July 28: "Blue Iris," Meaning and Purpose, My Daughter

Mary Oliver wonders who she is . . . 

Blue Iris

by:  Mary Oliver

Now that I'm free to be myself, who am I?

Can't fly, can't run, and see how slowly I walk.

Well, I think, I can read books.

               "What's that you're doing?"

the green-headed fly shouts as it buzzes past.

I close the book.

Well, I can write down words, like these, softly.

"What's that you're doing?" whispers the wind, pausing

in a heap just outside the window.

Give me a little time, I say back to its staring, silver face.

It doesn't happen all of a sudden, you know.

"Doesn't it?" says the wind, and breaks open, releasing

distillation of blue iris.

And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be,

the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.

This is who Mary Oliver is:  a glass waiting for water, a canvas waiting for paint, a piece of paper waiting for poetry.  I've spent a good portion of my life wondering who I am and who I long to be.  A lot of people spend their whole lives doing the same thing--always searching for meaning and purpose. 

I think I was meant to be a poet.  Everything that's happened in my life has led me to this moment right now, sitting on my couch, reading Mary Oliver, and contemplating what it means to be a poet.  Because there really isn't an official job description, in case you haven't noticed.

Sure, most of you are thinking that a poet is a person who spends a lot of time pondering things that nobody really cares about, like green-headed flies and wind and blue irises.  I'd lay down money that most of you are also thinking, "Who needs poets?"

Yes, the world needs more doctors and teachers and medical researchers and physicists and mechanics.  I know this.  When a person I love gets sick, I don't read them a William Carlos Williams poem.  When my car breaks down, I don't try to fix it by reading "I Heard a Fly Buzz."  When I'm hungry, I don't search through the fridge for Pablo Neruda's "Ode to a Lemon."  

However, when I'm grieving, I may pay a visit to Gerard Manley Hopkins.  When I'm suffering from insomnia (which is most nights), Maggie Nelson is right there with me in all her blueness.  When I need to celebrate, I can always count on Billy Collins to raise a glass of wine with me.  And when I need to be grateful, I have Mary Oliver.  

Who needs poets?  We all need poets.

This evening, we took our daughter out to eat.  She took the MCAT today, which was the culmination of four years of college education and two months of preparation, studying eight hours a day.  Here's where being a poet comes in handy.  It helps me to find words to express what I'm feeling tonight.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating:  my kids are the greatest poems I will ever write.  They fill me with wonder and awe.  My daughter amazes me.  My son makes me laugh every day.  Mary Oliver gets it right:  the job of a poet is to be an empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.  When it's time for me to give my Nobel Prize acceptance speech, I may just hold up a picture of my kids.

Saint Marty's glass is more than full tonight,  It's overflowing.

September 17-18: What Happened, Fresh Starts, Words

Our heroes are about to be Kill-O-Zapped to death . . .

But the end never came, at least not then.

Quite suddenly the barrage stopped, and the sudden silence afterward was punctuated by a couple of strangled gurgles and thuds.

The four stared at each other.

"What happened?" said Arthur.

"They stopped," said Zaphod with a shrug.

"Why?"

"Dunno, do you want to go and ask them?"

"No."

They waited.

After reading Tuesday night's post, many of you might be thinking, "What happened?"  Usually, I avoid engaging in political discussions.  My only answer is that it was late, and I was tired and cranky.  For those of my disciples who were turned off, I am tempted to apologize.  But I stand by what I said.  The United States has become a society that has legitimized bullying.

That being said, I promise not to talk in this post about Donald Trump and the criminal acts he's committed since taking over the Oval Office.  If there's one thing that I've learned about bullies in my life, it's this:  bullies love being the center of attention.  Therefore, I will not waste any more energy on Donald Trump.

In fact, I am so tired at this moment that I'm going to have to turn this into a two-part post.  Everyone has gone to bed in my house, my ten-year-old son a little reluctantly.  I am surrounded by night sounds--a clock ticking, the wind rattling my windows a little, and deep sleeping breaths.  Every day is a new beginning, a chance for fresh starts . . .

And this is a new day.  Thanks for hanging in there with me.  This week is turning into one of those weeks where many little and bigger things are encroaching on my time.  Projects and bills and work.  By the time I sit down in the evening, I'm one of two things--exhausted or busy.  Neither is conducive to writing blog posts.

It's strange, but, when I don't write at least one blog post a day, I feel a little off center.  The balance of my day is thrown awry.  Writing is the thing that keeps me in touch with my inner artist, which doesn't always get a chance to come out and play during the work week.  These blog posts are sometimes my only creative outlet.  They force me to pay attention to what's going on inside my head and heart.  Thus, if I don't blog, I neglect an important part of myself.

