May 13, 2025: "The Pope's Penis," Fearless, "Ornithology"

I admire Sharon Olds as an artist because she's fearless.  She tackles topics that upset people--from sexuality to violence to discrimination to corruption.  As I said in previous posts, that's one of jobs of a poet:  to speak truth, no matter what.

One of my favorite poems by Olds is below.  The first time I encountered it back in the early 1990s, I was blown away.  My reaction can be summed up like this:  "Wait!  You can write about THAT?"  This little poem convinced me to become a poet, because it was so . . . out there and wonderful at the same time.

Sharon Olds give readers an encounter with . . . 

The Pope's Penis

by: Sharon Olds

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate

clapper at the center of a bell.

It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a

halo of silver seaweed, the hair

swaying in the dimness and the heat--and at night,

while his eyes sleep, it stands up

in praise of God.

You may be offended by this poem.  That's okay.  If you don't like it, don't read it.  It's that simple.  You don't have to burn any books or go to some kind of meeting where you're crusading to rid the world of pornography.  Just politely close the book or log off this page and don't return to it.  Period.

Olds certainly is being humorous with her words here.  However, she's also providing commentary on how women have been subjugated by certain Christian denominations (including Catholicism).  And she's celebrating the sacredness of the body, in all of its uncontrollable splendor.  Even popes aren't immune to the physical cravings of the flesh.  Sharon Olds finds nothing shameful in sexuality.  In fact, I'd argue that she, in her own way, is saying that sexuality is one of God's gifts and should be exalted rather than relegated to the confessional.

That's my poetic sermon for today.  I'm climbing off my soapbox now.

I'm currently in between teaching semesters.  That gives me some time to breathe and relax and catch up on some much-needed sleep.  (In a week, I start teaching again until the end of June, so I'll be back to my neurotic self by Monday.)  I'm attempting to kickstart my writing, as well.  I've gotten lazy about sitting down with my journal and pen.  Not because I have nothing to say about life in the United States.  It's just this inability to know where to start.  

Do I focus on poetry, and ignore politics?  Do I pretend that the President 47 isn't accepting 400-million-dollar airplanes as a bribe from Qatar?  Do I tell cute stories about my puppy and ignore the Ice Agents arresting and deporting innocent people?  Don't get me started on tax cuts for billionaires.  

As a writer, I simply can't choose where to shine my spotlight.  It's exhausting.  When I sit down to work on a new poem, I have to give myself ten minutes to vent and bitch on the page.  Only after I've exorcised my anger and sadness can I begin to think in poetic terms.  Otherwise, all you'd probably be getting from me is one word repeated over and over and over and over.  (The word begins with an "f," ends with a "k," and isn't "folk" or "funk.")

All that being said, I don't have a lot on my mind at the moment.  Went out for drinks and KFC with some friends this evening.  I may have imbibed a little too much, as I can barely keep my eyes open.  

Saint Marty did write a poem for tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Sit in a comfy chair (with or without a glass of wine) and listen to jazz or classical music for fifteen to twenty minutes.  Have a notebook to jot down images or ideas that come to mind as you listen to the music.  Write a poem about something you thought of while you listened.  If you like, keep the music on while you write.

Ornithology

by: Martin Achatz

I don't practice poetry the way

I practiced scales on the piano

or parallel parking when I was

learning to drive--no tests to pass

or licenses to carry to prove

I know trochaic tetrameter, no, just

an impossible impulse to chase

words the way my Aussie chases

finches in my backyard, body

a rubber band, snout threshing

the air back, up, forth, down

until she catches something in her

eager jaws--maybe a feather small

as an eyelash--tosses it, shakes

her head, wrings every drop of flight

from its downy barb until death

arrives the way it did for Keats:

too soon, leaving behind flocks

of poems wheeling in the blue

lungs of heaven like hungry gulls.

January 1, 2025: Sharon Olds, "Ideographs," "I Resolve"

Welcome to the Year of Sharon Olds on Saint Marty.

When I was a teenager, Sharon Olds made me want to be become a poet.  My first encounter with her work was when I was sixteen or seventeen--a tiny little poem titled "The Pope's Penis."  It dazzled me with its audacity and made me realize I could write about anything at all.

