January 5: New Year, Julianna Baggott, "Eve Recalls Birthing and Her Discovery of Metaphor"

It is a new year, and I'm planning to change the line-up for Saint Marty.  I'm getting a little tired of the current Sunday through Saturday schedule.  I'm not sure what I'm going to keep and what I'm going to mothball.  I want to get back to the roots of this blog, when I was writing about saints.  That's going to happen in some way.  But I'm not sure how just yet.  I just wanted to make you aware of some kind of shakeup.

I have a new poem for the first Monday of the new year.  It comes from one of my favorite poets:  Julianna Baggott.  I received a copy of her collection Compulsions of Silkworms & Bees for Christmas, and it has been changing me, poem-by-poem.  It's, basically, a meditation of poems, poetry, and poets.  So smart and moving.

Saint Marty wants to be Julianna Baggott when he grows up.

Eve Recalls Birthing and Her Discovery of Metaphor

by:  Julianna Baggott

My baby's purple head newly wrung of blood
reddened.  Adam rubbed his body dry, no longer fish-like,

while I fisted my own stomach, to push out
the shining clots as dark red and bruised, ground-rotting apples,

my stomach, too, like the softened fruit, the way only the skin
     holds shape
when the inside has turned to meal.  My belly dull-colored,

almost gray and empty, I was the first to see how one thing
stands sadly for another, emotion mingling sweetly,

cruelly with the world.  I knew what it was to be
not free, but freed from, to be the garden left behind,

not just the willow, but all the sagged limbs weeping.

A great Christmas present

August 30: Dripping Wet, Julianna Baggott, "Jesus in the Mail," New Cartoon

The next day was foggy.  Everything on the farm was dripping wet.  The grass looked like a magic carpet.  The asparagus patch looked like a silver forest.

I love that description of a foggy morning from E. B. White.  It has a simple, fairy tale quality, especially the silver forest of asparagus.  It almost makes me want to eat asparagus.  Almost.

I woke to fog and rain this morning in my little corner of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  The fog eventually lifted, but it has been pretty much misting/drizzling/pouring rain all day long.  It was a good day to stay inside and read a book.  Which is exactly what I didn't do.

I spent some time at church, practicing on the pipe organ for a church service at which I have to play tomorrow morning.  Then I also practiced wedding music for my niece's upcoming nuptials in September.  Two-and-a-half hours' worth of organ time.  (Please keep your minds out of the gutter.)

I cleaned a house for some money after that, and then I attended the 4:30 p.m. mass at the local Catholic church.  Dinner.  Bath for my son.  A load of laundry.  And now I'm on my couch, ready to pass out.  I read about one paragraph of my current book.  Have I mentioned that I'm a little sick right now?  My head is pounding, eyes are watering, nose is running.  I'm a mess.

My last offering from Julianna Baggott is one of my favorites.  She has a way of cutting through the bullshit and getting to a clean, beating heart in her lines.  She takes the simplest, everyday moments and transforms them into resurrection.

At the moment, I can hear rain tapping on the window behind me.  The clothes dryer is humming in the kitchen.  Lawrence Welk is on the TV.  It's quiet, relaxed.  Soon, I'll retire to my bedroom with my book and a glass of water.  Maybe some potato chips or raisins.

It's not exciting, but it's Saint Marty's life.

Jesus in the Mail

by:  Julianna Baggott

Someone at the Shrine of Divine Mercy
knows I'm a lapsed Catholic;
a card comes in the mail, a chapelful of nuns
(I'd prefer a nun full of chapels)

is offering the perpetual novena, celebrated daily.
There's a checklist of spiritual ailments.
I pause over lukewarm souls and those
who separated themselves from His body.

I didn't know the soul was temperate,
made of water; and his body, I'd never thought
of myself as attached.  And yet now
both seem right, and I imagine

the soul poured into the unknotted ribs,
that we are bodies of water, and I hope
that death, when it comes, will feel like
what it was to be a girl back-floating on a lake,

pulling down armfuls, then gliding,
arms outstretched and rowing
like Christ coming out of his own body,
flying from the heavy cross.

