April 8: The Harpoon Shaft, a Badass, Kill Wonder

Santiago has miles to go before he sleeps . . . 

He started to pull the fish in to have him alongside so that he could pass a line through his gills and out his mouth and make his head fast alongside the bow. I want to see him, he thought, and to touch and to feel him. He is my fortune, he thought. But that is not why I wish to feel him. I think I felt his heart, he thought. When I pushed on the harpoon shaft the second time. Bring him in now and make him fast and get the noose around his tail and another around his middle to bind him to the skiff.

"Get to work, old man," he said. He took a very small drink of the water. "There is very much slave work to be done now that the fight is over."

He looked up at the sky and then out to his fish. He looked at the sun carefully. It is not much more than noon, he thought. And the trade wind is rising. The lines all mean nothing now. The boy and I will splice them when we are home.

Watched a documentary about Maya Angelou today.  She was a badass.

Saint Marty's koan:  it's easy to kill wonder--just drive a harpoon through its heart.

April 4: Tail Weaving in the Air, How Deep the Ocean, Maya Angelou

Santiago tries to turn the fish again.

Now you are getting confused in the head, he thought. You must keep your head clear. Keep your head clear and know how to suffer like a man. Or a fish, he thought.

"Clear up, head," he said in a voice he could hardly hear. "Clear up."

Twice more it was the same on the turns.

I do not know, the old man thought. He had been on the point of feeling himself go each time. I do not know. But I will try it once more.

He tried it once more and he felt himself going when he turned the fish. The fish righted himself and swam off again slowly with the great tail weaving in the air.

I'll try it again, the old man promised, although his hands were mushy now and he could only see well in flashes.

Koan:  Eyes and hands can't change how deep the ocean is.

Saint Marty saw a documentary about Maya Angelou tonight.  She was a badass.

January 7: Poetry Workshop, Richard Blanco, "One Dog"

I led a poetry workshop tonight.  All of the prompts were based on poems written for Presidential Inaugurations.  Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, Miller Williams, Elizabeth Alexander, and Richard Blanco.  All of the poems full of light and some brand of hope.

So, on a day where those things seemed pretty scarce in my life, I offer you my attempt at something . . . hopeful.

One Dog

by:  Martin Achatz

after Richard Blanco's "One Today"

Yes, this is one of those dog poems
full of leather tongue, wet noses pressed
into crotches.  Because dogs are all about
hope.  For backyard hunts of gray
squirrels or screeching jays.
For a piece of hotdog bun to flake off,
fall to hardwood floor.  A fly
in the water dish, flash of mouse
in corner dark.  A dog survives
on hope, from first yawn and stretch
to pillow sigh.  Hope is what wags
the leash, digs in a box for a bone-
shaped biscuit.  At night, hope

slams the car door, enters the house,
calls out, sings out, Good girl! or Good boy!
Which is an invocation, a conjuring.
Yes, hope is a four-legged thing
that meets you after a long day
of reports and budgets, shivers its tail,
helicopters on the floor, humps
your shins, circles and circles and circles
until, exhausted, it flops on its back,
waits for your hand to reach down,
scratch its belly until it pisses
all over you in joy.

April 28: Two-to-the-Power-of-Infinity-Minus-One, Donald Hall, Book Club

Zaphod and Trillian are still discussing coincidence and improbability:

"Yeah, but that's one wild coincidence, isn't it?" [said Zaphod.]

"Yes."

"Picking someone up at that point?  Out of the whole of the Universe to choose from?  That's just too . . . I want to work this out.  Computer!"

The Sirius Cybermetics Shipboard Computer, which controlled and permeated every particle of the ship, switched into communication mode.

"Hi there!" it said brightly and simultaneously spewed out a tiny ribbon of ticker tape just for the record.  The ticker tape said, Hi there!

"Oh God," said Zaphod.  He hadn't worked with this computer for long but had already learned to loathe it.

The computer continued, brash and cheery as if it were selling detergent.

