March 3: My Mother, Philip Levine, "Soloing"

I drove my mother home from the hospital last night after she visited my sister.  My mother has memory issues.  Just before we left, she kept saying, "I have to change into my nightgown."  And I kept answering, "It's too early for that, Mom.  Too early."

She seems a little lost right now.  My sister, Rose, is her constant daily companion.  Rose makes her breakfast and lunch.  Sometimes dinner.  In the afternoon, they play Casino together, although I don't think either of them really remembers all the rules of the game.  In the last couple weeks, they sometimes talked about my father.

I don't know what to do for my mother to make all this change tolerable.  Rose will probably be home in a few days.  That will help.  However, my mother has outlived most of her friends.  Now, she's outlived two of her children.  Her life is becoming a series of subtractions. 

Saint Marty has a poem for his mother today.  It's about soloing through life's losses.

Soloing

by:  Philip Levine

My mother tells me she dreamed
of John Coltrane, a young Trane
playing his music with such joy
and contained energy and rage
she could not hold back her tears.
And sitting awake now, her hands
crossed in her lap, the tears start
in her blind eyes.  The TV set
behind her is gray, expressionless.
It is late, the neighbors quiet,
even the city--Los Angeles--quiet.
I have driven for hours down 99,
over the Grapevine into heaven
to be here.  I place my hand
on her shoulder, and she smiles.
What a world, a mother and son
finding solace in California
just where we were told it would
be, among the palm trees and all-
night super markets pushing orange
back-lighted oranges at 2 A.M.
"He was alone," she says, and does
not say, just as I am, "soloing."
What a world, a great man half
her age comes to my mother
in sleep to give her the gift
of song, which--shaking the tears
away--she passes on to me, for now
I can hear the music of the world
in the silence of that world:
soloing.  What a world--when I
arrived the great bowl of mountains
was hidden in a cloud of exhaust,
the sea spread out like a carpet
of oil, the roses I had brought
from Fresno browned on the seat
beside me, and I could have
turned back and lost the music.

February 28: Helping My Daughter, Philip Levine, "Among Children"

These last couple nights, I have been helping my daughter construct a resume for her application for the National Honor Society.  It has been a wonderful experience, because we've been together and she listens to my advice and laughs at my jokes.  We have bonded over this mundane task.  The first resume of many she will probably have to write in her lifetime.

It's difficult for me to think about her as a junior in high school.  That, as a friend of mine pointed out a couple days ago, she is not longer my "little girl."  She's a beautiful young woman.  Pretty independent, too.  I count that as a parental success. 

Tonight will probably be the last for this task.  I will also, probably, read the essay she has written about success in life.  It will be full of hope and ambition and excitement.  All the things that accompany youth.  And it will fill me with pride and a little sadness.

Children can't stay children forever, I know.  I just want to arm my daughter with what little wisdom I have gained in my life, so that she can learn from my mistakes.

Saint Marty has made plenty of those.

Among Children

by:  Philip Levine

I walk among the rows of bowed heads--
the children are sleeping through fourth grade
so as to be ready for what is ahead,
the monumental boredom of junior high
and the rush forward tearing their wings
loose and turning their eyes forever inward.
These are the children of Flint, their fathers
work at the spark plug factory or truck
bottled water in 5 gallon sea-blue jugs
to the widows of the suburbs.  You can see
already how their backs have thickened,
how their small hands, soiled by pig iron,
leap and stutter even in dreams.  I would like
to sit down among them and read slowly
from The Book of Job until the windows
pale and the teacher rises out of a milky sea
of industrial scum, her gowns streaming
with light, her foolish words transformed
into song, I would like to arm each one
with a quiver of arrows so that they might
rush like wind there where no battle rages
shouting among the trumpets, Ha! Ha!
How dear the gift of laughter in the face
of the 8 hour day, the cold winter mornings
without coffee and oranges, the long lines
of mothers in old coats waiting silently
where the gates have closed.  Ten years ago
I went among these same children, just born,
in the bright ward of the Sacred Heart and leaned
down to hear their breaths delivered that day,
burning with joy.  There was such wonder
in their sleep, such purpose in their eyes
closed against autumn, in their damp heads
blurred with the hair of ponds, and not one
turned against me or the light, not one
said, I am sick, I am tired, I will go home,
not one complained or drifted alone,
unloved, on the hardest day of their lives.
Eleven years from now they will become
the men and women of Flint or Paradise,
the majors of a minor town, and I
will be gone into smoke and memory,
so I bow to them here and whisper
all I know, all I will never know.

