March 17, 2026: “The Maples,” Saint Patrick’s Day Storm, “I Believe in Ghosts”

Greetings, faithful disciples!

This past weekend has been pretty wild.  In the past seven days, my little piece of the Upper Peninsula endured three winter storms.  The last was the worst—a two-day blizzard that dumped almost four feet of snow in about 36 hours.  If you do the math, that’s a little less than two inches per hour.  Couple that with almost 70 mile an hour wind gusts, six- and seven-foot-tall snowdrifts, and (in some places) thunder, and you get an idea of what life has been like for a majority of Yoopers.

According to all the old timers, Saint Patrick’s Day always ushers in a really big snow event in the U.P.  This year, Pat outdid himself.  Most meteorologists are using the adjective “historic” to describe what we’ve just been through.  We haven’t had a storm approaching this strength since 1997.  That’s about 30 years ago.  This summer, I’m sure some innovative entrepreneur will be selling tee shirts with the slogan “I Survived the Winter of ‘26” all over the place.  I know I’m going to be haunted by the memory of this little storm for quite some time.

Marie Howe is haunted by Mother Nature . . . 

The Maples

by: Marie Howe

I asked the stand of maples behind the house,

How should I live my life?

They said, shhh shhh shhh . . . 

How should I live, I asked, and the leaves seemed to ripple and gleam.

A bird called from a branch in its own tongue,

And from a branch, across the yard, another bird answered.

A squirrel scrambled up a trunk

then along the length of a branch.

Stand still, I thought,

See how long you can bear that.

Try to stand still, if only for a few moments, 

drinking light     breathing.

It’s not easy—just standing perfectly still in a moment.  Paying attention.  Breathing.  There’s this human impulse to talk, move, act.  We all have it.  Think about an uncomfortable pause in a conversation.  If you’re anything like me, you want to jump in.  Fill the void.  Silence makes us antsy.  

Tonight was the first time I’ve been out of my house (except to move snow) since Saturday evening.  My wife and I had dinner and drinks with two of our best friends.  In my last post, I wrote about the tension of waiting for the blizzard to begin; on Saturday, wherever I went, everyone I encountered seemed on edge, as if waiting for some kind of mass extinction event.  At the pub this evening, everyone was smiling, singing, laughing.  When I ordered my drink, the bartender said to me, “We all deserve this after what we’ve just been through.”

For three or so days, we’ve all been hunkered down in our homes, listening to the wind howl outside.  That’s a long time to be still for anyone.  But we had no choice.  Even the plows were getting stuck in ten-foot-high snowdrifts.  

What did I do during my hunkering down?  I watched Ken Burns’ three-part documentary on the life of Ernest Hemingway; I’ve kinda been on a Hemingway kick recently.  And I worked on some poems.  And I thought a lot about ghosts (my sisters, parents, brother, best friend).  I was so haunted by memories that I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday because I thought I heard my sister Sally call my name, and I found myself crying for no specific reason.  (I was watching a Peter, Paul, and Mary concert, and I started weeping when they sang “Puff, the Magic Dragon.”)

I think ghosts are around us all the time.  The dead find their voices through maple trees, birdcalls, blizzards, old songs.  They remind us to pay attention to everything.  Live in the moment and breathe.

That’s what I did during this extended weekend of snow and wind.  I listened to my ghosts.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight . . ,

I Believe in Ghosts

by: Martin Achatz

Not the kind that appear on the battlements 

of Elsinore seeking revenge.  Or the kind

that dance to “Sir Roger de Coverly” with

the Fezziwigs, or fill 124 Bluestone Road

with baby venom.  No.  My ghosts sit

with me as I write these words, guide

my nib across a white sheet of paper

until I hear their voices in my ear, 

like mosquitoes on a July night.  All ghosts

really want is recognition.  That’s why they

hide car keys or push books off shelves

or slam doors.  My 17-year-old son

does the same thing.  He just wants

to be seen, heard.  Here he is now,

haunting the final line of this poem.

July 21: Ultimate Question, Chasing Dreams, Fishing

And now a few words from the stupendous super computer, Deep Thought . . .

"Might I make an observation at this point?" inquired Deep Thought.