"I want you to know that whatever your problem, I am here to help you solve it."

"Yeah, yeah," said Zaphod.  "Look, I think I'll just use a piece of paper."

"Sure thing," said the computer, spilling out its message into a waste bin at the same time.  "I understand.  If you ever want . . ."

"Shut up!" said Zaphod, and snatching up a pencil sat down next to Trillian at the console.

"Okay, okay," said the computer in a hurt tone of voice and closed down its speech channel again.

Zaphod and Trillian pored over the figures that the Improbability flight-path scanner flashed silently up in front of them.

"Can we work out," said Zaphod, "from their point of view what the Improbability of their rescue was?"

"Yes, that's a constant," said Trillian, "two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand, seven hundred and nine to one against."

"That's high.  They're two lucky lucky guys."

"Yes."

"But relative to what we were doing when the ship picked them up . . ."

Trillian punched up the figures.  They showed two-to-the-power-of-Infinity-minus-one to one against (an irrational number that only has a conventional meaning in Improbability Physics).

"It's pretty low," continued Zaphod with a slight whistle.

"Yes," agreed Trillian, and looked at him quizzically.

"That's one big whack of Improbability to be accounted for.  Something pretty improbable has got to show up on the balance sheet if it's all going to add up into a pretty sum."

Zaphod scribbled a few sums, crossed them out and threw the pencil away.

Believe it or not, I am pretty good at math.  Of course, I don't think I could do complicated statistics with sums like two-to-the-power-of-Infinity-minus-one.  That goes a little bit beyond the math and computer science minor I earned as an undergraduate.  But I used to be able to do calculus problems in my sleep.  Took a class in abstract algebra, and figured out how many moves exist on a standard Rubik's Cube.  (It's a very large number.)  Yes, I used to be on speaking terms with math.

Right now, I'm calculating the possibility that I am home alone yet again.  It happened on Friday evening, and it has happened again this afternoon.  That's twice in one weekend.  Unprecedented.  It might be two-to-the-power-of-Infinity-minus-one.  Of course, it's not going to last forever.  In two hours, the members of my Book Club will appear at my front door, and we will eat and talk and discuss poet Donald Hall's final book--a collection of essays titled A Carnival of Losses:  Notes Nearing Ninety.  Hall died last summer at the age of 89.

I am a fan on Donald Hall's work, although his poetry can be a little uneven at times.  When you write as much as Hall did during his life, you're bound to write some mediocre material.  His best work, for me, are the poems he wrote after the death of his wife, poet Jane Kenyon.  They are full of so much sorrow and beauty and longing.  (Some of you might argue with me, but I've always thought that Jane Kenyon was a better poet than Hall.  Just sayin'.)

One of the members of my book club is the widow of a retired English professor.  She and her husband used to be friends with Hall.  Hall came to the university a few times, to give readings and do interviews and visit classes.  They became friends through these occasions.

I, myself, met Donald Hall once at a dinner honoring him.  It was a brief encounter.  He was quite frail at the time, sitting in a char, signing books.  I knelt beside him, told him how much his work had meant to me as a poet.  I'm not sure how much he actually heard of my gushing.  Then, I mentioned my friend from book club to him.  He immediately brightened and spoke to me for a couple of minutes of their friendship.  It was an honest moment of connection at an occasion that really bred superficial interaction.  The food was pretty good, but seeing Donald Hall come to life for those skinny moments was kind of magical.

So, tonight's book club meeting is sort of like visiting a person that I really knew.  As I was reading Carnival of Losses this month, I could hear Hall's voice full of gravel and cigarettes.  It reminded me of how lucky I've been to meet and listen to so many great poets and writers in my lifetime.  Donald Hall.  Sharon Olds.  Jorie Graham.  Kurt Vonnegut.  Maya Angelou.  Gwendolyn Brooks.  Many others.  These are people who have shaped American literature AND culture.  And, despite the improbability against it, I've met them, if only for a few brief moments.