February 27: Bert, Philip Levine, "Ascension"

In these last weeks, I find myself drawn to poets and poems that remind me of my father in some way.  Poems by older men, of my father's generation.  Poets who look like my father.  Poems in which I can hear my father's voice.

I don't think that I'm wallowing in grief.  I think that I'm searching for something.  I'm not sure what.  Closure?  Acceptance?  Love?

Yesterday, I found myself listening to a speech given by former United States Poet Laureate Philip Levine at the Library of Congress at the end of his laureateship.  His lecture was about forgotten poets who had influenced him.  Poets who, he thought, should be remembered.  I found myself incredibly moved my his words, as he spoke about these writers as if they were friends he'd lost to war and cancer and car accidents.

This evening, I found out that a wonderful gentleman and local poet passed away yesterday.  He was also of my father's generation, full of wit and kindness.  He will be greatly missed by all who knew him.  His name was Bert.

Saint Marty is thankful to have been able to call him a friend.

Ascension

by:  Philip Levine

Now I see the stars
are ready for me
and the light falls upon
my shoulders evenly,
so little light that even
the night birds can't see
me robed in black flame.
I am alone, rising
through clouds and the lights
of distant cities until
the earth turns its darker
side away, and I am ready
to meet my guardians
or speak again the first words
born in time.  Instead,
it is like that dream
in which a friend leaves
and you wait, parked
by the side of the road
that leads home, until
you can feel your skin
wrinkling and your hair
grown long and tangling
in the winds, and still you
wait because you've waited
so long.  Below, the earth
has turned to light but,
unlike the storied good
in Paradise, I see no going
and coming, none of the pain
I would have suffered had I
merely lived.  At first
I can remember my wife,
the immense depth of her eyes
and her smooth brow in morning
light, the long lithe body
moving about her garden
day after day, at ease in the light
of those brutal summers.  I can
see my youngest son again
moving with the slight swagger
of the carpenter hitching
up his belt of tools.  I
can even remember the feel
of certain old shirts
against my back and shoulders
and how my arms ached
after a day of work.  Then I
forget exhaustion.  I forget
love, forget the need to
be a man, the need to
speak the truth, to close
my eyes and talk to someone
distant but surely listening.
Then I forget my own trees
at evening moving in the day's
last heat like the children
of the wind, I forget the hunger
for food, for belief, for love,
I forget the fear of death,
the fear of living forever,
I forget my brother, my name,
my own life.  I have risen.
Somewhere I am a god.
Somewhere I am a holy
object.  Somewhere I am.

October 7: Nurses' Strike, Philip Levine, "What Work Is"

Over the last few days, the registered nurses at a local hospital went on a two-day strike. 

Through five months of negotiations, the administration only spoke to the nurses through lawyers.  The hospital is owned by a very large, national healthcare system that seems to have little concern for its reputation within the community.  This healthcare system spent over a million dollars bringing in travel nurses, housing and feeding those nurses, and changing all the security locks within the hospital. 

Many of my best friends are registered nurses who simply want to take care of their neighbors and friends safely.  Instead, they are being forced to work 16, 17, and 18-hour shifts because of inadequate staffing.  They are good people.  Tired people.  People who care about caring.

This morning, those people tried to return to work at the end of the two-day strike.  They found the entrances locked to them. 

Saint Marty supports the nurses of the hospital because those nurses care for his family and friends.

