First, I'm preparing to teach an online mythology class. So, I've been reading Ovid's Metamorphoses and reflecting on how I'm going to get my students (most of them probably just out of high school) to understand how every culture has the same mythological thread running through it. Creation. Great floods. Sons of God. Heroes. Quests. I know, I know. Deep shit.
Second, I went back-to-school shopping with my kids. Clothes and notebooks and calculators. It made me nostalgic for crib days and nighttime prayers and I Love You, Stinky Face.
Third, I got caught up in the great American solar eclipse frenzy today. Taking pictures. Looking through eclipse glasses. Watching the sun slowly be eaten by the moon.
So, tonight, I have chosen Maggie Nelson as Poet of the Week, because she inspires me to reflect and remember. She fills me with wonder.
Saint Marty needs a little more of all of those things in his life at the moment.
Spirit
by: Maggie Nelson
The spirit of Jane
lives on in you,
my mother says
trying to describe
who I am. I feel like the girl
in the late-night movie
who gazes up in horror
at the portrait of
her freaky ancestor
as she realizes
they wear the same
gaudy pendant
round their necks.
For as long as I can
remember, my grandfather
has made the same slip:
he sits in his kitchen,
his gelatinous blue eyes
fixed on me. Well Jane,
he says, I think I'll have
another cup of coffee.
