December 4: Nappishness, Green Sheep, Beer and Pasta

We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and easy were we; when, at last, by reason of our confabulations, what little nappishness remained in us altogether departed, and we felt like getting up again, though day-break was yet some way down the future.

I love this little description of Ishmael and Queequeg.  I think it's the intimacy of it that appeals to me.  How both men seem so connected to each other.  They are green sheep.

Last night, I attended a holiday open mic and party for a local poetry circle of which I'm a member.  It was at a local microbrewery, and all the poets brought dishes to pass.  There were salads and lasagna and mostaccioli  and popcorn chicken and chocolate cake.  Plus beer and poetry.  It was a wonderful time.

The best part of the night was being around other poets.  It's something that doesn't happen to me very often.  I'm sort of a green sheep in my family.  I don't want to say black sheep because I'm not really a troublemaker.  I'm not the drunk uncle at Thanksgiving or New Year's.  I just sort of don't fit in.  Aside from my wife, I don't really have anyone with whom I can discuss writing or poetry.  (And my wife doesn't really have the energy or patience to deal with lengthy poetry discussions.  She loves poetry, but not to the same compulsively neurotic level as me.)

This green sheep was among a flock of green sheep last night, and it fed my soul.  Gave me hope and inspiration, which I've been fairly lacking recently.  It made me want to write, and that impulse hasn't been tugging at me in the last few weeks.  This group has been one of the biggest blessings in my life since being named Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula.

The writing life can be a pretty solitary vocation.  It requires a certain measure of isolation.  For example, I'm typing this blog post in an empty house.  My wife and son are over at my mother's visiting.  My daughter is with her boyfriend, celebrating her last day as a 17-year-old.  And I am taking advantage of the silence.  (I don't even have Christmas music playing, which is very unusual for me.)

I don't mind being alone.  Not many people realize that I'm kind of an introvert.  Being among people exhausts me.  When I come home in the evening, I'm usually not very talkative.  I've used up all of my peopling skills through work and teaching.  I need to recharge my battery, or else I will not be able to function the following day.

However, being among other green sheep doesn't tax me.  I love hearing poetry, talking about poetry, reading poetry aloud.  It's one of my greatest pleasures.  That, and old Frank Capra films, but that's the subject of another blog post.  Green sheep--who think like me, care about the same things I care about, will spend 20 minutes talking about the placement of a comma--make me feel less alone.

Saint Marty is thankful this evening for poetry and beer and pasta.  And greenness.

A Matter of Business:

I wanted to take a moment to tell you all about something I've been dealing with.

About three years ago, I received a beautiful leather book bag from a company called Innovative Journaling.  The company specializes in leather journals and bags.  I'd always wanted a good leather bag, and my sister surprised me with one.  It was gorgeous and came with a lifetime guarantee.  As the company's website states, "Even if your dog chews it up, send us the bag, and we will repair it."

At the end of August, I sent my bag back to Innovative Journaling for a repair.  The company has had it ever since.  I have emailed the company several times and finally received a reply from the company's owner (Arthur) three weeks ago.  He told me that he was mailing my bag back to me on Monday.  That was three weeks ago, and I have not received my bag.

It's an expensive bag.  My sister paid well over $500 for it.  I don't think I'm ever going to see this bag again.

I tell you this story as a warning.  I know that a lot of poets and writers read this blog.  Do NOT order items from Innovative Journaling.  Their customer service is abysmal, and they have left me no recourse but to advise my friends and readers to avoid this company and its products.  I'm out a $500 bag.

April 10: Wild Logan, Poetry Reading, Inner Bigfoot

Another thing. Flask was the last person down at the dinner, and Flask is the first man up. Consider! For hereby Flask's dinner was badly jammed in point of time. Starbuck and Stubb both had the start of him; and yet they also have the privilege of lounging in the rear. If Stubb even, who is but a peg higher than Flask, happens to have but a small appetite, and soon shows symptoms of concluding his repast, then Flask must bestir himself, he will not get more than three mouthfuls that day; for it is against holy usage for Stubb to precede Flask to the deck. Therefore it was that Flask once admitted in private, that ever since he had arisen to the dignity of an officer, from that moment he had never known what it was to be otherwise than hungry, more or less. For what he ate did not so much relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal in him. Peace and satisfaction, thought Flask, have for ever departed from my stomach. I am an officer; but, how I wish I could fish a bit of old-fashioned beef in the fore-castle, as I used to when I was before the mast. There's the fruit of promotion now; there's the vanity of glory: there's the insanity of life! Besides, if it were so that any mere sailor of the Pequod had a grudge against Flask in Flask's official capacity, all that sailor had to do, in order to obtain ample vengeance, was to go aft at dinnertime, and get a peep at Flask through the cabin sky-light, sitting silly and dumfoundered before awful Ahab.

Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the first table in the Pequod's cabin. After their departure, taking place in inverted order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or rather was restored to some hurried order by the pallid steward. And then the three harpooneers were bidden to the feast, they being its residuary legatees. They made a sort of temporary servants' hall of the high and mighty cabin.

In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless invisible domineerings of the captain's table, was the entire care-free license and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferior fellows the harpooneers. While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed their food with such a relish that there was a report to it. They dined like lords; they filled their bellies like Indian ships all day loading with spices. Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox. And if he were not lively about it, if he did not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back, harpoon-wise. And once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted Dough-Boy's memory by snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the circle preliminary to scalping him. He was naturally a very nervous, shuddering sort of little fellow, this bread-faced steward; the progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital nurse. And what with the standing spectacle of the black terrific Ahab, and the periodical tumultuous visitations of these three savages, Dough-Boy's whole life was one continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after seeing the harpooneers furnished with all things they demanded, he would escape from their clutches into his little pantry adjoining, and fearfully peep out at them through the blinds of its door, till all was over.

It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego, opposing his filed teeth to the Indian's; crosswise to them, Daggoo seated on the floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head to the low carlines; at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the low cabin framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes passenger in a ship. But for all this, the great negro was wonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty. It seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively small mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so broad, baronial, and superb a person. But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong and drank deep of the abounding element of air; and through his dilated nostrils snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds. Not by beef or by bread, are giants made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had a mortal, barbaric smack of the lip in eating- an ugly sound enough- so much so, that the trembling Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether any marks of teeth lurked in his own lean arms. And when he would hear Tashtego singing out for him to produce himself, that his bones might be picked, the simple-witted steward all but shattered the crockery hanging round him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Nor did the whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for their lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner, they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating sound did not at all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How could he forget that in his Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly have been guilty of some murderous, convivial indiscretion. Alas! Dough-Boy! hard fares the white waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkin should he carry on his arm, but a buckler. In good time, though, to his great delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise and depart; to his credulous, fable-mongering ears, all their martial bones jingling in them at every step, like Moorish scimetars in scabbards.

But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally lived there; still, being anything but sedentary in their habits, they were scarcely ever in it except at mealtimes, and just before sleeping-time, when they passed through it to their own peculiar quarters.

In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American whale captains, who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion that by rights the ship's cabin belongs to them; and that it is by courtesy alone that anybody else is, at any time, permitted there. So that, in real truth, the mates and harpooneers of the Pequod might more properly be said to have lived out of the cabin than in it. For when they did enter it, it was something as a streetdoor enters a house; turning inwards for a moment, only to be turned out the next; and, as a permanent thing, residing in the open air. Nor did they lose much hereby; in the cabin was no companionship; socially, Ahab was inaccessible. Though nominally included in the census of Christendom, he was still an alien to it. He lived in the world, as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when Spring and Summer had departed, that wild Logan of the woods, burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab's soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom!

Once more in this passage, we have some comedy mixed, at the end, with a fairly harrowing description of Ahab's soul as a wild creature, trapped in the trunk of his body.  It's not a pleasant ending to the chapter.  It's like Melville, amid the hilarity and comic hyperbole, has to remind his reader of the specter of Ahab, which looms almost as large as the white whale itself on the page.  "Don't forget," Melville seems to be saying, knocking his knuckles on the wooden dinner table.

I just finished a poetry reading a little over an hour ago.  Bigfoot poems, which have become somewhat of an obsession with me--the same way that Dickinson wrote about death or Whitman about the Civil War and spears of grass. The event took place at the university where I teach.  It was the first time that I had been invited to read on-campus.