Saint Marty is two-to-the-power-of-Infinity-minus-one grateful for that.

February 27: Long Long Day, Maya Angelou, "When You Come"

It has been a long, long day.

Tomorrow's going to be another long, long day.

Saint Marty is ready for a long, long sleep.  Maybe after long, long drink, too.

When You Come

by:  Maya Angelou

When you come to me, unbidden,
Beckoning me
To long-ago rooms
Where memories lie.

Offering me, as to a child, an attic.
Gatherings of days too few.
Baubles of stolen kisses.
Trinkets of borrowed loves.
Trunks of secret words,

I CRY.

December 1: At A Loss for Words, Maya Angelou, "When Great Trees Fall"

I am still at a loss for words over the death of my friend's daughter.  I've seen my parents endure the loss of two of their children.  It's not an easy thing to witness.  Parents aren't supposed to outlive their kids.

I know that I've published the poem below on another occasion, but, today, it speaks to me on a very deep level.  That's what all great poems do.

Saint Marty doesn't know how to help pick up the pieces from this, so he'll let Maya Angelou do it. 

When Great Trees Fall

by:  Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly.  Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed.  They existed.
We can be.  Be and be
better.  For they existed.

August 17: Another Poem of Resistance, Maya Angelou, "Caged Bird"

There are more white supremacist and Nazi rallies are planned for this weekend around the country.  Hopefully, there won't be any violence.

I have another poem of resistance, this one from one of my favorite poets and activists of the Civil Rights Movement.  I'm on my way to a poetry open mic event this evening.  Tomorrow, I'm heading to Baraga in the Copper Country.  I'm the featured poet at an art gallery opening.

Saint Marty has to get his poet on now.

Caged Bird

by:  Maya Angelou

A free bird leaps

on the back of the wind   

and floats downstream   

till the current ends

and dips his wing

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and   

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings   

with a fearful trill   

of things unknown   

but longed for still   

and his tune is heard   

on the distant hill   

for the caged bird   

sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn

and he names the sky his own

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams   

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream   

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied   

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings   

with a fearful trill   

of things unknown   

but longed for still   

and his tune is heard   

on the distant hill   

for the caged bird   

sings of freedom.

July 4: Taking It Easy, Tracy K. Smith, "The Good Life"

If you can't tell, I am taking it easy today.  Trying not to stress about anything.  I am living the good life, being a rainbow.

Saint Marty doesn't do this very often.

The Good Life

by:  Tracy K. Smith

When some people talk about money

They speak as if it were a mysterious lover

Who went out to buy milk and never

Came back, and it makes me nostalgic

For the years I lived on coffee and bread,

Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday

Like a woman journeying for water

From a village without a well, then living

One or two nights like everyone else

On roast chicken and red wine.

April 14: Going Home, Rigoberto Gonzalez, "Casa"

It is going to be a long weekend of church.  Holy Thursday.  Good Friday.  Easter Vigil.  Sunrise Easter service.  Easter morning.  If you are counting, that's five different services in four days.  I'm not complaining.  That's the life of a church musician.  Noon on Sunday, I am going to breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Tonight, I am going home to clean my house.  There is a lingering scent of sewer in the air from this afternoon's surprise.  Then, I may correct some papers, depending on my level of energy.  Or I may read.  Or I may go to bed.

Saint Marty loves his casa.

Casa

by:  Rigoberto Gonzalez

I am not your mother, I will not be moved

by the grief or gratitude of men

who weep like orphans at my door.

I am not a church. I do not answer

prayers but I never turn them down.

Come in and kneel or sit or stand,

the burden of your weight won't lessen

no matter the length of your admission.

Tell me anything you want, I have to listen

but don't expect me to respond

when you tell me you have lost your job

or that your wife has found another love

or that your children took their laughter

to another town. You feel alone and empty?

Color me surprised! I didn't notice they were gone.

