October 7: "Adage," Monday, Clichés

Since I started taking creative writing workshops, I've been taught to avoid clichés like the plague.  (Okay, I know it's an old joke, but it still makes me chuckle.)  

I've tried to follow that rule, for the most part.  However, there was a time when each cliché was new and surprising.  Some author once wrote "dead as a doornail," and it was considered bold and insightful.  I'm not quite sure when originality gives way to hackneyed. 

Billy Collins clichés it up a little . . . 

Adage

by: Billy Collins

When it’s late at night and branches
are banging against the windows,
you might think that love is just a matter

of leaping out of the frying pan of yourself
into the fire of someone else,
but it’s a little more complicated than that.

It’s more like trading the two birds
who might be hiding in that bush
for the one you are not holding in your hand.

A wise man once said that love
was like forcing a horse to drink
but then everyone stopped thinking of him as wise.

Let us be clear about something.
Love is not as simple as getting up
on the wrong side of the bed wearing the emperor’s clothes.

No, it’s more like the way the pen
feels after it has defeated the sword.
It’s a little like the penny saved or the nine dropped stitches.

You look at me through the halo of the last candle
and tell me love is an ill wind
that has no turning, a road that blows no good,

but I am here to remind you,
as our shadows tremble on the walls,
that love is the early bird who is better late than never.

It was a Monday.  (That may be a cliché.)  Everyone knows what that sentence implies--it just wasn't a good day.  I won't say it was a terrible day, but it certainly wasn't one for the record books.  Nothing exciting occurred.  I didn't get a call from the Swedish Academy.  Or win the lottery.  Or write a perfect poem.

However, I did teach my Intro to Film class.  And revised some poems.  And visited with my great friend Jody.  In short, I kept myself busy as a beaver.  As Mary Poppins said, a stitch in time saves nine.  (I have no idea what that adage means, but it has something to do with careful work.)

I'm not feeling very . . . original tonight.  More like tired, bordering on exhausted.  Tonight feels like a cliché, because Mondays are supposed to be disappointing.  So, I'm going to leave it there.  I'm sure that there are people who will argue with me, saying that it's all about attitude.  If I changed my attitude, perhaps today would not have been so . . . so . . . Monday.

But I didn't.

Nobel Prize-winning writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez once wrote, "This should be the spirit of every Monday.  Know that something good will always happen."

Forgive Saint Marty if he doesn't stand up and cheer.

A cliché picture--it has appeared a couple times on the blog..  

September 6: "Monday," Flattened, Calumet

First things first:  I do not feel quite so flattened today.  My nose isn't running as much.  My head doesn't feel like an overinflated tire.  I don't think I have a fever anymore, and my cough is present but not quite so front page news.  It's tucked in the classifieds now.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm on the mend, just in time for a very busy weekend.

Billy Collins talks about the antithesis of Friday . . . 

Monday

by: Billy Collins

The birds are in their trees,
the toast is in the toaster,
and the poets are at their windows.

They are at their windows
in every section of the tangerine of earth–
the Chinese poets looking up at the moon,
the American poets gazing out
at the pink and blue ribbons of sunrise.

The clerks are at their desks,
the miners are down in their mines,
and the poets are looking out their windows
maybe with a cigarette, a cup of tea,
and maybe a flannel shirt or bathrobe is involved.

The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong
game of proofreading,
glancing back and forth from page to page,
the chefs are dicing celery and potatoes,
and the poets are at their windows
because it is their job for which
they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon.

Which window it hardly seems to matter
though many have a favorite,
for there is always something to see–
a bird grasping a thin branch,
the headlight of a taxi rounding a corner,
those two boys in wool caps angling across the street.

The fishermen bob in their boats,
the linemen climb their round poles,
the barbers wait by their mirrors and chairs,
and the poets continue to stare at the cracked birdbath
or a limb knocked down by the wind.

By now, it should go without saying
that what the oven is to the baker
and the berry-stained blouse to the dry cleaner,
so the window is to the poet.

Just think–
before the invention of the window,
the poets would have had to put on a jacket
and a winter hat to go outside
or remain indoors with only a wall to stare at.

And when I say a wall,
I do not mean a wall with striped wallpaper
and a sketch of a cow in a frame.

I mean a cold wall of fieldstones,
the wall of the medieval sonnet,
the original woman’s heart of stone,
the stone caught in the throat of her poet-lover.

Currently, I'm sitting in a hotel room in Calumet, Michigan.  I have the heat blasting, and Duke Ellington is swinging in my headphones.  I'm going to be performing in a show tomorrow night--The Read Jacket Jamboree.  My voice has been coming and going most of the day.  Right now, it's gone.