"We'll go on strike!" yelled Vroomfondel.

"That's right!" agreed Majikthise.  "You'll have a national Philosophers' strike on your hands!"

The hum level in the room suddenly increased as several ancillary bass driver units, mounted in sedately carved and varnished cabinet speakers around the room, cut in to give Deep Thought's voice a little more power.

"All I wanted to say," bellowed the computer, "is that my circuits are now irrevocably committed to calculating the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything."  He paused and satisfied himself that he now had everyone's attention, before continuing more quietly.  "But the program will take me a little while to run."

Fook glanced impatiently at his watch.  

"How long?" he said.

"Seven and a half million years," said Deep Thought.

Lunkwill and Fook blinked at each other.

"Seven and a half million years!" they cried in chorus.

Seven and a half million years for a stupendous super computer to figure out the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.  I don't feel quite so bad that I'm still working out what I'm going to be when I grow up.

When I was my son's age, I was sure I was going to be a full-time writer/movie director.  That was my dream.  I read biographies of famous writers all the time.  Robert Frost,  Charles Dickens.  Ernest Hemingway.  William Faulkner.  I studied the work of directors I admires.  Steven Spielberg.  George Lucas, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford.  I was committed to this dream.

Of course, as so often happens with dreams, reality intervened.  I graduated from high school and found myself majoring in computer science at college, while stealthily stacking up credits from the English Department.  Eventually, I realized that I didn't want to spend my life communicating with computers (even if they were stupendous super computers).  Then I went to graduate school and stacked up some advanced degrees in English and creative writing.

And here I sit now.  Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula.  Contingent English professor at a university.  Full-time medical office worker.  I am NOT Robert Frost or Alfred Hitchcock.  I can barely cobble together enough time to write a little, 500-word blog post every day.  I struggle with depression on a daily basis.  My wife struggles with mental illness and sexual addiction.

Hardly the happily ever after I envisioned as a ten-year-old boy armed with a library card and a boatload of dreams. 

I miss those times when anything seemed possible.  I know that I will probably never direct a Hollywood film like Jaws or Vertigo.  I'm not going to be the next Stephen King or J. K. Rowling.  I still have those writerly aspirations, but they are mostly relegated to daydreams driving home from work.  That's right.  I have become Walter Mitty, imagining myself as a world-famous writer, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, owning a mansion with a swimming pool and library. 

Last night, my kids went fishing.  They landed a couple big ones.  My kids are full of dreams right now.  The future is a wide sea, and they have the fishing rods in their hands.  I hope they never give up or settle.  I hope they keep chasing their dreams until they come true, whatever they are.  I hope they continue to land the big ones.

Saint Marty will be happy if he lands a nap sometime this week. 

January 17: Famous Writer, Langston Hughes, "Dream Deferred"

We all have dreams.   I dreamed about being a famous writer.  Bestseller Lists.  National Book Awards.  Pulitzer Prizes.  Nobel Prize.  Stay-at-home husband and father.  Distinguished teacher.  Literary diplomat.

And what have I attained?  I'm a writer.  Not quite famous.  No bestsellers or Pulitzer Prizes to my credit.  I'm a professor.  Not quite distinguished.  I've been nominated a few times for Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula.  That doesn't make me a diplomat.

One of my favorite films is It's a Wonderful Life.  It's about a man who had big dreams.  A man who sees those dreams deferred in the service family and friends.  He makes sacrifices, and those sacrifices are what give his life meaning.

Saint Marty may not be William Faulkner or Ernest Hemingway, but, as George Bailey learned, no man is a failure who has friends.

Dream Deferred

by:  Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--
And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

October 10: Hot Spell, Ingmar Bergman, Ernest Hemingway

The creek's water was still warm from the hot spell . . .

It's September at Tinker Creek, and summer is still holding on.  Warming the creek water and driving nature crazy.  Ants swarm.  Dillard notes that the woods are "restless as birds."  Like all early autumn warm snaps, it will soon pass.  Ants will go underground.  Birds will wing south.  Killing frost will appear.