Around 20 years ago, I had the great fortune of being a part of a weeklong poetry workshop that Olds led in Big Sur, California.  It was amazing to climb the hill to her cabin every day and sit in a room with her while she shared her poetic advice and wisdom.  I sort of felt like Moses on Mount Sinai, getting the Ten Commandments.

So, be prepared to be challenged and surprised this year.  Because that's what Sharon Olds does.

Tonight, Olds meditates on suffering . . . 

Ideographs

by: Sharon Olds

(a photograph of China, 1905)

The small scaffolds, boards in the form of

ideographs, the size of a person,

lean against a steep wall of

dressed stone.  One is the simple

shape of a man.  The man on it

is asleep, his arms nailed to the wood.

No timber is wasted; his fingertips

curl in at the very end of the plank

as a child's hands open in sleep.

The other man is awake--he looks

directly at us.  He is fixed to a more

complex scaffold, a diagonal cross-piece

pointing one arm up, one down,

and his legs are bent, the spikes through his ankles

holding them up off the ground, 

his knees cocked, the folds of his robe flowing

sideways as if he were suspended in the air

in flight, his naked leg bared.

They are awaiting execution, tilted against the wall

as you'd prop up a tool until you needed it.

They'll be shouldered up over the crowd and

carried through the screaming.  The sleeper will wake.

The twisted one will fly above the faces, his

garment rippling.

Here there is still the backstage quiet,

the dark bottom of the wall, the props

leaning in the grainy half-dusk.

He looks at us in the silence.  He says

Save me, there is still time.

As I said above, Sharon Olds doesn't shy away from difficult, controversial, or painful topics.  Rather, she embraces them.  This poem, from her collection The Dead and the Living, is all about the nature of suffering and violence.  The two condemned men are described in physically explicit terms, and their impending executions really call into question the nature of humanity.

I know, I know.  That's pretty serious shit for the first day of a new year.  However, I think it's appropriate to examine the barbarity of state-sanctioned murder at this particular moment in history when hatred/wars are rampant while empathy/understanding are in short supply.  The final line--a plea for mercy and salvation--is heartbreaking.  

For me, and hopefully for you, too, dear disciple, Olds' words are powerful reminders of the need for forgiveness and the possibility of redemption.  People should never be defined by their worst actions.  I know I wouldn't want to be defined by my biggest mistakes.

Perhaps that's a New Year's resolution we should all make:  to erase violence and hatred with love and understanding.

Another thing I plan to do in each post this year is write a new poem.  I'm using a really wonderful book called The Daily Poet by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano to accomplish this.  In it, there are 365 poetry prompts, one for each day of the year.

Tonight's challenge was pretty simple:  write a poem containing a list of New Year's resolutions that are ridiculously hard, if not impossible.

Saint Marty wishes all of his faithful disciples love and understanding this coming year.

I Resolve

by: Martin Achatz

January 1, 2025

to stop global warming by standing with the refrigerator door open while deciding what to have for dinner

to end world hunger by always leaving food on my plate to send to the starving children of Africa, as my mother taught me

to combat institutional racism by making everyone read Charlotte's Web and imagine Charlotte is Aretha Franklin or Morgan Freeman

to save the Amazon rain forest by changing it's name to something friendlier--the Eugene or Patty or Willy rain forest

to save polar bears from extinction by creating an International Polar Bear Preserve somewhere.  How about Greenland?

to bring about world peace by sending homemade chocolate chip cookies to every leader with a note attached:  Please play nice

November 10: "My Hero," Hero Worship, First Saint Marty

I think hero worship is a dangerous thing. Hero worship of movie stars leads to negative body image and eating disorders in young people. Hero worship of professional athletes leads to unrealistic expectations in college athletes. Hero worship of politicians leads to tyrants and dictators. I can vouch for the fact that hero worship of poets can lead to writer's block.

Billy Collins worships a terrapin . . .

My Hero

by: Billy Collins

Just as the hare is zipping across the finish line,

the tortoise has stopped once again

by the roadside,

this time to stick out his neck

and nibble a bit of sweet grass,

unlike the previous time

when he was distracted 

by a bee humming in the heart of a wildflower.

I understand Collins's admiration of the tortoise.  The hare is all about crossing the finish line, winning the race.  The tortoise, on the other hand, is more about being in the moment.  Stopping to find joy in sweet grass and a bee dancing in the heart of a daisy or rose.  In other words, the tortoise is a poet.