What Work Is

by:  Philip Levine

We stand in the rain in a long line

waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.

You know what work is—if you’re

old enough to read this you know what

work is, although you may not do it.

Forget you. This is about waiting,

shifting from one foot to another.

Feeling the light rain falling like mist

into your hair, blurring your vision

until you think you see your own brother

ahead of you, maybe ten places.

You rub your glasses with your fingers,

and of course it’s someone else’s brother,

narrower across the shoulders than

yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin

that does not hide the stubbornness,

the sad refusal to give in to

rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,

to the knowledge that somewhere ahead

a man is waiting who will say, “No,

we’re not hiring today,” for any

reason he wants. You love your brother,

now suddenly you can hardly stand

the love flooding you for your brother,

who’s not beside you or behind or

ahead because he’s home trying to   

sleep off a miserable night shift

at Cadillac so he can get up

before noon to study his German.

Works eight hours a night so he can sing

Wagner, the opera you hate most,

the worst music ever invented.

How long has it been since you told him

you loved him, held his wide shoulders,

opened your eyes wide and said those words,

and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never

done something so simple, so obvious,

not because you’re too young or too dumb,

not because you’re jealous or even mean

or incapable of crying in

the presence of another man, no,   

just because you don’t know what work is.

September 20: Rumor of Sadness, Warm Day, Philip Levine, "Night Thoughts Over a Sick Child," New Cartoon

The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever.  Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year--the days when summer is changing into fall--the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.

Yes, the end of summer is a time of sadness and change.  The trees are preparing for winter.  Crickets seem to call for frost and snow at night.  At dusk, the sun turns everything gold--the grass, bark on the pines, swings on the playground.  The whole world is a sepia photograph.


Today felt like August, not late September.  Near 80 degrees.  Sky, blue as church window glass.  The wind was temperate and constant, making the oranges, greens, and yellows flicker and spark in the trees.  It was a perfect day.

Autumn is my favorite time of year, but it also fills me with a kind of melancholy.  I suppose it's that rumor of sadness and change that White writes about.  Something coming to an end.  Soon it will be cold and white in the mornings, and the sidewalks will be a carpet of fallen maple and aspen and oak leaves.

No, I'm not suffering from seasonal affective disorder.  Yet.  That comes after the first six months of winter.  I'm simply mourning the end of summer.  One of the reasons I've chosen to live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with my family is the acuteness of the seasons.  Spring, summer, fall, winter--they're all magnified here.  Spring is greener.  Summer, hotter.  Autumn, oranger.  Winter, whiter and colder.

Today, I'm being reflective.  Thinking about everything that's happened and changed.  It's been a year of upheaval for sure.  It makes me nostalgic for simpler times in my life.  Retro times, if you will, when happiness was easier to come by and worries were just shadows in a brightly lit room.

My son is still coughing, but not so acutely.  He has more energy and is hungry again.  He's on the mend.  I found a poem by Phil Levine about caring for a sick child.  It certainly touches upon the fears of all parents when it comes to the illness of a son or daughter.  Especially a very young one.

Saint Marty hopes you love it as much as he does.

Night Thoughts Over a Sick Child

by:  Philip Levine

Numb, stiff, broken by no sleep,
I keep night watch. Looking for
signs to quiet fear, I creep
closer to his bed and hear
his breath come and go, holding
my own as if my own were
all I paid. Nothing I bring,
say, or do has meaning here.

Outside, ice crusts on river
and pond; wild hare come to my
door pacified by torture.
No less ignorant than they
of what grips and why, I am
moved to prayer, the quaint gestures
which ennoble beyond shame
only the mute listener.