It was close to 70 degrees in my neck of the woods today.  I drove around all day with my windows down and sunroof open.  Even now, 9:30 at night, it hasn't cooled down all that much.  I'm sitting in my living room, watching Psycho with my daughter.  Another entry in our private film appreciation class.

The Swedish Academy announced this morning that the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced early Thursday.  I'm not sure what the weather's like in Sweden these days.  Maybe it's just as warm.  Swans gliding down a river.  People sitting in outside cafes, sipping strong coffee and eating meatballs with tiny forks.  Maybe talking about Ingmar Bergman movies.  Or Hitchcock.

At least, that's what I imagine.  Stockholm just a Scandinavian version of my home town, with some snooty academics thrown in to keep things interesting.  I watched a video biography about Ernest Hemingway this morning.  Hemingway's publisher said in an interview that the Nobel Prize is the closest a writer can come to canonization.  When Hemingway won it, he climbed into bed with his wife and said, "I won it.  The Swedish thing."

Canonization.  Saint Marty knows a few things about that.  And he loves Swedish meatballs, too.  It's fate.

Ernie becoming a saint

October 6: Everything and Anything, Post Saint Marty's Day, 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature

The world is full of creatures that for some reason seem stranger to us than others, and libraries are full of books describing them--hagfish, platypuses, lizardlike pangolins four feet long with bright green, lapped scales like umbrella-tree leaves on a bush hut roof, butterflies emerging from anthills, spiderlings wafting through the air clutching tiny silken balloons, horseshoe crabs . . . the creator creates.  Does he stoop, does he speak, does he save, succor, prevail?  Maybe.  But he creates; he creates everything and anything.

Dillard is writing about God, the creator of everything that crawls and flies and swims and oozes under the sun and moon.  God doesn't get tired of creating.  God is creating.  However, Dillard could just as easily be describing herself or Toni Morrison or William Faulkner or Ernest Hemingway.  Writers create worlds, as well.  They creates stories about ghosts and bear hunts.  An old man battling an immense fish in the middle of a unforgiving ocean.

I am now in the doldrums of post Saint Marty's Day.  The celebrations aren't over.  My family is having a Saint Marty's Day party this Sunday, filled with bratwurst and tapioca pudding and gifts.  As Charles Dickens wrote in A Saint Marty's Day Carol, "I will honor Saint Marty's Day in my heart, and try to keep it all the year."

Always around Saint Marty's Day, another event takes place.  Every year, the Swedish Academy in Stockholm announces the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.  I happen to know that, as the Swedes discuss and debate with each other, they eat bowls of tapioca and sing traditional Saint Marty's Day songs.  Now, some of the greatest writers who ever lived have won the Nobel, all under the influence and grace of Saint Marty.

This year, the prize will be announced on October 13.  Reporters will gather in the Grand Hall of the Swedish Academy at the appointed hour.  The gold and white doors will open, and the Permanent Secretary will step into the camera lights.  Then, speaking in Swedish, she will announce the name of a writer.  One lucky writer. 

It may be my year.  Saint Marty.  Poet.  Teacher.  Blogger.  I'm sure that I have made the short list already many times.  The only reason that I have not won already is that the Swedes are highly superstitious academics.  They don't like mixing religion and literature.  That's what cost Tolstoy the prize.  However, I have a feeling that this year, drunk of their feast of Diet Mountain Dew and tapioca, the Permanent Secretary, in a hushed voice (almost a prayer), will say those words that the entire world has been longing to hear:

"The Swedish Academy is pleased to announce that the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to Saint Marty, who in essays and poetry and blog posts characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential part of spiritual reality." 

The Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, and a big Saint Marty fan

June 18: Charles Dickens, Adonis, "New Testament"

Emily Dickinson only published a few poems during her lifetime.  In fact, I've published more poetry in my life right now than Dickinson ever did while she was alive.  Walt Whitman just kept on revising the same book over and over and over.  It worked for him. 

I'm always fascinated by the lives of writers.  One of my favorite things to do is read biographies of famous authors.  Peter Ackroyd wrote a 1200-page biography of Charles Dickens.  I've read that book six or seven times.  I've read about Flannery O'Connor, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, James Joyce, and e. e. cummings.