Don't get me wrong.  I've been given and won my share of accolades and awards, and it felt great.  Everyone loves to be recognized for their hard work and talents.  It doesn't ever feel great to finish last.  I used to run 5K and 10K races.  I never came in first.  (Okay, I did take first or second place in my age group a couple times.  Often, however, there were only one of two other men my age running in those races, so I was guaranteed to win some kind of prize.)

There are some poets whom I admire greatly, almost bordering on hero worship.  Sharon Olds is at the top of that list.  Mary Oliver and Galway Kinnell.  However, my admiration never crosses into hero worship territory.  Rather, these writers teach me how to be a better writer and person.  I don't want to be the next Sharon Olds or Galway Kinnell or Mary Oliver.

I want to be the first Saint Marty.

Saint Marty's moment of hope today:  putting up his Christmas tree with his wife.

June 21: "Song for Autumn," Summer Solstice Sun, Haiku Workshop

Mary Oliver's love song to autumn . . .

Song for Autumn

by:  Mary Oliver

In the deep fall

     don't you imagine the leaves think how

comfortable it will be to touch

     the earth instead of the

nothingness of air and the endless

     freshets of wind?  And don't you think

the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,

     warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come--six, a dozen--to sleep

     inside their bodies?  And don't you hear

the goldenrod whispering goodbye,

     the everlasting being crowned with the first

tuffets of snow?  The pond

     vanishes, and the white field over which

the fox runs so quickly brings out

     its blue shadows.  And the wind pumps its

bellows.  And at evening especially,

     the piled firewood shifts a little,

longing to be on its way.

This is why I love Mary Oliver--poems like this.  The world is unpredictable and beautiful, and every time I encounter Mary on the page, I find myself stunned into wonder.  

I took a haiku writing workshop this afternoon.  I've always loved the simplicity of haiku--its concentration on image and surprise.  At the end of a haiku, I feel as if I will never see the world quite the same way.  I am altered.

Now, I'm not going to turn this post into a lecture on poetic form.  Not going to recite my favorite haiku,  (It's "The Pope's Penis" by Sharon Olds, although some may argue with me about its haiku-ness.)  Not going to talk about syllabics or nature imagery.  If you want a poetics lesson, there are plenty of good books out there on the subject, written by people much smarter than me.  

What I will say is that I think Mary Oliver writes extended haiku.  Her poems are firmly grounded in nature and the seasons, and, when I read them, I am transported.  Sometimes stunned and breathless.  She does that at the end of today's poem, making the firewood hungry for flames.  I will never think of autumn in quite the same way, and autumn has been my favorite season all my life.

So, during today's poetry workshop, we were given 40 minutes to go outside to the library's flower gardens and write haiku, as many as we could.  There I sat with a large group of poets, under the summer solstice sun, trying to capture the mystery of creation in three short lines of verse.  

Now, at the end of the longest day of the year, I will confess that, although they are short and fairly simple in imagery and language, haikus are a bitch to write.  I always imagined Mary Oliver sort of living a life of constant wonder, each waking moment a haiku.

Of course, I'm sure that Mary struggled with language and writing, as all writers do.  Her simple, beautiful poems are the result of divine inspiration and many, many hours of poetic blood, sweat, and tears (not always in that order).  Effortless writing requires a lot of effort.

Saint Marty wants to be Mary Oliver when he grows up.

Some haiku from this afternoon . . . 

Summer Solstice Haiku

by:  Martin Achatz

In the blooming violets

     a chipmunk

gorges on purple. 

A small green caterpillar

     on a friend's thumb

          crawls toward butterfly.

A finger of lupine

     points at me.

"Write!" it says.

Church steeple

     against June sky

makes me thirsty for wine.

Blue birdbath 

     in library shadow

washes away words.

Spider on my journal

     page doesn't care

about syllables or lines.

Poets

     in a June garden

          picking poems.

August 4: More Noble and More Able, Putting Up With Me, Gurnee

Santiago admires the fish . . . 

"He is two feet longer than the skiff," the old man said. The line was going out fast but steadily and the fish was not panicked. The old man was trying with both hands to keep the line just inside of breaking strength. He knew that if he could not slow the fish with a steady pressure the fish could take out all the line and break it.

