June 4: Bow of the Skiff, Do Our Best, "The Breakfast Club"

Santiago drinks his coffee . . .

The old man drank his coffee slowly. It was all he would have all day and he knew that he should take it. For a long time now eating had bored him and he never carried a lunch. He had a bottle of water in the bow of the skiff and that was all he needed for the day.

The boy was back now with the sardines and the two baits wrapped in a newspaper and they went down the trail to the skiff, feeling the pebbled sand under their feet, and lifted the skiff and slid her into the water.

I identify with Santiago here.  He loves his work.  And the boy.  Even after three months without catching a fish, the old man gets up every morning, drinks his coffee, and gets in his boat.  

Today, I went to work.  Then I put together music for church this evening.  After that, I drove to church and rehearsed.  These are things I do almost every Saturday.  Then, I played the pipe organ for the 4 p.m. Mass, picked up a pizza, and went home to watch a movie with my son and my wife.

That's what everyone does, I suppose.  We get out of bed every morning and go through our days, trying to do our best to make the world a tiny bit better.  Or a tiny bit worse, depending on outcomes.  And then we go to bed, get up in the morning, and go through it all over again.

This evening, I watched The Breakfast Club with my son.  He had never seen it before.  At first, he was bored, skeptical.  Then, he got it.  A group of kids in Saturday detention, trying to overcome their pre-ordained roles.  Jock.  Prom queen.  Brain.  Space case.  Criminal.  After the movie was over, while the credits were rolling, I looked at him and said, "Did you like it?"  He nodded at me.  "All the kids in the movie," I said, "are way more than how people see them."  He nodded again, slowly.  "Alright," I said.  "Thanks for watching it with me.  It's one of my favorites."

I think my son is getting tired of these Yoda wisdom lessons from me.  I don't care.  It's my job.  I'm a Jedi father, trying to turn my son into the best Jedi knight he can be.  Trying to keep him away from the Dark Side.

Help him, Saint Marty can.

December 20: Bewilderment, Facebooker, the Dark Side

I am no scientist.  I explore the neighborhood.  An infant who has not learned to hold his head up has a frank and forthright way of gazing about him in bewilderment.  He hasn't the faintest clue where he is, and he aims to learn . . .

I've been feeling that way since Sunday night.  Kind of discombobulated.  At sea.  Annie Dillard is talking about her surroundings, which are alien to her.  So, she sets out to explore Tinker Creek.  The banks and forest and distant mountain.  She wants to somehow gain some understanding of her world.

Me?  I joined Facebook on Sunday.  For years, friends and family have been pressuring me to become a Facebooker (don't know if that's a word, but I'm going to use it).  I have stubbornly held out.  My reason was simple:  my life is complicated enough without having to add social media into the mix.  The world at large doesn't need to know what I ate for breakfast or what kind of bowel movement I had this afternoon.

However, I have good friends who have recently moved a great distance away.  I don't want to lose touch with them.  Therefore, I gave in to Darth Zuckerberg, went to the Dark Side.  In the last two days, I've gotten friend requests from family, friends, and complete strangers.  I feel like the popular girl in high school, getting asked to the prom by every member of the football team.

I'm not really sure about how Facebook works yet.  But I'll figure it out.  As my Facebook profile says, I did study computer science as an undergrad.  Plus, I have a teenage daughter as my IT person.  I'm pretty much set.

Now, all I need is an iPhone, and I'll be part of the 21st century.

Please vote for Saint Marty (Martin Achatz):

Voting for next Poet Laureate of the U. P.

October 4: Owed Poem, Lisel Mueller, "When I am Asked"

Yes, at the end of Lisel Mueller's week, I owe you a poem.  These last few weeks, it seems I can't keep up with my blogging responsibilities.  Too much to do, too little time.  Some nights, when I get home, I simply want to put my head down on a pillow and close my eyes.

Anyway, I know you don't want to hear my excuses, no matter how legitimate or well-expressed they may be.  So, I will get on with the business at hand.

I didn't set out to become a poet.  No, my first advanced college degree was in the much more lucratively promising:  I earned a Master's in fiction writing.  I wanted to tell stories.  My thesis was a collection of short stories.  In my last semester, my thesis director suggested I take a poetry workshop.  "You have such strong imagery," she said.  "I think you may be a poet."

At first, I laughed at the idea.  Me, the son of a plumber?  A poet?  It seemed like a ludicrous notion.  But I signed up for the workshop.  There wasn't any other class being offered that interested me, and I liked the instructor.  She was deeply spiritual and funny.

And I discovered, in my twenty-fifth year of life, that I was a poet.  I loved the mathematical precision of word and line.  The brevity and power of metaphor.  The beauty of image.  It was narcotically addictive.

 And that is how Saint Marty went to the dark side.

When I am Asked

by:  Lisel Mueller

When I am asked
how I began writing poems,
I talk about the indifference of nature.

It was soon after my mother died,
a brilliant June day,
everything blooming.

I sat on a gray stone bench
in a lovingly planned garden,
but the day lilies were as deaf
as the ears of drunken sleepers
and the roses curved inward.
Nothing was black or broken
and not a leaf fell
and the sun blared endless commercials
for summer holidays.

I sat on a gray stone bench
ringed with the ingenue
faces
of pink and white impatiens
and placed my grief
in the mouth of language,
the only thing that would grieve with me.

And that's how I went to the dark side...

May 10: Sharon Olds, "To Our Miscarried One, Age Thirty Now"

Any person who know me knows that I love Sharon Olds.  She is the Darth Vader who brought me to the Dark Side.  I wouldn't be writing poetry today if it weren't for her.

I have studied with Sharon Olds.  I have read drafts of my poems to Sharon Olds, and she has commented on them, offered me advice.  She is, hands down, amazing.

Today, Saint Marty would like to offer you a heartbreaking poem from Olds' Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Stag's Leap.

To Our Miscarried One, Age Thirty Now

Though I never saw you, only your clouds,
I was afraid of you, of how you differed
from what we had wanted you to be.  And it's as if
you waited, then, where such waiting is done,
for when I would look beside me--and here
you are, in the world of forms, where my wifehood
is now, and every action with him,
as if a thousand years from now
you and I are in some antechamber
where the difference between us is of little matter,
you with perhaps not much of a head yet,
dear garden one, you among the shovels
and spades and wafts of beekeeper's shroud
and sky-blue kidskin gloves.
That he left me is not much, compared
to your leaving the earth--you shifting places
on it, and shifting shapes--you threw off your
working clothes of arms and legs,
and moved house, from uterus
to toilet bowl and jointed stem
and sewer out to float the rivers and
bays in painless pieces.  And yet
the idea of you has come back to where
I could see you today as a small, impromptu
god of the partial.  When I leave for good,
would you hold me in your blue mitt
for the departure hence.  I never thought
to see you again, I never thought to seek you.