It took place in the atrium of the the university's library.  The rear wall of the room is floor-to-ceiling windows, and a beautiful April sun was filling the room with warmth and light.  I had a pretty good sized crowd--students and friends and poets and professors.  All come to see and hear my big hairy alter ego (or is that altar ego, since Bigfoot approaches myth?).

I have to admit that I was quite nervous before it all began.  I have done dozens of poetry readings, but never in front of a "home" crowd like this.  And certainly never as a solo act.  Everything rested on the wild creature, trapped inside the trunk of my body.  I had to let my inner Bigfoot loose to howl.  And that's what I did.  For thirty or forty minutes, I let Sassy (my name for my Bigfoot self) roam the university library, barking and coughing poetry at people.

I think it worked.  People were laughing and clapping.  At the end, when I asked if there were any questions, people actually raised their hands, something that usually doesn't happen at my poetry readings.  I talked for another ten or 15 minutes, and everyone seemed genuinely interested in what I was saying.

I'm not a person that basks in the limelight, which is a strange thing for me to say since I'm a poet.  Poets are supposed to love reading poems to groups of people, and part of me does.  However, my inner Bigfoot is truly a shy, retiring animal.  More comfortable in a cave than in a Speedo on a beach.  Preferring to order pizza than drive to a restaurant.  My Bigfoot is an introvert.

Saint Marty is thankful today for all of his friends who came to hear him howl this afternoon.

July 16: Quiet Night, Classic Saint Marty, "What I'd Be"

It is quiet in my house tonight.  We dropped my son off at Bible camp this afternoon.  He will be gone for the week.  My daughter is at her boyfriend's house, and my wife is asleep after a long weekend of birthday parties and weddings and wedding receptions.  I am pretty tired myself.

This week, I plan to rest and relax a little.  Read.  Write.  Be a little introverted.  Believe it or not, I have always seen myself as an introvert.  I find public gatherings a little exhausting.  After this weekend, I'm absolutely dead.  Ready to hibernate.

Tonight's episode of Classic Saint Marty first aired a year ago, when I was in a confessing mood . . .

July 16, 2016:  Goldfish Bowl, Augustus, a Confession

Something else is happening in the goldfish bowl.  There on the kitchen table, nourished by the simple plank of complex light, the plankton is blooming.  The water yellows and clouds; a transparent slime coats the leaves of the water plant, elodea; a blue-green film of single-celled algae clings to the glass.  And I have to clean the doggone bowl.  I'll spare you the details:  it's the plant I'm interested in.  While Ellery [Dillard's goldfish] swims in the stoppered sink, I rinse the algae down the drain of another sink, wash the gravel, and rub the elodea's many ferny leaves under running water until they feel clean.

Dillard buys a goldfish.  She puts it in a bowl on her kitchen table.  If anyone would know how to take proper care of a goldfish, it's Dillard, who makes a habit of examining the complexities of the universe, from dwarf planets to red blood cells.  Ellery is in good hands.

Let me tell you a little story about my attempt at raising goldfish.  I was quite young at the time (let's say eight years old).  One day, my older brother brought me to the local Woolworth's store and bought me a goldfish.  It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, if I remember correctly.  I carried the fishbowl into my bedroom and put it on my dresser.  I don't remember if I ever named the fish, but let's call him Augustus.

Augustus was a good fish.  When I sprinkled food on the top of his water, he rose and munched, drifted back down to watch the show outside of his bowl for a while, and then rose again for another bite.  Sort of like sitting in front the the television, eating pizza.  The first week of Augustus' life was great.

Then, the novelty of owning a fish wore off.  I was eight years old and had a busy life.  I still fed him, at night, just before bed.  But something started happening in his bowl.  The glass got a little slimy, and the water started giving off a slightly funky aroma.  My bedroom started to smell a little like dead worms.  One day, my mother told me, "You need to clean that fishbowl."

Well, never in my eight-year-old mind did I contemplate the possibility that owning a goldfish would require that kind of care.  I thought it would simply be a matter of sprinkling a few flakes of food into the bowl every day, and that was it.  Augustus would clean his own room, just like me.

So, I cleaned the fishbowl.  A week later, the dead worm smell returned.  My mother made me clean it again.  Another week, more dead worm smell.  I was done.  I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea.  Now, please remember that I was eight-years-old and had no concept of the biology of living things.  After I cleaned Augustus' fishbowl and filled it with fresh water, I added some dish soap to keep it cleaner for a little longer.

