October 28: Killing Frost, Pile of Dead Leaves, Christmas Essay

Since then the killing frost has struck.  If I got lost now on the mountains or in the valley, and acted foolishly, I would be dead of hypothermia and my brain wiped smooth as a plate long before the water in my flesh elongated to crystal slivers that would pierce and shatter the walls of my cells.  The harvest is in, the granaries full.  The broadleaf trees of the world's forests have cast their various fruits:  "Oak, a nut; Sycamore, achenes; California Laurel, a drupe; Maple, a samara; Locust, a legume; Pomegranate, a berry; Buckeye, a capsule, Apple, a pome."  Now the twin leaves of the seedling chestnut oak on the Carvin's Cove path have dried, dropped and blown; the acorn itself is shrunk and sere.  But the sheath of the stem holds water and the white root still delicately sucks, porous and permeable, mute.  The death of the self of which the great writers speak is no violent act.  It is merely the joining of the great rock heart of the earth in its roll.  It is merely the slow cessation of the will's sprints and the intellect's chatter:  it is waiting like a hollow bell with stilled tongue.  Fuge, tace, quiesce.  The waiting itself is the thing.

This passage smells like autumn to me.  The killing frost.  Berry and drupe and legume and pome.  I was recently on a panel with two other poets.  We spoke about the power of the month of October, which is what Dillard is speaking about here.  One of the poets said that October is his most productive month.  It is a time when, for him, it's easier to tap into the root of writing.  Or, as Dillard says above, it is a time for the "slow cessation of the will's sprints and the intellect's chatter."  The poet simply becomes a hollow bell, waiting to to rung.

This last weekend of October, I find myself exhausted for some reason.  My mind barely functions at the moment.  The evidence:  it took me close to four minutes to compose the previous two sentences.  It is only 4:30 in the afternoon as I type this, and yet I could go into hibernation right now.  I don't feel like a hollow bell, full of potential music.  More like a pile of dead leaves, rattling and scratching like bones in the wind.

I do have two writing projects in the works:  my collection of Bigfoot poems and my annual Christmas essay.  The former has started taking shape, although I'm not sure what that shape is eventually going to be.  The latter is merely a great idea in my head at the moment--one that requires some research and poetic inspiration.

So, my bell has been ringing this month.  Tonight, however, I feel the need for rest.  My body and mind let me know every once in a while that I am in need of more than my usual nightly quota of five hours of sleep.  A late afternoon slump.  Sometimes, I regain my energy.  Other times, I surrender.  Fall asleep on the couch for five hours.  Crawl into bed for a power nap and stay there until the morning.

I want to rest this evening.  But I also want to read and work on my Christmas essay a little bit.  Perhaps I will be able to do both.  Or neither.  Remain mute, like Bob Dylan.  Refuse to acknowledge reality.

If the Swedish Academy calls tonight, Saint Marty will answer the phone.  He doesn't want to be accused of being impolite and arrogant.

August 13: Poetic Inspiration, Nikky Finney, "The Aureole"

 I haven't written a poem for a while.  I've scrawled some ideas in my journal, but my life has sort of gotten in the way recently.  Now, I have a small amount of time before the fall semester begins.  A couple of weeks.  I'm not going to wait for the muse to strike me.  If I did that, I'd never write another poem ever again. 

So I will read some books and sit down with my journal every day.  I have an idea for a new collection of poems.  Perhaps I'll pursue that.  Writing a book of poetry is an interesting endeavor.  It's not like fiction, plotted out.  It's not like nonfiction, where there's a certain amount of research and shaping.  Writing a book of poems is like chasing a fog bank as it races toward the sea.

Nikky Finney provides me some poetic inspiration.  As I said in a previous post, she does not write short poems.  Her work is lyrical and stunning, but it is also sprawling, like a Kansas wheat field.  Yet, there's something inherently personal and private, as if she's telling you about secrets that could change the world.  Secrets about justice and race.  And love.

Saint Marty is always a sucker for a great love poem.

The Aureole

by:  Nikky Finney

               I stop my hand midair.

 

               If I touch her there everything about me will be true.

               The New World discovered without pick or ax.

 

               I will be what Brenda Jones was stoned for in 1969.

               I saw it as a girl but didn’t know I was taking in myself.

 

               My hand remembers, treading the watery room,

               just behind the rose-veiled eyes of memory.

 

Alone in the yard tucked beneath the hood of her car,

lucky clover all about her feet, green tea-sweet necklace

for her mud-pie crusty work boots.

 

She fends off their spit & words with silent two-handed

twists & turns of her socket wrench. A hurl of sticks &

stones and only me to whisper for her, from sidewalk far,

 

break my bones. A grown woman in grease-pocket overalls

inside her own sexy transmission despite the crowding of

hurled red hots. Beneath the hood of her candy-apple Camaro:

 

souped, shiny, low to the ground.

 

               The stars over the Atlantic are dangling

               salt crystals. The room at the Seashell Inn is

               $20 a night; special winter off-season rate.

               No one else here but us and the night clerk,

               five floors below, alone with his cherished

               stack of Spiderman. My lips are red snails

               in a primal search for every constellation

               hiding in the sky of your body. My hand

               waits for permission, for my life to agree

               to be changed, forever. Can Captain Night

               Clerk hear my fingers tambourining you

               there on the moon? Won’t he soon climb

               the stairs and bam! on the hood of this car?

               You are a woman with film reels for eyes.

               Years of long talking have brought us to the

               land of the body. Our skin is one endless

               prayer bead of brown. If my hand ever lands,

               I will fly past dreaming Australian Aborigines.

               The old claw hammer and monkey wrench

               that flew at Brenda Jones will fly across the

               yard of ocean at me. A grease rag will be

               thrust into my painter’s pants against my

               will. I will never be able to wash or peel

               any of this away. Before the night is over

               someone I do not know will want the keys

               to my ’55 silver Thunderbird. He will chase

               me down the street. A gaggle of spooked

               hens will fly up in my grandmother’s yard,

               never to lay another egg, just as I am jump-

               ed, kneed, pulled finally to the high ground

               of sweet clover.