June 22: "Quickie Ekphrasis," Art, "Everyday Ekphrasis"

Billy Collins at tea time . . .

Quickie Ekphrasis

by: Billy Collins

I looked at a postcard

of Mount Rushmore

while I cooled my tea with a spoon

then I turned over

the postcard of Mount Rushmore

and bit into a buttered scone.

Art happens every minute of every day.  Ask any poet or painter or quilter or musician.  Sure, every once in a while, inspiration strikes and something new and beautiful is born.  However, if an artist (or poet or musician or fill-in-the-blank) always waits to be inspired before picking up a brush (or pen or violin or fill-in-the-blank), then there would be much less painting and poetry and punk in the world.  (Yes, punk music is an art.)

I have to confess that I don't really believe in inspiration.  My poems are usually written through struggle and stress, each one going through draft after draft.  The trick for me is practice.  I write all the time.  Even if I'm just running to the post office to mail a postcard, I take my journal and pen with me.  Because you never know when a poem will tap you on your shoulder.  You have to be ready.  All.  The.  Time.

And, as I said at the beginning of this post, we are surrounded by art every day.  We just have to train our eyes (or ears or bodies) to recognize it.  Once a person opens up to that recognition, it becomes much easier to write a new poem or paint a new landscape.

It has been raining since I woke up this morning.  It's cool tonight, with no stars or moon.  In short, not a day that inspires anything but naps and comfort food.  Yet, I managed to write this blog post and the poem below.  Through sheer stubbornness.

Saint Marty may write about the callous on his big toe tomorrow

Everyday Ekphrasis

by: Martin Achatz

Isn't every poem

an act of ekphrasis,

including this one

about my dog shitting

in my backyard

as rain turns the grass

into a pond Monet

would have painted?

February 21: No Hurricane Coming Now, Still Snowing, Yoopers

Santiago reflects on weather . . .

He looked across the sea and knew how alone he was now. But he could see the prisms in the deep dark water and the line stretching ahead and the strange undulation of the calm. The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.

He thought of how some men feared being out of sight of land in a small boat and knew they were right in the months of sudden bad weather. But now they were in hurricane months and, when there are no hurricanes, the weather of hurricane months is the best of all the year.

If there is a hurricane you always see the signs of it in the sky for days ahead, if you are at sea. They do not see it ashore because they do not know what to look for, he thought. The land must make a difference too, in the shape of the clouds. But we have no hurricane coming now.

He looked at the sky and saw the white cumulus built like friendly piles of ice cream and high above were the thin feathers of the cirrus against the high September sky.

Santiago's livelihood depends on the weather.  He must know what the sea and clouds hold for him every day.  If he can't look at the sky and predict what it has in store for him, he might very well die.  Or lose a good day of fishing.  The watch of Santiago's life is set to the second hand of weather.

Today, it snowed.  A lot.  At least six or seven inches.  It's still snowing.  By the time I wake up tomorrow morning, there will probably be another foot of snow on the ground.  And it will still be snowing.  There's a line in Thornton Wilder's Our Town that goes like this:  "If it ain't rain, it's a three-day blow."  That's pretty much what we have right now.  The snow and wind aren't supposed to stop until Wednesday morning.

I've lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for most of my life, except for a short stint in a PhD program at a university downstate.  I know winter and snow and wind.  We Yoopers take pride in our ability to endure this kind of weather.  Six inches of fresh snow won't even slow a Yooper down.  We will still go to school and work and church and movies.  We are a hardy group.  

If you haven't lived here for more than 20 years, don't complain aloud about all the snow in the U. P.  You will get stink-eyed from Yoopers, and the thought you will see scrolling across our faces will be something like, "Stupid troll" (the term we use for anyone who lives anywhere but  above the Mackinac Bridge).  Yoopers are allowed to complain about snow and wind.  We have earned that right through the tens of thousands of inches of white precipitation we have shoveled and moved in our lifespans.  

Being one of those lifelong U. P. residents, I can say, without any Yooper shame, that I am tired of snow today.  I'm running out of places to push it on my property.  My puppy wakes up every morning, goes outside for her constitutional, and finds a fresh new landscape, her familiar scents and holes buried again.  

Yet, tomorrow morning, my alarm clock will be set for 5 a.m.  My wife needs to be at work by 7 a.m.  We will roll out of bed, bleary and exhausted.  I will prod myself awake with toothpaste and shaving cream, do my normal ablutions.  And then, I will pull on my boots, put on my coat-hat-gloves, grab a shovel, and head into the snow to shovel out my car.

This is the life of a Yooper, from about October to May (sometimes June).  A series of snowstorms interrupted by sleep.

Saint Marty has this to say, "If it ain't sun, it's a three-day snow."