I put Augustus back in his bowl, quite pleased with myself, and went off to fight Captain Hook or Darth Vader.  That night, as I was getting ready for bed, I looked over at Augustus.

There he was, doing the back float at the surface of the water.  At first, I thought he was simply practicing a fishy version of the backstroke.  But, after tapping his belly a few times with my finger and seeing him bob up and down like a piece of cork, I realized that my goldfish had gone to the Big Lake in the Sky.

I quickly gave Augustus a burial at sea in the toilet, dumped out and washed the fishbowl, and put all the incriminating evidence away, hoping nobody would notice.  My mother never said a word.  I think she was happily relieved that the great goldfish experiment was over.

I tell you this story as a confession.  I am a goldfish murderer.

It was Saint Marty, in the bedroom, with the Dawn detergent.,

And a poem for this quiet summer night . . .

What I'd Be

by:  Martin Achatz



if I weren't a poet.
The question stops me,
makes me think of teenage
summers when I installed
water heaters with my dad,
hauled empty tanks up
cellar steps, sagged wood,
away from canned tomatoes,
screws and nuts sorted
into baby food jars, secret
places where dirty laundry
breathed with spider and mouse.
Midnight shift at a hospital,
I cleaned the morgue
each night until I met
the body of an old woman,
wrapped in white sheets,
left on a table like scraps
from a rained-out picnic,
her face yellow as melted butter.
In a book store,
I organized porn,
paired magazines of foot fetish
with magazines of hairy legs,
girls with serpent stares,
breasts like icebergs
in National Geographic,
boys with shoplifted smirks,
penises, gibbous moons in the black
curl of universe.  I would not
do any of these jobs again,
given the choice.  If words
were taken from me,
maybe I'd turn to some
other sound occupation,
climb to my roof,
sit with mourning doves,
bubble, cluck daybreak to dusk.
Or maybe ransack woods
for skulls of squirrels,
ribs of deer, skunk spines
left behind by hungry owl, wolf,
piece together these scrimshaw
remnants with thread or chain,
hang them on my porch,
let them sing all night
of chase and hunt, dark grass,
fat, ripe blueberries.
Or maybe, just maybe,
I'd eat the silence,
make it part of me.
I'll practice this August
evening for my new career,
go outside, watch my son ride
his bike up and down
the street, not shout at him
about cars, trucks,
curbs and uneven sidewalks.
No, I'll let myself fill up,
rise like bubbles of yeast in dough,
with the quiet ferment of love.

May 20: Poet Marty, Shel Silverstein, "Skin Stealer"

Believe it or not, I think of myself as a introvert.  Social situations, especially around groups or strangers, are difficult for me.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't feel the urge to flee when confronted with the necessity of small talk.  I don't have that kind of social anxiety.  It just sometimes takes a great deal of effort for me to be friendly.

When I give a reading, it's almost like I have to zip myself into the skin of a different person.  Let's call him Poet Marty.  Poet Marty is funny and articulate and personable.  He's the life of the party.  And when it's all over, I go home, hang Poet Marty in the closet, and don't talk a lot for the rest of the night.

And then there's Saint Marty, who's sort of like a blogging version of Poet Marty.

Skin Stealer

by:  Shel Silverstein

This evening I unzipped my skin
And carefully unscrewed my head,
Exactly as I always do
When I prepare myself for bed.
And while I slept a coo-coo came
As naked as could be
And put on the skin
And screwed on the head
That once belonged to me.
Now wearing my feet
He runs through the street
In a most disgraceful way.
Doin' things and sayin' things
I'd never do or say,
Ticklin' the children
And kickin' the men
And Dancin' the ladies away.
So if he makes your bright eyes cry
Or makes your poor head spin,
That scoundrel you see
Is not really me
He's the coo-coo
Who's wearing my skin.

April 11: Sit in a Corner, Keeping to Myself, Billy Collins, "The Names," New Cartoon

[Ives] watched the column lights passing rapidly in the tunnel, tried to read the newspaper, felt a little despair.  Earlier, getting on the train at Ninety-sixth Street, he was amazed to think that he used to ride the subways at least twice a day during the week for years, and he used to stand in the middle of the car, lost in the newspaper, his portfolio by his side, fairly oblivious of people, and now?  He kept to himself, preferring to sit in a corner like everyone else, except the wide-eyed tourists.