Tonight, I'm feeling anxious for various reasons.  Being away from my wife and kids does that to me.  When I'm present at home, I can sort of maintain the illusion of control.  I know it's an illusion, but it keeps my mind at ease.  I sort of thrive on that illusion.  It allows me to sleep on sleepless night.

So, I give thanks for these few minutes of writing on my laptop, sending my thoughts out into the world.  Even with these small paragraphs, I am more grounded, until I can get behind the wheel of my car, drive home, and walk through my front door.  See my wife.  Son.  Daughter.  They remind me why words were invented.  To say, "I love you."

Words have saved Saint Marty, over and over and over.

February 24: Adam and Eve, Pablo Neruda, Wrestling Tournament

Their commander was a middle-aged corporal--red-eyed, scrawny, tough as dried beef, sick of war.  He had been wounded four times--and patched up, and sent back to war.  He was a very good soldier--about to quit, about to find somebody to surrender to.  His bandy legs were thrust into golden cavalry boots which he had taken from a dead Hungarian colonel on the Russian front.  So it goes.

Those boots were almost all he owned in this world.  They were his home.  An anecdote.  One time, a recruit was watching him bone and wax those golden boots, and he held one up to the recruit and said, "If you look in there deeply enough, you'll see Adam and Eve."

Billy Pilgrim had not heard this anecdote.  But, lying on the black ice there, Billy stared into the patina of the corporal's boots, saw Adam and Even in the golden depths.  They were naked.  They were so innocent, so vulnerable, so eager to behave decently.  Billy Pilgrim loved them.

I love this little passage, with its almost magically real image of Adam and Eve in the commander's boots.  War and death.  Innocence and vulnerability.  Billy falling in love with them as he is flat on his back on the black ice of the frozen creek.

That's the way poetry happens, really.  In the middle of the shitstorm of life, something beautiful surfaces.  Today, I felt pretty lousy all day long.  Hot then cold.  Stuffed up nose then runny nose.  Full of energy then exhausted.  Right now, I feel like I could crawl under the covers and take a Rip Van Winkle nap.  And there is snow and snow and snow.

I'm looking for poetry tonight.  Having a hard time.  Perhaps if I I take some Nyquil, I will find poetry.  Neruda once wrote, "And it was at that age . . . Poetry arrived / in search of me.  I don't know, I don't know where / it came from, from winter or a river."  I have an idea for a poem I want to write for the poetry reading I'm giving this coming Tuesday.  I haven't had the energy to put pen to journal.  Still don't.  I'm waiting for poetry to arrive.

Tomorrow, my son has a wrestling tournament.  Maybe poetry will be there, cheering in the crowd.  In the afternoon, my daughter has a dance rehearsal.  Maybe poetry will be there in a leotard.  In the evening, church.  Poetry may be there, saying a few prayers.

I'm saying that I don't know when poetry is going to arrive.  I just have to keep an eye out.

Tonight, Saint Marty is thankful for . . .the possibility of meeting poetry at the concession stand.

May 9: Spare Time, Type-A, Pablo Neruda, "Ode to Laziness," New Cartoon

For the most part, [Ives and Annie] saw each other on weekends.  There was very little they did not do together in their spare time:  they went to jazz clubs in the village, visited galleries, haunted bookshops, had picnics in the park, and sometimes, with a borrowed car, took drives upstate, along the Hudson and beautiful wooded areas, through quiet towns and countryside, where they fantasized about living one day...

This is Ives and Annie in the first flush of their romance.  Spending all their spare time together.  Music and art and books and trips.  No obligations of jobs and children and family.  Freedom is abundant, and laziness is treasured.

I have little spare time for laziness.  Aside from Saturday morning, most of my days are filled with various tasks.  This afternoon, I have to clean a house and then play the pipe organ for Saturday evening mass.  When I get home this evening, I have more cleaning to do (vacuuming and a bathroom).  In between, I have a card to drop off at a graduation party (which I can't attend because of my other obligations) and finish writing a poem for church tomorrow morning.

I can't remember the last time I just indulged in pure laziness.  Sitting back and, despite having a full slate of to-dos, doing something completely frivolous.  Reading a book that isn't for school or book club or research.  Watching a movie or television program just for the hell of it.

Summer provides more opportunities for laziness.  On 80- or 90-degree days, when simply breathing makes you sweat, laziness is the order of the day,  Maybe.  Being a type-A person, I find myself a little anxious being lazy, feel guilty taking naps.

Saint Marty needs to learn to let go.  Or get a prescription for Xanax.

Ode to Laziness

by:  Pablo Neruda

Yesterday I felt as if my ode
was never going to sprout.
At least it should
have been showing
a green leaf.
I scratched the soil:  "Come up,
sister ode,"
I said,
"I promised to produce you,
don't be afraid of me,
I'll not step on your
four leaves, your
four hands, ode,
we'll have tea together.
Come up
and I'll crown you first among my odes,
we'll go to the seashore
on our bicycles."
It was useless.