He is a great fish and I must convince him, he thought. I must never let him learn his strength nor what he could do if he made his run. If I were him I would put in everything now and go until something broke. But, thank God, they are not as intelligent as we who kill them; although they are more noble and more able.

I admire a lot of people and things.  I admire the moon on a clear night.  The sound of rain pelting my window.  Poems by Sharon Olds and Tracy K. Smith.  President Obama.  President Biden for being willing to take on the mess left by his predecessor.  My dog for showing me unconditional love every day.  And I admire my wife and kids for putting up with me and all my weird, neurotic, obsessive, depressive tendencies.

Today, I took a seven-hour drive with my family to Gurnee, Illinois, to make good on a promise I made to my son.  When he had his eighth grade class trip taken away from him by a school administration too worried about covering its own mistakes, I told my son that I would take him to Great America.  So, here I sit in a Gurnee hotel room with my son, daughter, daughter's significant other, and wife.

I didn't make this trip because I want my family to admire me.  Or because I love rollercoasters.  (I don't, by the way.)  Or because I had an extra $1000 lying around the house.  (I never do.)  I am in Illinois tonight because I love my wife and kids.  Period.  Love being with them.  Sharing pizza with them.  Going to movies with them.  Laughing with them.

All we have is today.  Right now.  I chose to live in this moment because there's no guarantee for tomorrow.  This point has been made very clear to me in the last day or so.  

Sure, I'm still climbing my way out of an unending blue funk.  At points during every day I cry, panic, cry some more, and feel overwhelmed.  But even in the middle of all of that, I know love.  Deep love.

Saint Marty's blessing today:  a new pair of Vans shoes.  (Hey, they are super cool.)

March 5: Young and Strong, WWDD, Heroes

Santiago does a little DiMaggio hero worship . . . 

"Unless sharks come," he said aloud. "If sharks come, God pity him and me."

Do you believe the great DiMaggio would stay with a fish as long as I will stay with this one? he thought. I am sure he would and more since he is young and strong. Also his father was a fisherman. But would the bone spur hurt him too much?

"I do not know," he said aloud. "I never had a bone spur."

Santiago could be wearing a WWDD bracelet in this passage.  What Would DiMaggio Do?  Would his hero be in a boat in the middle of the sea, inextricably linked to a massive fish?  Of course, he has no way to truly know the answer to that question.

Hero worship is a strange thing.  It allows you to imagine a regular person being able to perform superhuman feats of strength or intelligence or skill.  Suddenly, a baseball player can survive on the ocean like wind or current.  Can overcome a sea monster.  And do all that with a bone spur.

I have heroes in my life.  Writers.  Poets.  Artists.  Actors.  Actresses.  Filmmakers.  I just finished watching My Octopus Teacher with my son.  The guy in that movie is a hero of mine.  Last week, I watched a documentary about Kurt Vonnegut.  Hero.  Right now, I'm watching another documentary about Toni Morrison.  Hero.  Flannery O'Connor.  Sharon Olds.  Bruce Springsteen.  Hero, hero, hero.

I have closer heroes.  My sister who just died was one of my heroes.  My son, in all his 13-year-old fierce energy and truth, is my hero.  My daughter, in her intelligence and thoughtful strength.  My sisters-in-law for all the love and support they've given me in my life struggles.  My wife's cousin for her ability to make me laugh in dark times.  My wife for looking into the face of mental illness every day.  All heroes.

I think a hero is a person who teaches you something about yourself.  Who lifts you up.  Who makes you see the world full of light and hope.  That's what my heroes do.  They make me believe in the possibility of God and heaven, because their gifts aren't of this world.  Their gifts are grace.  

I hope that some day someone may think of me as a hero.  In my life, I try to lift people up.  In my work, I try to make my little corner of the universe a tiny bit more beautiful.  Maybe it will be my kids.  Or one of my students.  Or it may be a complete stranger--a person I've never met in my life.

Saint Marty believes that we all can be heroes.  It's just a matter of doing your best.  Day after day.

February 17: Overboard, No Waste, Meaningful

Santiago eats a little breakfast . . . 

"Now," he said, when his hand had dried, "I must eat the small tuna. I can reach him with the gaff and eat him here in comfort."