No one hears. A dry wind shifts
dry snow, indifferently;
the roof, rotting beneath drifts,
sighs and holds. Terrified by
sleep, the child strives toward
consciousness and the known pain.
If it were mine by one word
I would not save any man,

myself or the universe
at such cost: reality.
Heir to an ancestral curse
though fallen from Judah's tree,
I take up into my arms my hopes,
my son, for what it's worth give
bodily warmth. When he escapes
his heritage, then what have

I left but false remembrance
and the name? Against that day
there is no armor or stance,
only the frail dignity
of surrender, the dumb beast's fall,
unseen in the frozen snow.   

Confessions of Saint Marty

 

September 20: Owed Poem, Philip Levine, "Among Children"

I owe you guys and gals a poem.  Thursday night, I was busy cleaning and packing and being tired.  This afternoon has been a little lazier for me.  I'm done with most of my work, and I've just spent an hour looking at online speculation about who will win the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature.  (Surprisingly, I do not appear on any of the lists of potential winners.)  Now I'm getting ready to head out to church for Saturday evening mass.

The poem I've chosen to share is a meditation on children and desperation and the future.  It's heartbreakingly beautiful.  A poem about the cycle of poverty that exists in many of the industrial cities in the state of Michigan.

It makes Saint Marty want to hug his kids.

Among Children

by:  Philip Levine

I walk among the rows of bowed heads--
the children are sleeping through fourth grade
so as to be ready for what is ahead,
the monumental boredom of junior high
and the rush forward tearing their wings
loose and turning their eyes forever inward.
These are the children of Flint, their fathers
work at the spark plug factory or truck
bottled water in 5 gallon sea-blue jugs
to the widows of the suburbs. You can see
already how their backs have thickened,
how their small hands, soiled by pig iron,
leap and stutter even in dreams. I would like
to sit down among them and read slowly
from The Book of Job until the windows
pale and the teacher rises out of a milky sea
of industrial scum, her gowns streaming
with light, her foolish words transformed
into song, I would like to arm each one
with a quiver of arrows so that they might
rush like wind there where no battle rages
shouting among the trumpets, Hal Ha!
How dear the gift of laughter in the face
of the 8 hour day, the cold winter mornings
without coffee and oranges, the long lines
of mothers in old coats waiting silently
where the gates have closed. Ten years ago
I went among these same children, just born,
in the bright ward of the Sacred Heart and leaned
down to hear their breaths delivered that day,
burning with joy. There was such wonder
in their sleep, such purpose in their eyes
dosed against autumn, in their damp heads
blurred with the hair of ponds, and not one
turned against me or the light, not one
said, I am sick, I am tired, I will go home,
not one complained or drifted alone,
unloved, on the hardest day of their lives.
Eleven years from now they will become
the men and women of Flint or Paradise,
the majors of a minor town, and I
will be gone into smoke or memory,
so I bow to them here and whisper
all I know, all I will never know.

Can't say more than this

September 19: Barking Son, Bronchitis, Philip Levine, "A Sleepless Night"

I didn't sleep well last night.  In the next bedroom, I could hear my five-year-old son coughing.  He sounded like a seal in San Francisco bay.  It was a terrible sound in the dark.  Eventually, about five in the morning, he came stumbling into bed with my wife and me.  And kept coughing.

I hate it when my kids are sick.  It's that whole parent urge of wanting to fix everything that's wrong for your children, and you can't.  I could tell my son was exhausted, but he couldn't put his head on a pillow for longer than a minute or so before he started barking again.

My wife took him to the pediatrician.  Acute bronchitis.  He has bubblegum-flavored antibiotic now.  By tomorrow, he should be feeling better.

I'm tired.  It has been a long week.  I'm ready for a little down time.

Saint Marty has a poem tonight from Mr. Levine about insomnia, and the first shards of morning.

A Sleepless Night

by:  Philip Levine

April, and the last of the plum blossoms
scatters on the black grass
before dawn. The sycamore, the lime,
the struck pine inhale
the first pale hints of sky.
An iron day,
I think, yet it will come
dazzling, the light
rise from the belly of leaves and pour
burning from the cups
of poppies.
The mockingbird squawks
from his perch, fidgets,
and settles back. The snail, awake
for good, trembles from his shell
and sets sail for China. My hand dances
in the memory of a million vanished stars.