Then,
high amid the pines,
I saw lovely
naked laziness,
she led me off bedazzled
and bemused,
she showed me on the sand
small broken bits
of marine matter,
driftwood, seaweed, stones,
seabirds' feathers.
I hunted but did not find
yellow agates.
The sea
surged higher,
crumbling towers,
invading
the shoreline of my homeland,
sending forth
successive catastrophes of foam.
A solitary corolla
cast a ray
against the sand.
I saw silvery petrels cruising
and, like black crosses,
cormorants
clinging to the rocks.
I freed a bee from
its death throes in a spiderweb,
I put a pebble
in my pocket,
it was smooth, as smooth
as a bird's breast,
meanwhile along the coast,
all afternoon,
sun and fog waged war.
At times
the fog glowed
with
a topaz light,
other times
a moist sun cast
rays dripping yellow drops.

That night,
thinking of the duties of my
elusive ode,
I took off my shoes
beside the fire,
sand spilled from them
and soon I was falling
fast asleep.

Confessions of Saint Marty

May 8: Dinner with my Wife, Pablo Neruda, "Your Feet"

I am going to dinner with my wife in a few minutes.  One of our favorite local restaurants where they have garlic bread that drips with butter and stuffed shells that would make Jesus weep.

I don't tell my wife I love her often enough.  Most days, the only conversations we have are right before we fall asleep in bed.  We see each other in the morning for a few minutes and for a couple of hours at night, when we're both too exhausted to carry on any meaningful discourse.

So, tonight, we will talk.  Eat.  Laugh.

Saint Marty is ordering the tortellini.

Your Feet

by:  Pablo Neruda

When I cannot look at your face
I look at your feet.
Your feet of arched bone,
your hard little feet.
I know that they support you,
and that your sweet weight
rises upon them.
Your waist and your breasts,
the doubled purple
of your nipples,
the sockets of your eyes
that have just flown away,
your wide fruit mouth,
your red tresses,
my little tower.
But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.

I may have a gin and tonic, too

May 7: Fiding Happiness, Pablo Neruda, "Ode to Sadness"

When I pick up my daughter this evening from her dance studio, I will take her shopping for Mother's Day.  We will buy cards for mother and grandma and aunts.  We'll pick up some good chocolates.  Maybe a DVD or a book.  I have no plan.

At the end of this rather solemn day, I'm all about finding some happiness.  I want to find something that will make my wife smile this Sunday.  I want to drive sadness into the shadows tonight.  Banish it.  I've had enough of its company.

Saint Marty is taking his cue from Neruda tonight.

Ode to Sadness

by:  Pablo Neruda

Sadness, scarab
with seven crippled feet,
spiderweb egg,
scramble-brained rat,
bitch's skeleton:
No entry here.
Don't come in.
Go away.
Go back
south with your umbrella,
go back
north with your serpent's teeth.
A poet lives here.
No sadness may
cross this threshold.
Through these windows
comes the breath of the world,
fresh red roses,
flags embroidered with
the victories of the people.
No.
No entry.
Flap
your bat's wings,
I will trample the feathers
that fall from your mantle,
I will sweep the bits and pieces
of your carcass to
the four corners of the wind,
I will wring your neck,
I will stitch your eyelids shut,
I will sew your shroud,
sadness, and bury your rodent bones
beneath the springtime of an apple tree.

Anybody want a piece of happiness?

May 6: A Realization, Pablo Neruda, "Ode to Bicycles"

I realized this afternoon that tomorrow will be the first anniversary of my brother's death.

That realization really caught me by surprise.  Usually, I'm not a person that keeps track of things like that.  I can barely remember my own kids' birthdays, and I certainly don't celebrate death days.  In fact, I think that people who keep track of such depressing milestones are a little morbid.

Yet, here I sit, contemplating the last 365 days.  A lot has changed, and a lot has stayed the same.  I'm not going to get all maudlin.  I refuse to sit here and reflect on loss.  I'll save that for tomorrow.  What I will say this evening is that I'm going to enjoy the warmth of the sun as it sets tonight.  I'm going to hug my daughter, force her to give me a goodnight kiss before she goes to bed.  I'm going to go into my son's bedroom and touch the down of his hair.  And I'm going to tell my wife that I love her for putting up with all my insanities.

Saint Marty is going to give thanks for all the little things in his life:  my withered lawn, a cup of cold water, a piece of cheese, peepers singing in the dusk, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a quilt, a pillow, night, morning, and bicycles.

Ode to Bicycles

by:  Pablo Neruda

I was walking
down
a sizzling road:
the sun popped like
a field of blazing maize,
the
earth
was hot,
an infinite circle
with an empty
blue sky overhead.

A few bicycles
passed
me by,
the only
insects
in
that dry
moment of summer,
silent,
swift,
translucent;
they
barely stirred
the air.