It's kind of a sickness, I think.  I like learning about the struggles these artists faced.   Alcoholism and mental illness and drug addiction.  Flannery O'Connor's battle with lupus.  Robert Frost's lifelong bouts of depression.  Hemingway and bipolar.  All of these great writers faced incredible life challenges, and, through those challenges, they created amazing things.

I suppose it has to do with facing human failings.  Every great writer that I've read about has dealt with some incredible hurdle.  I find that a little comforting.  These great poets and novelists and short story writers are incredibly flawed human beings, and they transform these flaws into works that shed a little light into the dark places of the universe.  Each of these people created their own testaments for the world to read.

That gives Saint Marty a great deal of hope.

New Testament

by:  Adonis

He doesn’t speak this language.
He doesn’t know the voices of the wastes—
a soothsayer in stony sleep,
he is burdened with distant languages.

Here he comes from under the ruins
in the climate of new words,

offering his poems to grieving winds
unpolished but bewitching like brass.

He is a language glistening between the masts,
the knight of strange words.

Everybody's a critic . . .

October 24: High School, Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"

When I was a senior in high school, my class voted for this motto:  "Don't go where there is a path.  Rather, go where there is no path and leave a trail."

Not very original, I know.  I think that little saying makes the top ten list of every senior high school class.  That and "I'm outta here suckah."  However, it's a beautiful little sentiment about not being afraid of hard work.  Making a new path in the world is tough.

In my salutatorian address at graduation, I read the Robert Frost poem below.  I believed it, too.  I thought I was going to be the next Robert Frost or Ernest Hemingway.  The whole world seemed so bright and exciting.  I wasn't looking for any paved roads.  I was going to be a pioneer.

Now, almost 30 years later, I realize that those unpaved roads made my life quite difficult at times.  Still do.  If I had thought about the odds of becoming a full-time writer, I may have taken a few more busy thoroughfares.  Stuck with computer science as my major.  Learned a skilled trade.  Welding, maybe.  Because, I am here to tell you that the road not taken is not all it's cracked up to be.

Of course, that wouldn't have been much of a graduation speech.  "Dear classmates, life is going to suck for most of us.  Be prepared."

Saint Marty is still going down his road not taken.

The Road Not Taken

by:  Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Pretty much says it all...

February 23: David Copperfield Crap, The Paris Review Interviews Vol. 1, New Cartoon

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

 That's how Salinger opens The Catcher in the Rye.  It's one of the most famous quotes from the book.  It touches on Charles Dickens and his largely autobiographical novel, David Copperfield.  Dickens never wrote an autobiography.  The closest he ever came was Copperfield, which contains several details from Dickens' youth.  Of course, Holden isn't interested in all the trappings of autobiography--the requisite navel gazing.  And, of course, the next 200-plus pages of Catcher is an exercise in just that, on a Holden Caulfield level.

For my birthday last year, I received a box-set of The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 1-3.  Basically, these three volumes include a selection of interviews with some of the most famous writers of the twentieth century.  In the introduction to the first volume, Philip Gourevitch writes about the process of a Paris Review interview, which strays a great deal from the normal journalistic approach.  There is no attempt to surprise of "catch" the interviewee.   It is a collaborative process, conducted over several seasons, sometimes years.  The writer being interviewed is given several attempts to edit and revise his/her statements in the interview.  The results are illuminating portraits of the writer's thoughts about the life and the craft of fiction, poetry, theater, biography, essay, whatever.

The first volume of the series contains interviews with the likes of Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Vonnegut, and Joan Didion.  Rather than try to capture the essence of the interviews in this little post, I'm simply going to give you a smattering of some of the pearls of wisdom and truth displayed by the interview subjects:

I suppose my superstitiousness could be termed a quirk.  I have to add up all numbers:  there are some people I never telephone because their number adds up to an unlucky figure.  Or I won't accept a hotel room for the same reason.  I will not tolerate the presence of yellow roses--which is sad because they're my favorite flower.  I can't allow three cigarette butts in the same ashtray.  Won't travel on a plane with two nuns.  Won't begin or end anything on a Friday.  It's endless, the things I can't and won't.  But I derive some curious comfort from obeying these primitive concepts.
     --Truman Capote