He knelt down and found the tuna under the stern with the gaff and drew it toward him keeping it clear of the coiled lines. Holding the line with his left shoulder again, and bracing on his left hand and arm, he took the tuna off the gaff hook and put the gaff back in place. He put one knee on the fish and cut strips of dark red meat longitudinally from the back of the head to the tail. They were wedge-shaped strips and he cut them from next to the back bone down to the edge of the belly. When he had cut six strips he spread them out on the wood of the bow, wiped his knife on his trousers, and lifted the carcass of the bonito by the tail and dropped it overboard.

Santiago knows that he has to keep up his strength if he is going to outlast the fish.  He takes what he needs and gives the rest back to the sea.  No waste in anything that he does.

This post will be short.  I spent the day in meetings at the library, with department heads and artists and writers.  Tonight, I attended a virtual open mic, listened to some of my best friends share their beautiful words and painting and film.  Always, these third Thursdays make me excited to belong to this group of artists.

Sometimes, when it is near bedtime, I look back on my day and tally the time I have wasted.  The things I didn't complete.  Not this evening.  I will go to bed knowing that I did the best I could to make every minute of this day meaningful, either working or connecting with friends.

This last hour or so of the day, I am going to watch some of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which always inspires me.  Seeing people of such physical talent doing what they love is like reading a Sharon Olds poem.  It makes me want to do better.  Write better.  Be better.

Saint Marty will sleep well tonight, dreaming of being head and shoulders above.

July 9: My Heart Ready to Explode, My Daughter, "Arias"

Merton sinks into adolescent depression . . .

Of course the whole family was there on the dock.  But the change as devastating.  With my heart ready to explode with immature emotions I suddenly found myself surrounded by all the cheerful and peaceful and comfortable solicitudes of home.  Everybody wanted to talk.  Their voices were full of questions and information.  They took me for a drive on Long Island and showed me where Mrs. Hearst lived and everything.  But I only hung my head out of the window of the car and watched the green trees go swirling by, and wished that I were dead.

I would not tell anybody what was the matter with me, and this reticence was the beginning of a kind of estrangement between us.  From that time on no one could be sure what I was doing or thinking.  I would go to New York and I would not come home for meals and I would not tell anyone where I had been.

I'm sure we've all been here at some point or other in our lives--a feeling of utter devastation and abandonment because we've lost what we thought were the loves of our lives.  So, what to do with that?  Well, teenagers turn inward, withdraw from all who care about them.  They rebel.  Disappear, physically and/or emotionally.  What Merton describes here is so familiar to me that I could almost have written this passage myself.

It is difficult trying to find your path after someone you care about deeply flits away, a hungry hummingbird looking for better nectar.  It's a little like being in a strange countryside without a map or cell phone or road signs.  You just don't know which way to go, and the night is moonless, starless. 

I've been in this place many times.  I suffer from vertigo occasionally, and the experience is very similar.  Not being able to find stable ground.  But I have had one anchor through most of these moments:  my daughter.  She has kept me going during some pretty difficult days.  She's beautiful, graceful, and empathetic.  She cares about everything and everyone deeply. 

Around my birthday last year, I was experiencing one of these moments of emotional vertigo.  Feeling very lost.  At sea.  My daughter was in the middle of her first semester of college, majoring in pre-med, working her first job.  She was making new friends, engaging in new activities.  It was her first taste of independence, and she was loving it.

But, she also knew that I was struggling.  I try to keep my problems separate from my daughter.  She's had to deal with a lot in her 19 years, and I've been really conscious about letting her be a kid and do kid things.  I don't want her to look back on her childhood and teenage years with melancholy, like Thomas Merton.

A couple weeks past my birthday, I came home from work, and my daughter handed me a wrapped present.  She'd pre-ordered it many weeks prior, and she couldn't wait for me to unwrap it.  I sat down, read the card she had chosen.  That made me cry.  And then I opened the present.  It was a copy of Sharon Olds' newest collection of poems, Arias.  It had just been released.  That made me cry even more.  She knew I wanted the book, but that I didn't want to spend the money on it because we were struggling financially.  So, she took some of her work money and bought it for me.

I was speaking to sister-in-law last week about my daughter, and I said, "I don't know what I did to deserve a kid like her."