Confessions of Saint Marty

August 29: Bonfire, Julianna Baggott, "Discussing Sorrow with Jesus"

I just returned from a bonfire.  Actually, it was a really small fire, but it was billed as a bonfire.  A colleague from the English Department hosted a gathering of grad students and faculty at her home.  Lots of drinking imported beer.  Lots of smoking cigarettes.  Lots of talking about bullshit irony in Juneau, Alaska.

I made an appearance, only to be seen, to have my name known or remembered by people.  It was important to do this.  It's the only way I can be a presence in the English Department.  The smoke and smokers nearly killed me.  I was coughing like Mimi at the end of La boheme.  I'm still coughing as I type this post.

Being sick makes me contemplate a lot of things.  Tonight, however, all I'm thinking about is going to bed.  However, I have a great poem to share.  It's about suffering and sacrifice.  It's about pain and healing.  It's about birth and death.

Saint Marty needs to take some cold medicine now.

Discussing Sorrow with Jesus

by:  Julianna Baggott

The blood blurs his vision
                   so he's always winking
like a diner waitress, eye-teared
by her cigarette's smoke,
                    and I ask to take his hat
--thorns, really==but no, he says, I'm fine.
It's so like him,
               to suffer openly,
and I tell him,
               It's too much,
the way your whittled shape
                    still dangles
from gold chains and rearview mirrors
tangled in wedding garters,
                     hung forever
on the back wall of Verbitski's fish shop.
You said that we would forget
                    the sorrow
after your resurrection, like a woman forgets labor
once the child is born.
               But we haven't forgotten.
And it's a poor metaphor,
because women do not forget
                    our bodies ripped open,
the knowledge that life simply passes through,
that the child isn't born
                    but taken
and we had thought it a gift.
No, each time, a woman resigns herself to joy,
like choosing
          the bruised and bitten fruit
because the bin is almost empty.
But I've gone too far, he's embarrassed now,
slouching, arms crossed
               to hide the wound
in his side, his hands' nail holesl
and legs crossed to cover
                    his soft penis.
Tired now,
          he lies down on the sofa.
Only to rest his eyes, he says,
and I cover him
               with a white sheet
that I know he will stain as he sleeps
                         like a young girl
who bleeds without knowing, and I watch as the blood inches
like brilliant red night-crawling spores,
covering the white until it is not his body,
                         but his image,
a perfect blood-stiffened cast of our Lord
and beneath it his shallow breathing.

Shroud of Turin

August 28: Totally Ill, Julianna Baggott, "Mary Todd On Her Deathbed"

Welcome to my poetry post for the day.  I'm still feeling totally ill.  All I want to do is sleep, get up, go the bathroom, and go back to sleep.  It's been a very long week.

Julianna Baggott wrote a poem about Mary Todd Lincoln that I love.  Mary Todd suffered a lot in her life.  She was most probably bipolar, by all accounts.  After her husband's assassination, she never really recovered.  She stayed the First Lady of Mourning until the day she died.

Speaking of deathbeds, Saint Marty is going to go slug down a bottle of Nyquil and crawl under the covers.

Mary Todd On Her Deathbed

by:  Julianna Baggott

I can hear them, choking on spoons, screaming,

in the shower stalls; the fat are given only

a raw egg and whiskey

                                   

                                  and those who refuse

to eat are force-fed. The least crazy sing,

picking scalp scabs in window-seats.

One woman finds scissors

                                        and stabs herself

again and again. It was the tireless Jew

who wore me down; no one believed

that he followed me

                             from train to train

with his satchel of poisons sneering

as they searched my baggage

for the stolen footstools, how he knew

that I shuffled because my petticoats,

stitched so tight with money,

                                           had become a heavy net

for dredging the lost. And I do not speak of the lost:

Abe could have worn me as a boutonnière

my pinched face, say it: an ugly plump bud,

hoisted skirts and petticoats

                                         

the leaf and ribbon trim.