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible.  There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.  You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there.  You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.  You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that.  When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love.  Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again.  It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.
     --Ernest Hemingway

I think it's awfully dangerous to give general advice.  I think the best one can do for a young poet is to criticize in detail a particular poem of his.  Argue it with him if necessary; give him your opinion, and if there are any generalizations to be made, let him do them himself.  I've found that different people have different ways of working and things come to them in different ways.  You're never sure when you're uttering a statement that's generally valid for all poets or when it's something that only applies to yourself.  I think nothing is worse than to try to form people in your own image.
     --T. S. Eliot

It was stated by Paul Engle--the founder of the Writers' Workshop at Iowa.  He told me that, if the workshop ever got a building of its own, these words should be inscribed over the entrance:  Don't take it all so seriously.
     --Kurt Vonnegut

Although a novel takes place in the larger world there's always some drive in it that is entirely personal--even if you don't know it while you're doing it.  I realized some years after A Book of Common Prayer was finished that it was about my anticipating Quintana's growing up.  It wrote it around 1975, so she would have been nine, but I was already anticipating separation and actually working through that ahead of time.  So novels are also about things you're afraid you can't deal with.
     -Joan Didion

Just last week a friend and I went to visit a wonderful lady I know in Quebec.  She's seventy-four or seventy-five.  And she didn't say this to me but she said to my friend, Alice, I'd like to ask my neighbor who has the big house next door to dinner, and she's so nice, but she'd be bound to ask Elizabeth what she does and if Elizabeth said she wrote poetry, the poor woman wouldn't say another word all evening!  This is awful, you know, and I think no matter how modest you think you feel or how minor you think you are, there must be an awful core of ego somewhere for you to set yourself up to write poetry.  I've never felt it, but it must be there.
     --Elizabeth Bishop

This is the end of this blog post.
     --Saint Marty

Confessions of Saint Marty

September 17: One of Those Mornings, Lists, "Carol" Dip Monday

It has been one of those mornings.  I overslept a little bit, and I have been running my butt off ever since, trying to make-up for the lost time.  I will probably feel rushed for the rest of the day.  That's what happens when my day starts off like this.  I have a lot of stuff to accomplish.

One of the first things I did when I was finally able to sit down was make a list.  I know, I know.  Lists are nothing new for me.  This list, however, was requested by a friend of mine who is putting together an anthology of Upper Peninsula writers/poets for a university press.  He wanted me to come up with a list of the three best U.P. poems.  Well, I came up with a list, but it's the three best U.P.-based short stories.  I think it's a really good list.  Let me share it with you:

1.  "Indian Camp" by Ernest Hemingway from the collection In Our Time.  The quintessential U.P. story for me.  A young Nick Adams visits a Native American camp with his physician father to deliver a baby.  His father has to perform a C-section without anesthetic.  After the operation is complete, Nick's father discovers that the woman's husband has committed suicide in his bunk.

2.  "Road Kill" by John Vandezande from the collection Night Driving.  This story deals with an experience almost everyone who lives in the U. P. has had--encountering a deer that's been hit by a car.  The three characters in the story deal with questions of mortality and death.

3.  "Winter Mines" by Sharon Dilworth from the Iowa Short Fiction Prize-winning collection The Long White.  This story is about a laid-off miner who sinks into depression.

Those are the three stories that capture important elements of what it means to live and survive in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  When I look at that list, I realize those tales are pretty dark and depressing.  All of them.  But they are increbile pieces of writing.

Now that I have that out of the way, I can move on to other tasks, like doing a Carol dip for this Monday.  And I have just the question to ask:

Will I ever end up at the top of a writer's list for poetry?  (Say, the top three greatest poets to have ever lived?)

And the answer from the great Charles Dickens is:

But if you had judged from the numbers of people on their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought that no one was at home to give them welcome when they got there, instead of every house expecting company, and piling up its fires half-chimney high.  Blessing on it, how the Ghost exulted!

There you have it.  Numbers of people and friendly gatherings and blessings, all to celebrate me on the top of a list of great poets.

Saint Marty can't ask for much better than that.

A poet in search of a list