March 17: Losing Things, Ellen Bryant Voigt, "Kyrie"

Again, I turn back to Ellen Bryant Voigt's Kyrie for solace.

I'm tired of losing things I cherish.  I have no idea what lesson I'm supposed to learn in all of this, except that grief is just a letter away . . .

Saint Marty is trying to hold on to hope.

from Kyrie

by:  Ellen Bryant Voigt

When does a childhood end?  Mothers
sew a piece of money inside a sock,
fathers unfold the map of the world, and boys
go off to war--that's an end, whether
they come back wrapped in the flag or waving it.
Sister and I were what they kissed goodbye,
complicitous in the long dream left behind.
On one page, willful innocence,
                                                     on the next
an Army Captain writing from the ward
with few details, and much regret--a kindness
she wouldn't forgive, and wouldn't be reconciled
to her soldier lost, or me in my luck, or the petals
strewn on the grass, or the boys still on the playground
routing evil with their little sticks.

March 15: Ellen Bryant Voigt, "Kyrie," Stay Loved

I will continue with offering up poems from Ellen Bryant Voigt's collection Kyrie, which is about the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.  A little over 100 years ago this thing took hold of the planet.

We are now dealing with another thing, and, as always, when I am facing something big and scary, I turn to poetry.

Keep calm, my friends.  Wash your hands.  Stay distanced.  Stay safe.  Stay loved.

Saint Marty is praying for you all.

from Ellen Bryant Voigt's Kyrie

All ears, tongue and gut,

dogs know if something's wrong;

chickens don't know a thing, their brains

are little more than optic nerve--

they think it's been a very short day

and settle in the pines, good night,

head under wing, near their cousins

but welded to a lower branch.

Dogs, all kids of dogs--signals

are their job, they cock their heads,

their backs bristle, even house dogs

wake up and circle the wool rug.

Outside, the vacant yard:  then,

within minutes something eats the sun.

March 14: Pandemic Panic, Ellen Bryant Voigt, "Kyrie"

Since true pandemic panic took hold in my little corner of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan this week, I have found myself turning to one particular poet:  Ellen Bryant Voigt.  She published a collection of poems titled Kyrie in the early 1990s.  It's about the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. 

I have begun rereading this book, remembering how beautiful Voigt's writing is.  It's a book that captures the human side of tragedy and manages, somehow, to instill a sense of some kind of hope, as well.  It's brilliant.  I once went to a reading Voigt gave in Kalamazoo.  She read sections from the unpublished manuscript of Kyrie, and she had the audience breathless and rapt by the end. 

Saint Marty has decided, over the course of the next few weeks, to share this collection with you, one poem at a time.  Just because . . .

Epigraph:

Nothing else--no infection, no war, no famine--
has ever killed so many in as short a period.
                     Alfred Crosby
                    America's Forgotten Pandemic:
                    The Influenza of 1918

Prologue:

After the first year, weeds and scrub;
after five, juniper and birch,
alders filling in among the briars;
ten more years, maples rise and thicken;
forty years, the birches crowded out,
a new world swarms on the floor of the hardwood forest.
And who can tell us where there was an orchard,
where a swing, where the smokehouse stood?

February 25: Good to Me, Tomas Transtromer, "Kyrie"

The Lord has been good to me.  Has blessed me, blesses me, every day.  With the sound of my son laughing in the living room.  My wife eating toast with grape jam in the kitchen.  My daughter bending her head down so I can kiss her before she goes to bed at night.

These are all moments of grace.  I go through my days rarely recognizing them.  Too wrapped up in worry and doubt.

Tonight, Saint Marty is full of thankfulness.

Kyrie

by:  Tomas Transtrőmer

Sometimes my life opened its eyes in the dark.
A feeling as if crowds drew through the streets
in blindness and anxiety on the way towards a miracle,
while I invisibly remain standing.

As the child falls asleep in terror
listening to the heart's heavy tread.
Slowly, slowly until morning puts its rays in the locks,
and the doors of darkness open.

September 22: Gold Watch, Promotion, Tomas Transtromer, "Kyrie," Adventures of Stickman

On December 29, 1982, there had been a big party in the boardroom, and it was attended by many of the old-timers like Ives himself--Crane, Silverman, Schamberg--and Mr. Mannis, having survived his third open heart operation, made a speech.  They had given Ives a watch--a gold Swiss pocket watch from the 1920s, engraved with his name on the back (to go into a drawer along with the watch he had intended to give to his son long ago at Christmas)--and a plaque.

Ives retires.  After many years at an advertising agency, he is given his gold watch and plaque, thanking him for his decades of faithful service.  Ives started out at the bottom and worked his way up, drawing by drawing, account by account, promotion after promotion.  He is respected and beloved by all of his colleagues and coworkers..

Tomorrow afternoon, I am meeting with the head of the English Department to discuss a promotion.  For the past 17 years, I have held the rank of Contingent Assistant Professor.  I want (and think I deserve) the title of Contingent Professor, which is a jump of two ranks.  After almost 20 years of teaching and a few thousand students, I am hoping that my boss will support my decision.

