October 19: Literacy Night, Lynn Emanuel, "From a Train"

I have a busy evening ahead of me.  I'm volunteering at the Children's Museum in Marquette as part of its Literacy Night.  I'm supposed to help kids write "letters home" from camp.  I'm not quite sure what that means, but I will find out soon.

This afternoon, I have a Halloween poem from one of my favorite poets.  It's about a haunted train encounter.  Sort of.  I certainly won't be sharing this poem with the kids at the Children's Museum.

Saint Marty will never be invited back if he does.

From a Train

by:  Lynn Emanuel

After night’s black abandoned truck—
morning is locked down tight,

and the sky’s brewing up
some trouble.

So far at the bottom of this
moment, she could fall off.

Coat hem. A pair
of sultry shoes. She is five.

Small for her age.
Meeting her father for the first

time. Union Station. Denver.
Behind the harsh horizon

beyond the tracks, a dark
wildness over the swing set,

brick yard, development.

Little nowhere, where
Did you come from?

The train roams through
the gone and vanquished,

some pale, soft voice talking.
Spooks. Phantoms.

He is the unclosed
cut of her.

Find the missing
dark scythe. Find

the jawbone of an ass.
Dead wood, cemetery, oil vat

shooed away—harried—
by the train’s advance.

First this, then that, then
a thrush’s three notes happen

all at once at once at once

and a figure
in a red hat.

October 8: Son's Final Birthday Party, Classic Saint Marty, "Pecan Pie"

We had the last birthday party for my son this afternoon at the Children's Museum in Marquette.  Lots of cake, pizza, slides and turtles, and an escaped iguana.  It was a wonderful time, full and laughter and screaming children.

Now, I am trying to catch up with my schoolwork.  Grading and writing.  Creating a midterm exam.  It's going to be a long night.  Hopefully, I will be able to focus and get shit done quickly, because I'm about ready to drop dead from exhaustion.

A year ago, I was dealing with a different kind of stress . . .

October 8, 2016:  Mockingbird on the Chimney, Panel of Poets, Swedish Spies

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing.... The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

Dillard is talking about birdsong in this little passage, and the fact that people spend a great deal of time talking about what the mockingbird on the chimney is saying.  Is it singing about the sun on its feathers?  The hawk circling in the sky?  Its nest of eggs in the pine tree?  No, Dillard says.  We're missing the point.  It's not the message so much as the package.  Sort of like looking at all the beautiful packages sitting under the Saint Marty's Day tree and not really thinking about what they contain.

Today, in about twenty minutes to be exact, I have to go to a local library to participate in a panel of poets.  It's part of a celebration of independent booksellers.  I was invited last week, and I agreed.  Of course, then all the low self-esteem kicked in.  I've known all the other poets for many, many years.  They are accomplished and successful.  My doubts and fears are unfounded.  I know that.  Like Dillard says, it's not really about what the mockingbird is singing.  It's about the beauty of the song.  I must keep that in mind.

So, I will show up, try to sell a few books, talk about poetry for an hour, maybe read some poems, and answer some questions.  I will be on the chimney with all the other mockingbirds, trying to create something uplifting, something that touches the heavens.  That's the goal, anyway.

No word from the Swedish Academy yet, although Saint Marty suspects there will be some very Scandinavian members in the audience today.

The Swedish Academy's motto.  I think it translates as "Saint Marty is great!"

I am grateful for this day of celebration.  And I have a gratitude poem for tonight about my mother and pie:



Pecan Pie

by:  Martin Achatz

Mix eggs, sugar and Karo,
melted butter, vanilla from Mexico
in a bowl until it all runs
yellow as corn silk.  Add pecans,
one-and-a-quarter cups.  Fold
them into the gold syrup,
the way a farmer folds
manure into a field of hay
or my son folds a Tootsie Roll
under his tongue, plants it there,
lets it feed the furrows
of his young body.  Pour this filling
into a shell, edges fluted
by my wife's hands, crimped
between thumb and forefinger
to peaks and troughs of dough.
Bake at 350 degrees.
Forty-five minutes to an hour.
You'll know when it's done.
The house will smell
brown and warm and sweet.
Dip a butter knife blade
into the center of the pie.
If it comes out hot and clean,
take the pie out of the oven.  Put it
on the front porch to cool.
You can leave it there overnight.
It'll be waiting in the morning.
Cover it with a hand towel.  Carry
it to your parents' house,
where your mother asks you
"Is it cold outside?"
over and over as you cut
the pie.  "Yes," you tell her.
And "yes" when she asks again.
It is cold this Thanksgiving.
And, yes, pecan pie is her favorite.
Give her a large slice,
with extra Cool Whip
and a hot cup of coffee.