Despite the row of faces pinned like medals

to my walls, I didn't earn them.

The scratches on the wood are not my scars.

If there's a smell of spices in the air

blame the trickery of kitchens

or your sad addiction to the yesterdays

that never keep no matter how much you believe

they will. I am not a time capsule.

I do not value pithy things like locks

of hair and milk teeth and ticket stubs

and promise rings—mere particles

of dust I'd blow out to the street if I could

sneeze. Take your high school jersey

and your woman's wedding dress away

from me. Sentimental hoarding bothers me.

So off with you, old couch that cries

in coins as it gets dragged out to the porch.

Farewell, cold bed that breaks its bones

in protest to eviction or foreclosure or

whatever launched this grim parade

of exits. I am not a pet. I do not feel

abandonment. Sometimes I don't even see you

come or go or stay behind. My windows

are your eyes not mine. If you should die

inside me I'll leave it up to you to tell

the neighbors. Shut the heaters off

I do not fear the cold. I'm not the one

who shrinks into the corner of the floor

because whatever made you think

this was a home with warmth isn't here

to sweet-talk anymore. Don't look at me

that way, I'm not to blame. I granted

nothing to the immigrant or exile

that I didn't give a bordercrosser or a native

born. I am not a prize or a wish come true.

I am not a fairytale castle. Though I

used to be, in some distant land inhabited

by dreamers now extinct. Who knows

what happened there? In any case, good

riddance, grotesque fantasy and mirth.

 So long, wall-to-wall disguise in vulgar

suede and chintz. Take care, you fool,

and don't forget that I am just a house,

a structure without soul for those whose

patron saints are longing and despair.

February 21: Maya Angelou, Empire State Building, "The Tin Man's Heart"

I am sitting in my living room, watching a documentary on the life of Maya Angelou.  My daughter is sitting next to me, and she just said, "I love her voice."

I saw Maya Angelou read twice.  She was a presence.  Tall as the Empire State Building, even in advanced age.  I remember sitting about forty feet away from the stage, and she stood there and started singing a spiritual.  It was electric, and she had the entire stadium in her palm.  I wish my daughter could have been there, seen her, heard her.

I have a poem tonight that may have made Dr. Angelou laugh, if she'd have the opportunity to read it.  At least, that's what I hope.

Saint Marty loves Dr. Angelou's voice, too.

The Tin Man's Heart

by:  Martin Achatz

The Wizard gave the Tin Man
A heart with a clock
That unwound after sundown,
Hands slowing at midnight
In the dark bed of his chest,
Each second an immense field of poppies,
Fragrant as Dorothy's thick braids.

In the forest under the stars,
The Tin Man listened to his heart tick,
Like the sound of lovers kissing,
Waiting for his spring to uncoil,
Praying for that moment:
He and Dorothy in the poppies,
The sun on their gleaming bodies.

December 15: Son's School Christmas Program, Something Beautiful, "Age of Miracles"

It has been a really good day.

I attended my son's school Christmas program.  I got to read poetry to a group of people who actually wanted to hear poetry.  That doesn't happen very often, unless your name is Maya Angelou or Sharon Olds.

Tonight's poem is a couple years old.   I wrote it in 2013.  It was the last Christmas poem that my sister who passed away helped me with.  She always found the images and put them together with the poem.  When she got really ill, I took over the job.  I miss her creativity.  She really had an great eye for creating something beautiful.

If you can't tell, I still miss her a great deal.

Age of Miracles

by:  Martin Achatz

My daughter has reached that age

when her body unfurls

gospels of growth all night,

psalms filled with arm, leg, hair, sweat,

breath staled by the tilt

from girl to woman.  She will soon

inherit gifts.  Blood.  Ovum.  Creation.

Then she will be lost to me.  Gone

on a long journey across desert, mountain,

to a distant Bethlehem.