I've known my sister-in-law for most of her life.  She's the baby sister I never had.  I'm still struggling with those feelings I was having around my birthday.  My sister-in-law knows this.  She said to me, "I do.  All the love, compassion, and genuine respect for others has boiled over into this additional human.  Too much goodness in one man.  There needed to be an additional human to continue it." 

I said, "She makes me feel like I've succeeded in something.  She's my Nobel Prize."

"Exactly!!!" my sister-in-law said.

I carry Arias with me everywhere.  To work and school.  It's my reminder, when I'm feeling very alone, that I've done something right in my life.  And that I am loved.

And for that miracle, Saint Marty gives thanks.

October 17: Unregarded Yellow Sun, Daughter's Gift, Significant Night

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

I didn't want the night to pass on this utterly insignificant little blue-green planet without acknowledging the wonderful evening I've had.  

After work, I returned home, and my daughter had a package waiting for her on the front porch.  When I told her about it, she asked me to bring it to her in her bedroom.  When I climbed the stairs, she told me to open the package in front of her.  

It turned out to be this:  

That would be Sharon Olds' just-published collection of poems, Arias.  My daughter's birthday present to me.  A wonderful surprise from my little girl who is so proud of her ability to buy gifts with her own money that she earns working at her job.

And then, I drove out into a beautiful sunset:

And attended the Open Mic at the Joy Center in my home town, where I listened to some great writing by some of my most favorite ape-descended life forms.  And I shared some newer and older pieces of my own:

This blue-green planet may be insignificant, but Saint Marty had a significantly fulfilling evening on it.

April 28: Two-to-the-Power-of-Infinity-Minus-One, Donald Hall, Book Club

Zaphod and Trillian are still discussing coincidence and improbability:

"Yeah, but that's one wild coincidence, isn't it?" [said Zaphod.]

"Yes."

"Picking someone up at that point?  Out of the whole of the Universe to choose from?  That's just too . . . I want to work this out.  Computer!"

The Sirius Cybermetics Shipboard Computer, which controlled and permeated every particle of the ship, switched into communication mode.

"Hi there!" it said brightly and simultaneously spewed out a tiny ribbon of ticker tape just for the record.  The ticker tape said, Hi there!

"Oh God," said Zaphod.  He hadn't worked with this computer for long but had already learned to loathe it.

The computer continued, brash and cheery as if it were selling detergent.

"I want you to know that whatever your problem, I am here to help you solve it."

"Yeah, yeah," said Zaphod.  "Look, I think I'll just use a piece of paper."

"Sure thing," said the computer, spilling out its message into a waste bin at the same time.  "I understand.  If you ever want . . ."

"Shut up!" said Zaphod, and snatching up a pencil sat down next to Trillian at the console.

"Okay, okay," said the computer in a hurt tone of voice and closed down its speech channel again.

Zaphod and Trillian pored over the figures that the Improbability flight-path scanner flashed silently up in front of them.

"Can we work out," said Zaphod, "from their point of view what the Improbability of their rescue was?"

"Yes, that's a constant," said Trillian, "two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand, seven hundred and nine to one against."

"That's high.  They're two lucky lucky guys."

"Yes."

"But relative to what we were doing when the ship picked them up . . ."

Trillian punched up the figures.  They showed two-to-the-power-of-Infinity-minus-one to one against (an irrational number that only has a conventional meaning in Improbability Physics).

"It's pretty low," continued Zaphod with a slight whistle.

"Yes," agreed Trillian, and looked at him quizzically.

"That's one big whack of Improbability to be accounted for.  Something pretty improbable has got to show up on the balance sheet if it's all going to add up into a pretty sum."

Zaphod scribbled a few sums, crossed them out and threw the pencil away.

Believe it or not, I am pretty good at math.  Of course, I don't think I could do complicated statistics with sums like two-to-the-power-of-Infinity-minus-one.  That goes a little bit beyond the math and computer science minor I earned as an undergraduate.  But I used to be able to do calculus problems in my sleep.  Took a class in abstract algebra, and figured out how many moves exist on a standard Rubik's Cube.  (It's a very large number.)  Yes, I used to be on speaking terms with math.