I remember the hoisted skirts

how his body seemed

                                     a long white country of its own

But it was owned by a country

of citizens as unruly as my dead boys,

my dead boys

                      roaring through the White House.

Nothing was mine, after all. Strangers

crowded his open coffin, snipped souvenirs

from the curtains,

                           slipped hands

into the casket to unclip his cufflinks.

All the while they could hear me

                                                wailing from bed.

Every day I can move slightly less;

each body hinge becomes more stubborn

                                                              than memory.

I know how I will die: a clenched jaw,

fists gripping bed sheets. Stiff with longing,

I will have to break 

                            into heaven, the willows

in my handmade girlhood hoop-skirt snapping.

August 27: Long-Ass Day, Julianna Baggott, "Blurbs"

Sorry, guys, I'm way too tired to get philosophical about Charlotte's Web or E. B. White.  I started work at the medical office at 6 a.m., taught from 3 p.m. to 4:40 p.m., and then taught again from 6 p.m. to 9:20 p.m.  I'm lucky I can string words together into a sentence.

However, I did have a Julianna Baggott poem picked out for today.  It's called "Blurbs," and, for almost any person who writes for publication, it's funny as hell.

That's all Saint Marty has tonight.  An excuse and a poem.

Blurbs

by:  Julianna Baggott

I don't want to be a national treasure,
too old-codgery, something wheeled out
of a closet to cut ribbon.  I prefer
resident genius, or for the genius
to be at least undeniable.
I'd like to steer away from the declaration
by far her best.  Too easily I read,
the predecessors were weary immigrant stock.
The same goes for working at the height
of her powers, as if it's obvious
I'm teetering on the edge of senility.
I don't want to have to look things up:
lapidary style?  I'd prefer not to be a talent;
as if my mother has dressed me
in a spangled leotard, tap shoes,
my hair in Bo-Peep pin curls.
But I like sexy, even if unearned.
I like elegance, bite.  I want someone
to confess they've fallen in love with me
and another to say, No, she's mine.
And a third to just come out with it:
she will go directly to heaven.

Go blurb yourself!

August 25: Poet of the Week, Julianna Baggott, "My Mother Gives Birth"

I know you've been waiting for this announcement.  The winner of this week's Poet of the Week Award is Julianna Baggott.

All kidding aside, Julianna is an astonishing poet.  Her collection, This Country of Mothers, is one of my favorite books of poetry.  Ever.  If you don't believe how good it is, I just have one thing to say:  Suuu-uuuuck it!

Saint Marty is making himself happy this week with Julianna Baggottt.

My Mother Gives Birth

by:  Julianna Baggott

They gave her a form of truth serum,
not to dull the pain, to dull memory.
But she does remember
asking the nurse to take off her girdle--
not a girdle but her skin taut with pain--
that the nurse told her to stop screaming,
the girl one over was having her first
and scared enough already.
She rolled my mother to her side, standard procedure,
handcuffed her to the bed rails, left her to labor alone.
My mother says her last thought was of Houdini,
that she too could fold the bones of her hands
and escape.  I want her to slip free,
to rise up from her bed and totter
out of that dark ward of moaning women.
I want to be born in black dirt.
But her mind went white as cream lidding a cup.
And she does not remember,
although her eyes were open, blank,
how I spun from her body, wailing,
drugged for truth, my wrists on fire.

One of the best out there

June 10: Hack

I'm feeling a little like a hack tonight.  I've been working on a new poem for the past four days, and I simply cannot get past the first line.  In fact, I've had about ten or eleven first lines so far.  Unlike some poets, I can't really write a poem until I have my first line.

So, if any of you guys have a first line you don't need, send them my way.  It has to be something surprising or beautiful or breathtaking.  Preferably, it should be all three.  If you have something that fits that description, put it in a comment to this post.