A man has every place to lay his head.

My son last night

September 17: Tired Again, Philip Levine, "Get Up"

Got home about an hour ago from the university.  It was a long day of work and teaching.  By the end of my night class, I was almost falling asleep.  That's a pretty hard thing to do with Pulp Fiction playing on the screen.  Tarantino does not lend himself to napping.  Doing jello shots, yes.  Relaxation, no.

And I have to get up early again tomorrow.  Department meeting at the medical office.  Then, if that wasn't exciting enough, I have eight hours of computer training to look forward to.  I'm going to be drooling on the keyboard in the first fifteen minutes.  If I'm lucky, I'll be struck with a severe case of violent diarrhea.

I hate alarm clocks.  For some reason, I always wake up a half hour before the alarm sounds, and I lie in bed, eyes squeezed shut, determined to fall back asleep.  Usually, I do manage to drift off again, about five minutes before I have to get up.

I have a poem from Phil Levine about waking up.  It seems he's not a big fan of mornings, either.

Saint Marty is ready for a vacation.

Get Up

by:  Philip Levine

Morning wakens on time
in subfreezing New York City.
I don't want to get out,
thinks the nested sparrow,
I don't want to get out
of my bed, says my son,
but out in Greenwich Street
the trucks are grinding and honking
at United Parcel, and the voices
of loudspeakers command us all.
The woman downstairs turns
on the TV, and the smoke
of her first sweet joint rises
toward the infinite stopping
for the duration in my nostrils.
The taxpayers of hell are voting
today on the value of garbage,
the rivers are unfreezing
so the pure white swans may ride
upstream toward the secret source
of sweet waters, all the trains
are on time for the fun of it.
It is February of the year 1979
and my 52nd winter is turning
toward spring, toward cold rain
which gives way to warm rain
and beaten down grass.  If I
were serious I would say I
take my stand on the edge
of the future tense and offer
my life, but in fact I stand
before a smudged bathroom mirror
toothbrush in hand and smile
at the puffed face smiling
back out of habit.  Get up,
honey, I say, it could be worse,
it could be a lot worse,
it could  be happening to you.

What's to like?

September 16: Love, Philip Levine, "Ascension"

If you can't tell from my last few posts, I'm a little preoccupied with the idea of time and love and growing up and growing old right now.  Weddings do that to me.  It's all that hope and joy fermenting in one day.  Like a flower bulb that, after two or three or four years of being dormant in the soil, suddenly blossoms toward the sun.

Of course, it's not all roses and champagne.  Marriage is difficult.  Love is difficult.  Anything that's precious requires work.  It's like when I was learning how to braid my daughter's hair when she was little.  I would sit with her in my lap and braid and unbraid and braid again.  I wanted her to be beautiful and perfect.

I have a poem tonight from Phil Levine that is about love in a way.  It's about the culmination of an entire life, all the hard work that goes into something precious, something blessed, something holy.

Saint Marty knows about that kind of work.

Ascension

by:  Philip Levine

Now I see the stars
are ready for me
and the light falls upon
my shoulders evenly,
so little light that even
the night birds can't see
me robed in black flame.
I am alone, rising
through clouds and the lights
of distant cities until
the earth turns its darker
side away, and I am ready
to meet my guardians
or speak again the first words
born in time.  Instead,
it is like that dream
in which a friend leaves
and you wait, parked
by the side of the road
that leads home, until
you can feel your skin
wrinkling and your hair
grown long and tangling
in the winds, and still you
wait because you've waited
so long.  Below, the earth
has turned to light but,
unlike the storied good
in Paradise, I see no going
and coming, none of the pain
I would have suffered had I
merely lived.  At first
I can remember my wife,
the immense depth of her eyes
and her smooth brow in morning
light, the long lithe body
moving about her garden
day after day, at ease in the light
of those brutal summers.  I can
see my youngest son again
moving with the slight swagger
of the carpenter hitching
up his belt of tools.  I
can even remember the feel
of certain old shirts
against my back and shoulders
and how my arms ached
after a day of work.  Then I
forget exhaustion, I forget
love, forget the need to
be a man, the need to
speak the truth, to close
my eyes and talk to someone
distant but surely listening.
Then I forget my own trees
at evening moving in the day's
last heat like the children
of the wind, I forget the hunger
for food, for belief, for love,
I forget the fear of death,
the fear of living forever,
I forget my brother, my name,
my own life.  I have risen.
Somewhere I am a god.
Somewhere I am a holy
object.  Somewhere I am.

