September 15: Classic Saint Marty, Better Day, October 12, New Cartoons

First, you will be happy to note the inclusion of two new Confessions of Saint Marty cartoons.  Sorry I didn't get a cartoon to you yesterday.  My daughter had my iPad, and my wife was working on my laptop until quite late in the evening.  I was lucky to get my poem posted last night.

I do owe you guys a Classic Saint Marty today.  This particular episode originally aired on October 12, 2011.  To be honest, I'd almost forgotten the poem in this post.  However, the reason I chose to rebroadcast this post is that it's about life getting better, unexpected blessings.  I need a little of that right now.

Saint Marty hopes you enjoy this little rerun.

October 12, 2011:  Better Day, New Poem, Comments

My day has steadily improved.  I saw several good friends unexpectedly today.  Blessings.  I had a really good teaching day.  Blessing.  Yesterday, a friend loaned me a book of poems by Sarah Vap titled Faulkner's Rosary.  It's amazingly good.  Blessing.  I got another poem written today that I think is satisfactory.  Another blessing.  Yes, that's right.  I'm doing the Oprah thing:  I'm counting my blessings today, cuz tallying up my problems ain't been workin' so good lately.

I have also solved the whole dilemma of some people not being able to leave comments on my blog.  Here's what you have to do if you're having problems commenting on any blog:  enable third party cookies.  Having said that, I don't know what the hell third party cookies are, but I told my friend Keith to try it this morning.  He left a comment for me this afternoon.  Yeah for technology.  Another blessing, although I still don't know what a cookie is, unless it's got chocolate chips or oatmeal in it.

As I said above, I do have a new poem for today.  It is inspired by the catastrophes of yesterday.  I've also used Greek mythology again.  Get used to it.  I'm teaching mythology this semester, so it's going to creep into my work.  I would actually venture to say that it is enriching my already rich output of poetry.  Alright, I may have taken that a little too far.  But I do enjoy having the myths to play around with.

Tonight, it's choir practice and band practice.  The usual.  I'm not sure if I'm sticking around for band practice, though.  It depends on whether or not we're going to practice anything for two Sundays hence, since I will be Wisconsin Delling it this weekend.  We'll see.

Saint Marty is going to go read some more Sarah Vap now.

Time Between

I love this time between cloud and rain,

My student says as he walks with me,

Talks about Hades and the Greek dead.

We’ve had this discussion before, how

The underworld of Athens and Sparta

Wasn’t filled with lakes of sewage or

Infinite planes of ice.  No, Hades

Was simply a place to go

After hard childbirth or fatal sword thrust,

A place of not life, the shadows of was.

All these people, accustomed to wine and grain,

Orgy and oracle, reduced to divine breath

And waiting, just waiting, like corn in a silo.

I drive home tonight with medicine on the seat

Beside me for my daughter’s eardrum.

My wife tells me how the nurse

At school looked in my Celeste’s ear,

Saw something like a cloud, a bright rib

Or jar, formed, ready to unleash

Rain and wind.  But not yet. 
Not yet.  I drive

Toward the coming storm, stare at the sky

As it darkens, the way my father’s face

Darkened before he shoved my sister

Into a wall.  I move through this time

Between work and home,

A wreck of clouds and bullets of rain.

The mutter of water.  I stand

On the shores of Styx, watch, wait

As Charon paddles across the waves toward

My unthreshed stalk.

Confessions of Saint Marty

February 15: New Poem, "Lent Flu," Be Kind

It has been a while since I've written a new poem.  I've been rereading Sarah Vap's poetry collection Faulkner's Rosary all week, and she has inspired this poem.  I love her form, her imagery, her surprise.  I hope what I have is good.  I'm not sure.  My first and most honest critic is my wife, and she didn't say she liked it.  But she didn't say it sucked.

Saint Marty can live with that tonight.  Be kind.

Lent Flu

He calls at two a.m. 
     My body hurts
in his crib

I stand beside him
     his fever in the air
like needles on a midnight pine

I can't help him
     snuff this flame
in his muscles

Can only watch him
     suffer, squirm
on his cross

He looks up at me
     eyes full of foresaken
If you love me

He seems to say
    through his thorns
You would take this cup

I know, I know, I know
    my son
these nails

Are sharp sacrifice 

February 9: Catholics, Sarah Vap, "Faulkner's Rosary," New Cartoon

I said I'd enjoyed talking to them a lot, too.  I meant it, too.  I'd have enjoyed it even more though, I think, if I hadn't been sort of afraid, the whole time I was talking to them, that they'd all of a sudden try to find out if I was a Catholic.  Catholics are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic.  It happens to me a lot, I know, partly because my last name is Irish, and most people of Irish descent are Catholics.  As a matter of fact, my father was a Catholic once.  He quit, though, when he married my mother.  But Catholics are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic even if they don't know your last name...

Of course, Holden has an opinion about Catholics.  Holden has opinions about everyone.  He reserves his most negative criticisms for people he considers to be "phony"--pretentious teens and adults who try to pass themselves off as smarter or more important than they actually are.  Holden prizes humility and truth.  That's why kids like his sister Phoebe and brother Allie are so central to him.  They are unspoiled by life.  In the passage above, Holden is talking to a pair of nuns he's met at a diner, and he likes them a great deal.  Holden claims to be an atheist, but he admires people with strong convictions and beliefs, because, at the moment, Holden is not sure what to believe or who to trust.

I've been lucky.  For the most part, I've had a strong spiritual life.  I was raised Catholic, and, aside from the usual teenage diversions, I've maintained my beliefs.  My faith informs most of what I do--working, teaching, husbanding, parenting, and writing.  I may get mad with God.  I may question God,  I may even wrestle with God from time-to-time.  That's normal.  Even healthy.  It's my faith, however, that is the thread that holds the elements of my life together.