And I'm doing just what the poet in Collins' poem is doing:  I'm at my window.  The parking lot is dark, dark, dark.  There's no moon visible.  The only illumination is a streetlight creating a bright pool on the asphalt.  

I need to get to sleep.  It's going to be a busy day of writing and rehearsing and performing tomorrow.  By this time tomorrow night, I will be completely exhausted.  Or dead.  

If Saint Marty does die, please have Wendell Berry read "The Peace of Wild Things" at his funeral.  

July 3: "Monday," Mock Orange Tree, Metonymy

Billy Collins window shops . . . 

Monday

by: Billy Collins

The birds are in their trees,

the toast is in the toaster,

and the poets are at their windows.

They are at their windows

in every section of the tangerine of earth--

the Chinese poets looking up at the moon,

the American poets gazing out

at the pink and blue ribbons of sunrise.

The clerks are at their desks,

the miners are down in their mines,

and the poets are looking out their windows

maybe with a cigarette, a cup of tea,

and maybe a flannel shirt or bathrobe is involved.

The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong

game of proofreading,

glancing back and forth from page to page,

the chefs are dicing celery and potatoes,

and the poets are at their windows

because it is their job for which

they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon.

Which window it hardly seems to matter

though many have a favorite,

for there is always something to see--

a bird grasping a thin branch,

the headlights of a taxi rounding a corner,

those two boys in wool caps angling across the street.

The fishermen bob in their boats,

the linemen climb their round poles,

the barbers wait by their mirrors and chairs,

and the poets continue to stare

at the cracked birdbath or a limb knocked down by the wind.

By now, it should go without saying

that what the oven is to the baker

and the berry-stained blouse to the dry cleaner,

so the window is to the poet.

Just think--

before the invention of the window,

the poets would have had to put on a jacket

and a winter hat to go outside

or remain indoors with only a wall to stare at.

And when I say a wall,

I do not mean a wall with striped wallpaper

and a sketch of a cow in a frame.

I mean a cold wall of fieldstones,

the wall of the medieval sonnet,

the original woman's heart of stone,

the stone caught in the throat of her poet-lover.

As a poet, I've done my fair share of window-gazing.  It goes with the territory--observing, noting, interpreting, capturing with words the ineffable world.  

Right now, I'm sitting on my living room couch, typing this post.  Behind me, a large picture window that provides a view of the bushes and tries along the side of my house.  On early mornings in summer, all manners of birds sit in the branches and beat my alarm clock in waking me up with their singing.

However, this morning, I didn't need a window.  One of my best poet friends invited me to sit in her garden and write with her.  So, a little after sunrise, there I was, scribbling away in my journal under the white petals of a mock orange tree.  It felt kind of sacred to me, surrounded by flowers, listening to the world wake up.  Dogs barking.  A jogger slapping by on the sidewalk.  Cars gliding down the street, on their way to jobs or schools or beaches.

My friend and I talked about how poets interact with the world differently than other people.  While everyone else focuses on the forest, we focus on the holes in the maple leaves.  Others concentrate on the rainstorm--we concentrate on the steak sizzle of the rain hitting the sidewalk.  It's a matter of metonymy, letting a part represent the whole.  Poets are great at it.

When my day starts with a little metonymy, I always feel more relaxed and centered.  If it occurs in a flower garden, even better.  And if it involves one of my best friends, it's nirvana.

Saint Marty is still a little blissed out.

June 17: Bad News, Spiral, Magic 8-Ball

I received some bad news at work today.  It seems the health care system which recently acquired the hospital where I work has sent down an edict that no clerical staff are allowed to work overtime any more.  That means that the overtime money that usually helps my family make it through the summer has suddenly gone the way of the passenger pigeon.

Here I sit in my office at the university.  I had to leave my other job because I'd already worked too many hours.  I'm in a downward spiral at the moment, imagining everything from bankruptcy to foreclosure.  In one of my fantasies, an asteroid hit the hospital and took out the entire administration building.  That was actually quite pleasant.

I don't know what I'm going to do.  I don't know if or how my family is going to survive until the checks from the university start coming again in late August.  Basically, I don't know anything.  It has been a pretty crappy few days for bad news.

My question for Magic 8-Ball Monday is pretty simple:

Is my family going to make it through the summer financially?

And the answer from that wellspring of positivity, Holden Caulfield, is:

"She's fine, thanks.  I haven't seen her too recently, but the last I--"

I'm going to take that one to the bank.  Too bad I can't cash it.  I'm going to be "fine," according to Holden.  Of course, "fine" for Holden is a nervous breakdown and pneumonia.


Saint Marty needs to stop spiraling.  Now.

Anybody got a spare parachute?