Think Sharon Olds or Julianna Baggott or Phil Levine.  That's what I'm looking for.

Saint Marty isn't picky.

I don't get it...

February 2: Robert Burns, Rye, Julianna Baggott, "This Country of Mothers," New Cartoon

"You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye'?  I'd like--"

"It's 'If a body meet a body coming through the rye'!" old Phoebe said.  "It's a poem.  By Robert Burns."

"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns."

She was right, though.  It is "If a body meet a body coming through the rye."  I didn't know it then, though.

"If thought it was 'If a body catch a body,'" I said.  "Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all.  Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around--nobody big, I mean--except me.  And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff.  What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff--I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.  That's all I'd do all day.  I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.  I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.  I know it's crazy."

That's what Holden tells Phoebe he wants to do with his life.  He wants to save children from falling off a cliff.  He wants to keep all children safe.  Allie.  Phoebe.  He wants them to just play and not have to worry about things like cliffs or schools or leukemia or growing up.  He'll be their savior.  All from a poem by Robert Burns.

There's something about certain poems that stick with you, years after you read them.  Robert Burns sticks with Holden, thanks to the kid he sees in the street earlier in the book.  In 2001, I read a collection of poems like that.  The poet was Julianna Baggott, and the book was This Country of Mothers.  At the time, I was working on my MFA thesis, poems that eventually became my first published book.  I was stuck.  I couldn't see any shape or reason in what I was writing.  Everything I got on the page struck me as crap.  Shallow, self-conscious crap.  And then I read Baggott.

Baggott draws stories of women's lives that cut close to the bone.  Stories of birth and death, tragedy and beauty.  The poems in This Country of Mothers are both very personal and very universal.  She's able to take the profane elements of this world and spin them into something like prayer:

My Mother Gives Birth

They gave her a form of truth serum,
not to dull the pain, to dull memory. 
But she does remember
asking the nurse to take off her girdle--
not a girdle but her skin taut with pain--
that the nurse told her to stop screaming,
the girl one over was having her first
and scared enough already.
She rolled my mother to her side, standard procedure,
handcuffed her to the bed rails, left her to labor alone.
My mother says her last thought was of Houdini,
that she too could fold the bones of her hands
and escape.  I want her to slip free,
to rise up from her bed and totter
out of that dark ward of moaning women.
I want to be born in black dirt.
But her mind went white as cream lidding a cup.
And she does not remember,
although her eyes were open, blank,
how I spun from her body, wailing,
drugged for truth, my wrists on fire.

A few years after I first read Baggott, I met her.  My book had just been released, and she came to the university where I teach to read from her recently published novel.  I couldn't tell her how important her poems were to me as a writer without sounding like some crazed Kathy Bates stalker.  I sat and listened to her read her work.  She was beautiful and full of a kind of manic nervous energy.  After the room had cleared and I was helping clean up, I approached her, gave her a copy of my book.  She was gracious and welcoming, and I fell in love with her all over again.

I know I'm going to sound like Holden Caulfield right now.  I want to live by Julianna Baggott.  I want to call her up and have coffee with her.  I want to return again and again to her creative fountain, full of poems like this....

After Giving Birth, I Recall the Madonna and Child

Who could ever believe it:
   the cows, shoulder to shoulder,
      lowing three-part harmony,
the stable so Hollywood-set tidy,
Joseph and Mary, serene, smiling,
and the boy, pink and fat, already blessing us
      with two tiny fingers raised
from his white swaddle?

He's never purple, blood-stained,
      yellowed--like my babies---
      from swimming in his own shit.

Maybe if we could see her belly
hardened by contraction,
      her knees
         spread, steam rising
from the wash of blood,
and her face contorted with pain,
the cords of her neck
         taut and blue,
then we might believe Joseph,
how he must have said,
      I can see the head.
               It's glowing.

That's Julianna Baggott.  In a wash of blood and shit and pain, she finds a miracle.

Today, she is Saint Marty's catcher in the rye.

Confessions of Saint Marty