Sarah Vap's collection of poems, Faulkner's Rosary, follows this thread, from pregnancy to birth to new motherhood.  Each poem is a bead, a cell, a prayer in the fabric of life.  Vap uses the concept of the Catholic rosary, with its concentration on meditation and mystery, happiness and sorrow, love and death, to create a circular poetic portrait of life.  Each line vibrates with a peculiar energy and light:

Fallopian

I don't know what it was like for you,
before me.          Wrapped-up, did your night

walk with you?  And practice speaking

like the black rock
slipped secretly, hand to hand, by a new love

to a new love?  Then, is forever looked-after?
Welcoming,

and not very happy, the black cat
turns into a white one

as it crosses the stone wall of the Street of the Holy Spirit.
Something untouchable, we know,

is still voluble.

I would be lying if I said I understood all of Vap's poems.  They resist understanding at times.  Like reading a Faulkner novel, Faulkner's Rosary is a journey through time, from the inner space of the womb to the outer space of the Street of the Holy Spirit.  Vap sees the miraculous even in the frayed string that holds her rosary together:

A cradle of warmed oats for the chickens on the Epiphany

Last week you formed the chambers of your own heart; this week
the lobes of your brain.  I wake up thinking overcelebrate.

I wake with the phrase as I am wont.

Chronology doesn't enter--my birth and yours,

my mother's pregnancy
and mine, they are the same:          blessed,

and tendered thanks for the infinite detail--windowsills,

before or after Advent, where the worm lived

by your vanished sister.  You must dream

of animals, afraid,
pitching themselves

into hollowed-out buildings, built

several stories down into the earth.

Sarah Vap's work frustrates me at times.  It leaves me puzzled, wondering.  Yet, I keep returning to it, the way my mother returns to her prayer books every morning or my father to his black-beaded rosary.  The poems in this book make me say a holy "yes" to life in all its vicissitudes, from the subatomic to the cosmic.

Saint Marty is in love with Faulkner's Rosary.

Confessions of Saint Marty

February 8: A Poem, "Memorare," Good Night

Saint Marty is ready to say good night, but, before he does, he gives you Sarah Vap's poem...

Memorare

She who knew what a body was

and gave him one, help me to distinguish
mouth from cock.          Help me to distinguish

the son from the mother:  redeemer and
redeemed.It's simple to give glory be to the father, to the son, and to the holy ghost,

as-it-was-in-the-beginning-is-now-and-ever-shall-be-world-without-end-amen.  But you,
throw the counterweight.  You, window ajar.  You, the floors swept

daily.  You did make love and you did

dive deep into ourselves

within ourselves.  At the beginning or near
the beginning.  You, the true begin,

haven't I been faithful?

NOTE:  Saint Marty will talk more about Sarah Vap tomorrow.  He knows she's a little frustrating.

The original Memorare

October 12: Better Day, New Poem, Comments

My day has steadily improved.  I saw several good friends unexpectedly today.  Blessings.  I had a really good teaching day.  Blessing.  Yesterday, a friend loaned me a book of poems by Sarah Vap titled Faulkner's Rosary.  It's amazingly good.  Blessing.  I got another poem written today that I think is satisfactory.  Another blessing.  Yes, that's right.  I'm doing the Oprah thing:  I'm counting my blessings today, cuz tallying up my problems ain't been workin' so good lately.

I have also solved the whole dilemma of some people not being able to leave comments on my blog.  Here's what you have to do if you're having problems commenting on any blog:  enable third party cookies.  Having said that, I don't know what the hell third party cookies are, but I told my friend Keith to try it this morning.  He left a comment for me this afternoon.  Yeah for technology.  Another blessing, although I still don't know what a cookie is, unless it's got chocolate chips or oatmeal in it.

As I said above, I do have a new poem for today.  It is inspired by the catastrophes of yesterday.  I've also used Greek mythology again.  Get used to it.  I'm teaching mythology this semester, so it's going to creep into my work.  I would actually venture to say that it is enriching my already rich output of poetry.  Alright, I may have taken that a little too far.  But I do enjoy having the myths to play around with.

Tonight, it's choir practice and band practice.  The usual.  I'm not sure if I'm sticking around for band practice, though.  It depends on whether or not we're going to practice anything for two Sundays hence, since I will be Wisconsin Delling it this weekend.  We'll see.

Saint Marty is going to go read some more Sarah Vap now.

Time Between

I love this time between cloud and rain,

My student says as he walks with me,

Talks about Hades and the Greek dead.

We’ve had this discussion before, how

The underworld of Athens and Sparta

Wasn’t filled with lakes of sewage or

Infinite planes of ice.  No, Hades

Was simply a place to go

After hard childbirth or fatal sword thrust,

A place of not life, the shadows of was.

All these people, accustomed to wine and grain,

Orgy and oracle, reduced to divine breath

And waiting, just waiting, like corn in a silo.

I drive home tonight with medicine on the seat

Beside me for my daughter’s eardrum.

My wife tells me how the nurse

At school looked in my Celeste’s ear,

Saw something like a cloud, a bright rib

Or jar, formed, ready to unleash

Rain and wind.  But not yet. 
Not yet.  I drive

Toward the coming storm, stare at the sky

As it darkens, the way my father’s face

Darkened before he shoved my sister

Into a wall.  I move through this time

Between work and home,

A wreck of clouds and bullets of rain.

The mutter of water.  I stand

On the shores of Styx, watch, wait

As Charon paddles across the waves toward

My unthreshed stalk.

Don't pay the ferryman!