzards.  But that turkey was stopping early morning traffic like a runway model during Fashion Week. 

So, my lines are not for dropping into the sea from a boat.  My feet don't carry me to deer or duck blinds.  I hunt with my pen and journal.  I'll leave the man versus nature battle to Santiago and Hemingway.  They are better equipped.  A poem never stopped a charging elephant or hungry shark.

Saint Marty simply prefers the white chicken beside the red wheelbarrow.

And a Lenten poem . . . 

A Murder of Crows

by:  Martin Achatz

I saw a murder of crows, black as Good Friday, in a stand of sugar maple, their cries a riot of thanksgiving in the gray air. Beneath them, a wrack of rabbits, too young to flee, mewled and bled, torn and ravaged by a boar sounder. I heard the pig screams in the woods, full of spring starvation, the way I feel when the sugar in my body makes my brain move like a sleuth of bears, all lumber and crash. In this time between February and April, Ash Wednesday and Easter, the world vacillates. Snow, heavy as a gam of whales, one day. Warmth and wind, an ostentation of peacock plume, the next. This morning, I woke to sleet, ice, crèche-of-penguin weather. This afternoon, I walk to my office, taste pollen, nectar, a charm of hummingbirds, a flicker of spring. I know, one day soon, the tomb of winter will open, sun will flood the world. A rabble of butterflies. A murmuration of starlings. An ascension, exaltation of larks.

August 7: President of the Galaxy, Mackinaw City, Hope

Zaphod is still reminiscing about meeting a famous person . . .

"The captain was this really amazing guy, Yooden Vranx," said Zaphod.  "He gave us food, booze--stuff from really weird parts of the Galaxy--lots of conkers, of course, and we had just the most incredible time.  Then he teleported us back.  Into the maximum security wing of the Betelgeuse state prison.  He was a cool guy.  Went on to become President of the Galaxy."

Zaphod paused.

I have met some famous people in my lifetime.  On a vacation in New York, my family and I ran into Alec Baldwin.  He was filming near the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and we just happened to be eating some hot dogs in the same place.  I shook Kurt Vonnegut's hand.  Listened to N. Scott Momaday tell stories to a classroom full of undergrads.  Watched Gwendolyn Brooks be real cool not more than ten feet away from me.  I could go on.

The thing is, each one of those encounters reminded me of one thing--they are/were just regular people.  Alec Baldwin was sipping coffee.  Kurt Vonnegut looked old and bored and in need of a cigarette.  Momaday smelled like onions.  And Brooks looked like she was in need of a nap.  They were all amazingly . . . human.

Spent the day with my family touring Fort Michilimackinac in Mackinaw City.  It's a historic landmark from colonial times, much like Fort Mackinac on Mackinac Island.  There  are archaeological digs on the site, reenactments of musket firings.  My daughter and her boyfriend helped pull a canon out to Lake Michigan, where they loaded it with a gun powder charge and set it off. 

In the evening, we walked along the main drag of Mackinaw City and did all the tourist things.  Bought fudge and caramel corn and over-priced tourist crap.  Coffee mugs embossed with Shakespearean insults.  Tee shirts that changed color in sunlight.  Polished stones.  I talked my son out of a colonial pistol that I know would have ended up Goodwill fodder by Christmas. 

Now, considering my introduction to this post, you're probably expecting me to tell you that I ran into Jeff Daniels in Murdick's Fudge Shop or Bob Seger in the Popcorn Factory.  Although both of those celebrities are Michiganders, I did not run into anybody close to famous.  As far as I know, being the Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula, I was the only celebrity in town.  And nobody asked me for an autograph.  (Please read this paragraph with the appropriate dose of irony and self-deprecating humor.)

It was a wonderful day, despite a rather stressful supper at the local KFC.  The stress was the result of my son's ADHD medication wearing off and some over-cooked popcorn chicken and a mouthful of Mountain Dew.  The result, an ice cube fight and my ten-year-old son saying "Fuck!" loudly in a crowded restaurant. 

These last few days have provided me with something that I haven't felt in quite some time--hope.  That may be a dirty word to some people who see it as something empty, filled with nothing more than empty wishes or dreams.  Me?  I see hope as something that gives meaning when everything else seems meaningless.