Workers and girls
were riding to their
factories,
giving
their eyes
to summer,
their heads to the sky,
sitting on the
hard
beetle backs
of the whirling
bicycles
that whirred
as they rode by
bridges, rosebushes, brambles
and midday.

I thought about evening when
the boys
wash up,
sing, eat, raise
a cup
of wine
in honor
of love
and life,
and waiting
at the door,
the bicycle,
stilled,
because
only moving
does it have a soul,
and fallen there
it isn't
a translucent insect
humming
through summer
but
a cold
skeleton
that will return to
life
only
when it's needed,
when it's light,
that is,
with
the
resurrection
of each day.

The smallest things can be the biggest miracles

May 5: Nature Essay, Pablo Neruda, "Ode to the Birth of a Fawn"

I have a couple of pressing writing projects this month.  For Sunday, I have to compose a poem for Mother's Day.  It's for a worship service at church.  I have started this poem several times without much success.  Tonight, I will try, yet again, to find my way again.

The other writing project I have this month is an essay about nature for a local writing contest.  I have entered this contest before and was awarded first honorable mention.  Last year, I was one of the contest's judges.  I sifted through some 25 or so essays for a month.  This year, I'm throwing my hat in the ring once more.  First prize is $250 and publication in a local newspaper.  Nothing to sneeze at.

So, I have to think about nature.  Maybe take some walks in the woods.  Climb a mountain.  Rake my lawn.  Whatever it takes.

Pablo Neruda knows how to write about nature.  The ode below proves that.

Now, Saint Marty has to go commune with the outdoors from the safety of his kitchen window.

Ode to the Birth of a Fawn

by:  Pablo Neruda

The doe lay on her side
behind
the wire fence.
Her eyes were
two great almonds.
The great buck kept vigil
and in the sun of midday
the crown of his antlers
shone
like
an altar aflame.

Blood and water,
a distended, pulsing
sac,
and in it
a new fawn,
helpless, shapeless.

There it lay in its opaque
wrapping
upon the stained grass.
The doe licked it
with her silver tongue.
It couldn't move,
but gradually
from the undefined and
steaming mass,
fouled, wet, defenseless,
the form
emerged,
the finely pointed nose
of regal
pedigree,
oval eyes unrivaled
on the earth,
delicate
legs,
the forest's natural
arrows.
The doe licked it
tirelessly, cleaned it
of its darkness, and pure
delivered it to life.

And so it rose,
fragile but flawless,
and began to move,
to walk, to be,
to look for brooks in the forest.
It gazed upon a radiant world.

The sky above
the tiny head
was a translucent
grape as the fawn
attached itself to the doe's teat,
quivering as if shaken
by light from heaven.

I have to become one with my inner Neruda

May 4: Poet of the Week, Pablo Neruda, "A Lemon"

So, I just got home about an hour ago.  Unpacked the car.  Got my son to bed.  Submitted the grades for my poetry workshop.

I literally didn't think I was going to have the time to get one post done, let alone two.  And I didn't have any idea of who I was going to choose as Poet of the Week.  Well, I just decided.

Pablo Neruda has always been one of my favorite poets.  His odes are simply stunning. Any poet would sacrifice a limb to be able to write just one poem like Neruda.

Saint Marty isn't quite ready to lose a hand just yet.  Maybe a toenail.

A Lemon

by:  Pablo Neruda

Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.  

 

When life gives you lemons...

September 11: "Il Postino" and Poetry

I started screening one of my favorite movies for my class this afternoon--Il Postino:  The Postman.  My students are liking it a whole lot more than Citizen Kane.  There's something very beautiful and gentle about the movie.  I think it has something to do with Massimo Troisi's performance.  He's so engaging and funny.  And nothing can beat Philippe Noiret's Pablo Neruda.  Noiret made me want to travel to Chile and visit Neruda's home.

I remember the first time I saw Il Postino.  It was around 1994 or 1995, and I was living downstate, laboring in a PhD program.  My friend, Lisa, told me about this little Italian film about a postman who learns about love from Pablo Neruda.  She started talking about it and then lapsed into silence, holding a small, sad smile on her face.  "Just see it," she said.

I followed her advice.  I think it was Il Postino that convinced me I was a poet.  Before, I was under the impression I wanted to write fiction and be Flannery O'Connor.  After, I knew I wanted to write poetry and be Pablo Neruda (or at least Charles Bukowski).  I have held on to that belief ever since, much to my family's chagrin and consternation.  (I suppose there is the possibility of more money in fiction.)

Well, I am going to try to communicate my love of this film to my students.  I will probably fail, miserably.  But, at the very least, I will have introduced a whole new generation of students to Mario the postman and Pablo the poet.

Saint Marty thinks that's a pretty good deal.

Orson Welles or Pablo Neruda, take your pick