I am not a person who feels comfortable tooting his own horn.  It's just not something at which I excel.  In my posts, I may sound incredibly confident and self-assured.  I'm not.  I've said it before, and I will probably say it with my dying breath:  I think that I could have done better.  I could have been a better son.  A better brother.  Better husband and father.  A better teacher and writer.  Basically, I could have been a better person every day of my life.

That doesn't mean that I'm Rasputin or Donald Trump.  That means that I've made mistakes, and I acknowledge them.  That doesn't mean I don't deserve that promotion (or a Pulitzer Prize or a MacArthur Genius Grant).  It means that I'm human, with tons of flaws.

Contingent Professor Saint Marty.  Sounds pretty good.

By the way, Tomas Transtromer isn't perfect, either, although he has a Nobel Prize hanging on his wall.

Kyrie

by;  Tomas Transtromer

Sometimes my life opened its eyes in the dark.
A feeling as if crowds drew through the street
in blindness and anxiety on the way towards a miracle,
while I invisibly remain standing.

As the child falls asleep in terror
listening to the heart's heavy tread.
Slowly, slowly until morning puts its rays in the locks
and the doors of darkness open.

Adventures of STICKMAN

May 14: Chafed, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Another Sonnet

I went to the gym after work this afternoon. I ran on the treadmill for half an hour.  It actually wasn't as horrible as I thought it was going to be.  After I overcame my absolute dread, I actually felt good about myself, until I got home and realized that I was so chafed my thighs felt like they'd been dipped in acid.

Aside from that, I still feel good about myself.  I don't know if I'm going to the gym tomorrow.  If I move my legs together, I think they may set my pants on fire.  Perhaps a leisurely walk is more appropriate.

I do have another Kyrie sonnet.  I must say it's difficult to get a good sense of this collection from individual sonnets.  In my opinion, it's really a book-length poem. 

However, Saint Marty doesn't have time to type all 75 pages tonight.

from Ellen Bryant Voigt's Kyrie:

After I'd seen my children truly ill,
I had no need to dream that they were ill
nor in any other way imperiled--
no more babies pitching down the well,
no more watching from shore as my boy rolls
like a kicked stone from the raft, meanwhile
Kate with a handful of bees--
                                               when I was a girl,
I practiced in the attic with my dolls,
but Del went out of right mind, his fingernails
turned blue, and Kate--no child should lie so still,
her small excitable body held enthralled. . . .
After that, in order to make it real
I dreamed them whole.

I'm getting a standing ovation

May 13: No Time, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Another Sonnet

I have no time this evening to reflect poetically.  My daughter is breathing down my neck.  She wants my laptop.  Plus, I have to get to work on my nature essay.  I've got a little research to do about memory and smell.  (When I post my nature essay, that statement will make sense, I promise.)

But, I have to give Ellen Bryant Voigt some space.

Saint Marty has enough time to type fourteen lines.

from Ellen Bryant Voigt's Kyrie:

He planned his own service, the pine box,
the open lid, which hymns, chapter and verse,
who would pray, how long, who'd carry him out.
He wrote it all down in a fair hand,
stroking the shawl around him in his chair,
and gave away his watch, his dog, his house.

Emmett said, he'd have lain down in the grave
except he needed us to tuck him in.

He shaved each day, put on his good wool pants
chosen for the cloth and a little loose
as they lowered in another son-in-law.
Sat by the door, handrolling cigarettes
three at a time, licking down both ends,
and wheezed and coughed and spit in a rusted can.

You tell 'em, Vlad

May 11: Poet of the Week, Ellen Bryant Voigt, "Kyrie"

I had a difficult time choosing a poet to feature this week.  Most weeks, the poet sort of asserts her/himself in my mind, and I know almost immediately.  Sometimes, it's the poet's name.  Sometimes, it's a favorite poem or book.

This evening, after much thought, I have chosen Ellen Bryant Voigt as the Poet of the Week, mostly for her fantastic collection Kyrie.  I saw Voigt read from this collection when it was first released, back in 1995.  I remember being stunned by the poems.

Kyrie is a series of sonnets about the influenza pandemic of 1918-19 that killed over 25 million people worldwide.  The sonnets are untitled, written in the voices of soldiers, children, victims, and survivors.  Simply reading one or two of the poems will not give you a true understanding of the power of this book.  Reading Kyrie is devastating and beautiful at once, like looking at a daguerreotype of your great grandmother as a young girl.

This book makes Saint Marty want to be a better poet.

From Kyrie by Ellen Bryant Voigt:

To be brought from the bright schoolyard into the house:
to stand by her bed like an animal stunned in the pen:
against the grid of the quilt, her hand seems
stitched to the cuff of its sleeve--although he wants
most urgently the hand to stroke his head,
although he thinks he could kneel down
that it would need to travel only inches
to brush like a breath his flushed cheek,
he doesn't stir:  all his resolve,
all his resources go to watching her,
her mouth, her hair a pillow of blackened ferns--
he means to match her stillness bone for bone.
Nearby he hears the younger children cry,
and his aunts, like careless thieves, out in the kitchen.

If you haven't read it, you should