This December, she tells my wife

she doesn’t believe in caribou

flying over glacier, tundra.  Questions

things like seraphim choirs,

kingdoms at the North Pole,

donkeys that sing “Dona nobis pacem”

on the winter solstice.  I know,

she says, nods as if she’s accomplice

to some divine conspiracy theory.

So I write her this poem

about last Friday, when twenty inches

of snow fell in Cairo, Alexandria,

Jerusalem.  Brought the entire Middle East

a silence it hadn’t heard in 112 years.

Children in refugee camps danced

in the blizzard, made rosefinches

with ice bodies, palm frond wings.

No bombs.  No bullets.  Just white.

Everywhere.  White upon white.

From the Mediterranean to the Mount of Olives.

It’s a miracle, little girl,

like the smell of baked ham and cloves

on Christmas Eve, or the sound

of your first breath

the morning you were born.

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December 10: Slants of Light, Trompe-l’esprit, Maya Angelou, "These Yet to Be United States"

I like the slants of lights; I’m a collector.  That’s a good one, I say, that bit of bank there, the snakeskin and the aquarium, that patch of light from the creek on bark.  Sometimes I spread my fingers into a viewfinder; more often I peek through a tiny square or rectangle—a frame of shadow—formed by the tips of index fingers and thumbs held directly before my eye.  Speaking of the development of papier colle in late Cubism, Picasso said, “We tried to get rid of trompe-l’oeil to find a trompe-l’esprit.”  Trompe’l’esprit!  I don’t know why the world didn’t latch on to the phrase.  Our whole life is a stroll--or a forced march—through a gallery hung in trompe-l’esprit.

Dillard is a collector of all kinds of things.  Snakeskins.  Slants of light.  Books on insects.  Using Picasso’s terms, she is referring to a difference in life views, I think.  Trompe-l’oeil means to cheat the eye.  Trompe-l’esprit means to cheat the spirit.  I think that Dillard falls squarely in the trompe-l’esprit corner.  For Dillard, it’s all about finding ways to trick herself into moments of grace—whether through taking a walk along the banks of Tinker Creek or reading about eels walking across land at midnight.

That’s what poetry is all about, I think.  Trompe-l’esprit.  A trick of the spirit.  The best poets are somehow able to worm their ways into the soul with their words.  Those are the kind of poets I love.  Maya Angelou does that for me.  So does Sharon Olds and sometimes Billy Collins.  They take me on a stroll—or forced march—and make me feel things a little differently. 

Two weeks before Christmas.  Tomorrow, we are celebrating my daughter’s sixteenth birthday with our families.  My son’s Sunday School Christmas program takes place tomorrow morning, as well.  In the middle of all this hubbub, I have to write a Christmas poem, put together my annual Christmas letter, and do some Christmas shopping.  That’s my reality in the coming days.

I will have to say, though, that this whole nomination for Poet Laureate of the U. P. has sort of lightened things up for me.  Tricked my spirit into a state of bliss.  Whether I win or one of the other poets wins, I have people out there who appreciate my work.  Right now, maybe somebody is taking a little stroll—experiencing a little trompe-l’esprit—with one of my poems.  That makes me feel like I’m making a tiny contribution to the story of the universe.

I have one more Maya Angelou poem for you today, a small moment of trompe-l’esprit on this cold December weekend.

These Yet to Be United States

by:  Maya Angelou

  

Tremors of your network
cause kings to disappear.
Your open mouth in anger
makes nations bow in fear.

Your bombs can change the seasons,
obliterate the spring.
What more do you long for ?
Why are you suffering ?

You control the human lives
in Rome and Timbuktu.
Lonely nomads wandering
owe Telstar to you.

Seas shift at your bidding,
your mushrooms fill the sky.
Why are you unhappy ?
Why do your children cry ?

They kneel alone in terror
with dread in every glance.
Their nights ['rights' ? - Schrift nicht lesbar] are threatened daily
by a grim inheritance.

You dwell in whitened castles
with deep and poisoned moats
and cannot hear the curses
which fill your children's throats.

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