It's hard work, but it's worth it

September 15: Bad News, Philip Levine, "Going Back"

Before I announce the poet of the week officially, I'd like to say a few words about poetry contests:

They suck.

Now that I have that off my chest, I am happy to announce that Philip Levine is the Poet of the Week.  Levine was born in Detroit and is what I would call an elder statesman in American poetry.  He's won just about every award available except the Nobel Prize.

The poem I chose for tonight comes from Levine's Unselected Poems.  It's about loss and memory.

Saint Marty lost a poetry contest today, and he hopes to put it out of his memory.

Going Back

by:  Philip Levine

I opened War and Peace to reread the scene
in which Natasha's brother Petya
falls in his first battle, and Denisov turns
from the boy's body to lean against a wattle fence.
In memory I heard a man so wracked the Cossacks
thought at first they heard the yelping of a dog.

Before I could locate the exact page I found
maple leaves I'd brought back from the East
in 1972, seven perfect blood red
pansies pressed for safekeeping, a dried thistle,
poppy or rose petals so dark and fragile
they glowed in the lamplight like shavings of oak.

Beneath them the author's words seemed frozen
in a common language no one understood.
"The cause of the delay was Natasha's skirt. . ."
Outside the sky darkened.  By the open window
with David Ber I sat, with Yenkl Tsipie,
Abraham, with all my lost, while the rain fell.

One of my heroes

December 14: Philip Levine, "Alone"

Saint Marty doesn't have a lot of energy to be witty or profound tonight.  All he has is a poem by Phil Levine on this lonely night.

Alone

Sunset, and the olive grove flames
on the far hill.  We descend
into the lunging shadows
of goat grass, and the air

deepens like smoke.
You were behind me, but when I turned
there was the wrangling of crows
and the long grass rising in the wind

and the swelling tips of grain
turning to water under a black sky.
All around me the thousand
small denials of the day

rose like insects to the flaming
of an old truth, someone alone
following a broken trail of stones
toward the deep and starless river.

September 12: New Week, Fresh Start, Philip Levine

This morning, I actually feel energy for the things I have to do today.  I've already finished writing a grant that I have to submit today for next year's U. P. Book Tour 2012.  Looking over the details for the tour, I just found out the organizer is trying to book U. S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine for a reading.  I am so excited about that prospect.  Phil Levine has been one of my favorite poets since I started writing.  He's originally from Detroit, worked in the factories down there as a young man, and made a better life for himself through poetry.  He's one of my heroes.

I love the feeling of a fresh start, and that's what today feels like to me.  As I sit here, eating my cheese and wholegrain bread for breakfast, I'm ready to throw myself into today's tasks.  That grant for the book tour has been looming over my head for a week, so getting it done lifts a weight from my shoulders.  Everything else I have to accomplish today seems miniscule in comparison.  Plus, I might get to meet Phil Levine next summer.  How freakin' cool is that?

Saint Marty is going to leave you with a poem from Phil Levine this morning (since he's not sure if he's going to get a poem written himself today).

What Work Is

by:  Philip Levine

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is--if you're
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it's someone else's brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, "No,
we're not hiring today," for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who's not beside you or behind or
ahead because he's home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You've never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you're too young or too dumb,
not because you're jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don't know what work is.

Coming next summer, hopefully