Ives is older, retired.  He has spent his life helping people, listening to people, trying to forgive people--even with his wounded heart.  He has reached a point in his life where his cup feels a little empty, I think.  He has become a little numb from years of grief and despair.

This morning, I went to McDonald's with my wife, sister, and son.  We do it almost every Saturday morning.  I call it McDonald's therapy.  For a couple of hours, we are disconnected from our day-to-day lives.  We relax.  Read.  Do crossword puzzles.  I draw cartoons.  It's one of my favorite times of the week.  Of course, we have to return to reality in the afternoon.  For a while, however, there's nothing to rush to, no task that needs to be done immediately.

When I'm not at work or the university, I like keeping to myself.  I socialize very little on the weekends.  Yes, I go to church, play the pipe organ and keyboard.  But I need to recharge my depleted battery on Saturday and Sunday.  I'm a little selfish with this time.  Like Ives in the above paragraph, I like to sit in the corner and not be bothered.

Of course, if there is a birthday party or graduation or other family event, I gladly attend if I can.  I'm not a misanthrope.  I'm a introvert.  I don't hate people, but I need a break from them every once in a while.  That's who I am.  Those breaks help me write poems, read good books, watch good movies.  And those solitary things allow me to do the more social things in my life.

I have learned that, at the end of really busy weekends, I dread the upcoming week.  The people,  Job.  Teaching.  I'm a little off-center, and I don't regain balance until I carve out a little quiet time for myself somehow.  A few hours  just sitting in my office at the university, staring at the walls.

Billy Collins wrote a poem for the victims and survivors of 9-11.  It's a poem that tries to find a center in an un-centered world.  Read it by yourself.  Reflect on its beauty.  Find your balance.

That's what Saint Marty did this morning.

The Names

by:  Billy Collins

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.

A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,

And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,

I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,

Then Baxter and Calabro,

Davis and Eberling, names falling into place

As droplets fell through the dark.

Names printed on the ceiling of the night.

Names slipping around a watery bend.

Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.

In the morning, I walked out barefoot

Among thousands of flowers

Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,

And each had a name --

Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal

Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.

Names written in the air

And stitched into the cloth of the day.

A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.

Monogram on a torn shirt,

I see you spelled out on storefront windows

And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.

I say the syllables as I turn a corner --

Kelly and Lee,

Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.

When I peer into the woods,

I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden

As in a puzzle concocted for children.

Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,

Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,

Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.

Names written in the pale sky.

Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.

Names silent in stone

Or cried out behind a door.

Names blown over the earth and out to sea.

In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.

A boy on a lake lifts his oars.

A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,

And the names are outlined on the rose clouds --

Vanacore and Wallace,

(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)

Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.

Names etched on the head of a pin.

One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.

A blue name needled into the skin.

Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,

The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.

Alphabet of names in a green field.

Names in the small tracks of birds.

Names lifted from a hat

Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.

Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.

So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.


Confessions of Saint Marty

July 3: Secrets, Being Private, Introvert

Secrets are hard to keep.  Long before Sunday came, the news spread all over the county.  Everybody knew that a sign had appeared in a spider's web on the Zuckerman place.  Everybody knew that the Zuckermans had a wondrous pig...

I am not good at keeping secrets.  I should probably be a little more introverted.  It would save me a lot of trouble.  For instance, I've spent this whole week submitting poems and poetry manuscripts to contests and publishers.  I've already blogged about it.  I'm blogging about it again.  When the rejections start coming in, I will probably blog about it again.  If I were an introvert, I wouldn't have to admit to failure.


But, that's not me.  I'm a pretty social guy.  Tomorrow, for Independence Day, I will be attending two parades and a fireworks display.  My favorite part of the day will be seeing friends and family.  And eating barbecued bratwurst.  I will probably tell people about my miserable work situation.  I will discuss the fact that two poets retired from the English Department, and I still don't have a full-time teaching job.  If I had a rash on my ass, I would probably talk about that as well.  Like I said, I'm not an introvert.

Maybe I should try to be a little more private.  Not talk about every aspect of my life.  In my blog posts, I could discuss the weather or restaurants or the fact that the asshole down the street has been setting off fireworks for three friggin' hours.

See, Saint Marty is about as secretive and private as Miley Cyrus.

I wore that outfit to work today