September 3: Wedding and Reception, Classic Saint Marty, "Recipe"

Well, I spent a great deal of time last night working on a new poem.  I'm going to a wedding and reception this afternoon.  The son of my best friend is getting married.  I didn't want to just shove money in a card or go out and buy matching towels.  So, a couple weeks ago, I started writing a wedding poem.

It wasn't an easy assignment that I gave myself.  How do you write about love without sounding like Helen Steiner Rice?  Answer:  with a lot of struggle and revision and rewriting.  At about ten o'clock last night, I had a poem.  Then I did some art work to accompany it. 

Pretty soon, I'm going to throw on a tie and head out to the wedding.  It will be a wonderful, joyous event.  And then the reception at the Marquette Children's Museum.  I'm ready to relax a little bit.

Two years ago on this day, I was feeling a little nostalgic . . .

September 3, 2015:  Foundling Home, Shirley Temple, Linda Gregg, "The Resurrection"

He thought about that crisp afternoon, years before, when the sky had opened and the world had seemed full of goodness, its meaning still baffling him . . . He remembered how, in the foundling home, the nuns gathered the children around a Christmas tree, and that one of the nuns had read aloud from a book:  "And behold there was a star, a beacon in the night.  And from the east there came angels and kings to worship the newborn son of God."

Ives becomes nostalgic for his childhood near the end of the novel, after he has found peace regarding his son's death.  He is no longer angry or grief-stricken.  He even thinks back to his time as an orphan in a foundling home wistfully, after years of feeling unwanted and abandoned.  Ives has reached an age where he looks back with fondness on many things that used to cause him heartbreack and pain.

At some point in life, everyone becomes nostalgic for the past.  I have been thinking about my daughter's first day of kindergarten.  At the time, my life was in great turmoil.  My wife and I were separated, and I was living the life of a single parent.  I did everything to make my daughter's life happy.  On her first day of school, I dropped her off with her Disney princess backpack.  She toddled into the classroom, looking incredibly small and vulnerable.

I remember going home that morning and baking my daughter's favorite cookies:  oatmeal butterscotch.  I put them on a plate, placed them on a table near her chair in the living room, and counted down the hours until I could pick her up.

Yes, at the time I felt like my world was falling apart.  Just getting up in the morning was a great chore.  But I still wish I could have my little kindergartner back, instead of my 14-year-old ninth grader.  We used to be best buds.  She used to think I was cool.  Now, I am simply the reason for much eye rolling and sighing.

Nostalgia is a strange thing.  It makes painful memories seem not so painful, and it makes the good times seem like Shirley Temple movies, where everybody is crying and hugging and tapdancing at the end.

Saint Marty misses his Little Princess.

The Resurrection

by:  Linda Gregg

Let the tower in your city burn. Let the steps
to the shadowed building by the lake burn
even though it is made of stone. Let the lion
house burn so that the roaring and burning
will be heard together. Let the old, poor,
wooden house where I lived go up in flames, even though
you returned and sat on the steps that led
up to where we used to exist. Let it all burn,
not to destroy them, but to give them the life
my life gives to them now. To make them flare
as they do in me, bright and hot, bright and burning.

And a poem about my friend whose son is getting married this afternoon:

Recipe

by:  Martin Achatz



My friend reads cookbooks
The way I read poetry, hungry
For each line, each word chosen
Like tiles in a Byzantine Christ,
Pieced together, stone-by-stone,
Color-by-color, into a creation
Greater than its parts.  My friend
Mixes twelve egg yolks, salt,
Sugar, lemon zest and juice,
Butter into lemon curd, spoons
It into vanilla cupcakes, follows
A recipe she discovered
In her grandmother's Betty Crocker,
Creates a poem of vanilla, citrus,
Something her mother's mother first made
As a young girl with whisk,
Heat, ice.  As she licks her finger,
My friend reads the recipe again,
Sees where her grandmother
Crossed out "Makes 3 cups,"
Penciled in "5 cups" in careful
Letters, underlined it twice.
This revision, made over 40 years ago,
Reminds my friend of the white
Moons of her grandmother's fingernails,
Her kitchen stove, hot as July,
The abundance of curd in her bowl.
I think of Robert Frost working
In his notebook, scribbling his last line
And miles to go before I sleep,
Reading it over, then writing
And miles to go before I sleep
Again, as if he needed one more
Egg, a pinch of cinnamon, to fill
His pastry until it overflowed.