So, tonight, I don't need Gwendolyn Brooks reciting poetry.  Or Kurt Vonnegut chain smoking in the backyard.  Tonight, I have hope that comes from firing a cannon across Lake Michigan.  From holding hands with my wife, walking down the path to a colonial fort.  From my son dropping f-bombs in the presence of Colonel Sanders.

Saint Marty will hold on to this hope, carry it home with him tomorrow, let it fill his days with light and joy.

January 19: Meeting a god, Gwendolyn Brooks, "The Crazy Woman"

I once sat in a classroom with Gwendolyn Brooks.  She was in her eighties at the time, but still tall and beautiful.  From the beginning, she had us eating out of her hand.  For me, it was like being in the presence of a god.  I kept thinking to myself, "I am in the same space as Gwendolyn freakin' Brooks."  It was an amazing afternoon.

So, on the eve of a presidential inauguration at which no poet will read, Saint Marty gives you Gwendolyn Brooks--African American, poet, crazy woman, voice for the voiceless.

The Crazy Woman

by:  Gwendolyn Brooks

I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I'll wait until November
And sing a song of gray.

I'll wait until November
That is the time for me.
I'll go out in the frosty dark
And sing most terribly.

And all the little people
Will stare at me and say,
"That is the Crazy Woman
Who would not sing in May."

January 15: The Most Talented, Poetry Class, Working Hard

Certainly he would have been a printer if he hadn't been so interested in drawing.  He took classes whenever he could and had the good fortune of studying with George Bridgeman for figure drawing and Max Bechman for painting at the Art Students League.  Although he had never been the most talented of artists, as he'd tell his son, Robert, years later, he had a highly developed work ethic.  A conscientious and self-effacing laborer, ever humble before his craft, he never thought he'd have any money and figured out, as a young man, that he would always live humbly, "without means," practicing his illustrative and painterly skills into his old age.  And if he was lucky, getting along on numerous fleeting jobs, he might one day have a show of beautiful portraits--he very much liked the works of John Singer Sargent and in another life would have been content as the official portraitist of an exclusive men's club.  Perhaps he would make enough money to see something more of the world than just the view from his window or where the trains and subways of the mass transit system would take him.  Paris, Tahiti, Rome--names that he associated with artists and adventure.  That was all he wanted.  

Ives is a humble guy with a gift.  He can draw and paint, and he makes a good living as a commercial artist.   Yet, he remains down-to-earth, not really thinking he's anything special.  He's a hard worker.  He knows he will never be John Singer Sargent, but he dreams of seeing the world.  Places associated with beauty and art.

Since I was a kid, I always dreamed of being a famous writer.  In kindergarten, I created books of nursery rhymes, illustrating them with crayons.  In middle school, I wrote pornographic stories and sold them to friends for money to buy Star Wars bubblegum cards.  In college, I took fiction workshops and dreamed of being Stephen King.

My aspirations have become a little more realistic.  I want to publish another book of poems.  I want to be the next U. P. Poet Laureate.  And I want to be able to sleep in every once in a while, visit my son's classroom, and not stress about finances all the time.  (I wouldn't mind seeing a little of the world, either.  Rome sounds pretty good at the moment.)

Tonight, I got a taste of what it's like to be a full-time college professor.  It was the first class night of the graduate poetry seminar I'm teaching this semester.  I've been stressed about it all week long.  Haven't been sleeping well.  I woke up at 4 a.m. today and couldn't get back to sleep.  All day long, I suffered intestinal distress.  I had visions of being treated like a high school substitute teacher.  A "Kick Me" sign on my back and a thumb tack on my chair.

But it was a fantastic night.  We talked about poetic influences.  I told stories of studying with Sharon Olds and meeting Gwendolyn Brooks.  And then we wrote.  It didn't even feel like I was working.  It was...fun.

I've worked hard all my life.  Two or three part-time jobs at a time.  Book store cashier.  Church organist.  Medical records clerk.  Contingent college professor.  In the midst of all that, I've written.  Stories.  Poems.  Essays.  Published a book.  Been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice.  Not bad for a kid from the Upper Peninsula.

I still dream of achieving big things.  The Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer was 80 years old when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Doris Lessing was 88.

Saint Marty still has a shot.

If this old coot can win, so can I