March 20: New Poet of the Week, Ted Kooser, "Late February"

Sometimes, when I'm looking for a new Poet of the Week, I happen upon a poet whom I've forgotten.  It's like coming across an old grade school picture and being reminded of a person who was your best friend in second grade.

I love Ted Kooser's poems.  Always have.  However, I haven't read Ted Kooser in a really long time.  Reading him now, I know why I first fell in love with his work so long ago.

So, Saint Marty is going to be spending the week with his old friend, Ted.

Late February

by:  Ted Kooser

The first warm day,
and by mid-afternoon
the snow is no more
than a washing
strewn over the yards,
the bedding rolled in knots
and leaking water,
the white shirts lying
under the evergreens.
Through the heaviest drifts
rise autumn's fallen
bicycles, small carnivals
of paint and chrome,
the Octopus
and Tilt-A-Whirl
beginning to turn
in the sun. Now children,
stiffened by winter
and dressed, somehow,
like old men, mutter
and bend to the work
of building dams.
But such a spring is brief;
by five o'clock
the chill of sundown,
darkness, the blue TVs
flashing like storms
in the picture windows,
the yards gone gray,
the wet dogs barking
at nothing. Far off
across the cornfields
staked for streets and sewers,
the body of a farmer
missing since fall
will show up
in his garden tomorrow,
as unexpected
as a tulip.

April 13: Poet of the Week, Judith Minty, "Yellow Dog Journal"

Yes, I am naming a new Poet of the Week tonight.

I met Judith Minty almost twenty years ago.  She visited a poetry workshop I was in, and, later that night, I had a few drinks with her.  I remember her being incredibly funny and smart.  The more I drank, the smarter and funnier she became.

One of my favorite poetry collections ever is Minty's Yellow Dog Journal, a series of poems based on her time living in a cabin on the Yellow Dog River in the Upper Peninsula, about thirty miles from my house.  I took this slim little volume off my bookshelf last night, started reading, and fell in love with Judith Minty all over again.

There are no titles to the poems in the book.  They are simply numbered in two sections:  Fall and Spring.

Saint Marty is going to start with a few selections from Fall.

1

400 miles into north land, driving hard
like a runaway, each town peeling away the woman skin,
turning me pale and soft, as if I
had never married, had not
been planted twenty years in the suburbs.

I come here as my father's child, back
down his rutted road, through a cave of sagging timber
to the clearing.  Nothing changed.
His land, his shack leaning over the riverbank,
the Yellow Dog barking home to Superior.

3

My father's slippers, found
in a trunk, now mine to wear.
Too large, creases in the leather
barely touch the flesh.
I slide my toes to the end, along the old ridges.

His feet clump over linoleum floor
table to dishpan, woodbox to stove.
Only the scrap of rug by the door
muffles his presence.

On the Yellow Dog

August 3: Summer Thanksgiving, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

Another Sunday afternoon.  I feel much less melancholy this Sunday because I do not have to go to work tomorrow morning.  Instead, I will get up when my son decides to get up.  That could be any time between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m.  I don't have to deal with disgruntled patients filling out paperwork.  I don't have to limit my lunch time to only 27 minutes.  I can actually enjoy the summer warmth and sun instead of cramming it into a few hours at the end of the day.  It's going to be a very good week.

Today, I will be celebrating a summer Thanksgiving.  Turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, pumpkin pie.  It's an appropriate meal at the beginning of my vacation.  If it were next Sunday, it wouldn't feel like Thanksgiving.  More like the final dinner before being led to the electric chair.  However, it's going to be a celebration, not a wake.  I've been starving myself all day in preparation.

Tomorrow, I will also introduce the new Poet of the Week.  All I can say is that you're all in for a treat.  I absolutely adore this writer.  If I say much more, I'll give the poet's identity away, so I'll end this paragraph now.

Today's episode of Classic Saint Marty is almost four years old.  It deals with vacations, barbecues, saints, saints on vacation, and saints being barbecued .  Enjoy.

Saint Marty has a turkey to de-bone soon.

August 10, 2010:  Saint Lawrence

I'm baaaaa-aaaaack!

Sorry about my prolonged absence from the blog.  For my two or three loyal readers, I will try to make it up to you by writing a couple posts this week.  However, I was on vacation for the last week or so.  Nowhere near a computer, keyboard, monitor, i-Pad, whatever.  Basically, all I've been doing is reading; playing with my almost-two-year-old son and almost-tween daughter; spending some much-needed quality time with my wife; and soaking up the final hot days of summer before the long slide into autumn.

So I have a few points of business to take care of.  First, my friend from Georgia had an operation and is recuperating, so I want anyone who reads this to send healing thoughts and prayers her way.  Second, my pastor friend and his wife had a baby last Friday night, so I want to send a shout-out to the little Twilight girl (that's an inside joke--sorry, I try not to be cryptic and cutesie in my posts, but I'm just coming off a ten-day break; my inner sarcastic child has not woken up yet).

I didn't do anything spiritually fulfilling during my time off.  I didn't build a school in the Ozarks.  I didn't volunteer in a soup kitchen in inner-city Detroit.  I didn't work for Habitat for Humanity (you don't want to see me with power tools, believe me!).  The closest thing I did  for charity was purchase The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner.  For those of you who don't know, for each copy of the book that is sold, one dollar is donated to the American Red Cross.  So, I killed two birds with one stone.  I got a birthday present for a friend and assuaged my Christian guilt a little bit.  Not much.  A little.

I'm not sure I've ever read about a saint taking a vacation.  But it's gotta get tiring being holy 24-7.  I know I couldn't handle it.  I'm way too self-absorbed, to quote a good friend.  Lawrence, the saint for today, is the patron of the poor and of cooks.  The reason he's the patron of the poor:  when he was ordered to turn over the "treasures of the Church" to the Roman government, Lawrence gathered over a thousand beggars, street people, and destitute children.  All the gold and silver the Roman Prefect was seeking had been sold as alms for the assembled crowd.  The reason Lawrence is the patron of cooks:  the Prefect had him roasted over a fire pit for his defiance of Rome.  Lawrence is reputed to have told his torturers, "This side's done, turn me over and have a bite."  On a side note, he's also the patron saint of comedians.

I don't think Lawrence took any paid time off.  If he had, I'm sure he would have skipped the barbecue.  I also don't think he and I were cut from the same cloth, although I appreciate his sense of humor.  I could see his death as part of a Monty Python skit, with John Cleese as the saint-kabob.  Like Lawrence, most of the holy people I've read about seem to think having time away from work has to involve fasting 40 days in the desert.

Me, I opt for a trip to a water park, a bag of Cheetos, and a trashy novel.

Confessions of Saint Marty