Right now, I'm calculating the possibility that I am home alone yet again.  It happened on Friday evening, and it has happened again this afternoon.  That's twice in one weekend.  Unprecedented.  It might be two-to-the-power-of-Infinity-minus-one.  Of course, it's not going to last forever.  In two hours, the members of my Book Club will appear at my front door, and we will eat and talk and discuss poet Donald Hall's final book--a collection of essays titled A Carnival of Losses:  Notes Nearing Ninety.  Hall died last summer at the age of 89.

I am a fan on Donald Hall's work, although his poetry can be a little uneven at times.  When you write as much as Hall did during his life, you're bound to write some mediocre material.  His best work, for me, are the poems he wrote after the death of his wife, poet Jane Kenyon.  They are full of so much sorrow and beauty and longing.  (Some of you might argue with me, but I've always thought that Jane Kenyon was a better poet than Hall.  Just sayin'.)

One of the members of my book club is the widow of a retired English professor.  She and her husband used to be friends with Hall.  Hall came to the university a few times, to give readings and do interviews and visit classes.  They became friends through these occasions.

I, myself, met Donald Hall once at a dinner honoring him.  It was a brief encounter.  He was quite frail at the time, sitting in a char, signing books.  I knelt beside him, told him how much his work had meant to me as a poet.  I'm not sure how much he actually heard of my gushing.  Then, I mentioned my friend from book club to him.  He immediately brightened and spoke to me for a couple of minutes of their friendship.  It was an honest moment of connection at an occasion that really bred superficial interaction.  The food was pretty good, but seeing Donald Hall come to life for those skinny moments was kind of magical.

So, tonight's book club meeting is sort of like visiting a person that I really knew.  As I was reading Carnival of Losses this month, I could hear Hall's voice full of gravel and cigarettes.  It reminded me of how lucky I've been to meet and listen to so many great poets and writers in my lifetime.  Donald Hall.  Sharon Olds.  Jorie Graham.  Kurt Vonnegut.  Maya Angelou.  Gwendolyn Brooks.  Many others.  These are people who have shaped American literature AND culture.  And, despite the improbability against it, I've met them, if only for a few brief moments.

Saint Marty is two-to-the-power-of-Infinity-minus-one grateful for that.

February 11: Government Spider, Long Night, Blue Funk

President Zaphod Beeblebrox is about to make a speech . . .

A government spider sidled up to him and attempted to press a copy of his prepared speech into his hands.  Pages three to seven of the original version were at the moment floating soggily on the Damogran Sea some five miles out from the bay.  Pages one and two had been salvaged by a Damogran Frond Crested Eagle and had already become incorporated into an extraordinary new form of nest which the eagle had invented.  It was constructed largely of papier-mache and it was virtually impossible for a newly hatched baby eagle to break out of it.  The Damogran Frond Crested Eagle had heard of the notion of survival of the species but wanted no truck with it.

Zaphod Beeblebrox would not be needing his set speech and he gently deflected the one being offered him by the spider.

"Hi," he said again.  

"Hi" is about all I have time for this evening, as well.  I'm in my office at the university, in between teaching classes.  Just finished up with mythology, heading toward second semester composition.  Three hours of writing and talking about writing to students who are only taking the class because it's required.  It's gonna be a long night.

So, hi.

I've been struggling with motivation all day.  At the medical office (which will be closing in a few weeks), I sat at my desk, thinking to myself, "What's the point?"  Of course, I eventually did get my work done, but that question echoed through my head all day long.  It's still with me, like some kind of apathy hangover.

I'm in a blue funk.  Have been since last Thursday.  I'm sorely in need of some kind of injection of goodness.  A good friend.  Good laugh.  Good book.  Good poems.  Good news.  Something to lift my spirits.  Won't be happening in the next 45 minutes, however.  I'll be heading into the classroom tonight with that question reverberating in my thoughts--"What's the point?"

So, hi.

I am going to read some Sharon Olds for a little while.  She's always good for some inspiration.

And a picture to lift Saint Marty's spirits spirits . . .

October 5: Sharon Olds, "Wonder as Wander," Saint Marty's Day Poem

Wonder as Wander

by:  Sharon Olds

At dusk, on those evenings she does not go out,   

my mother potters around her house.   

Her daily helpers are gone, there is no one   

there, no one to tell what to do,

she wanders, sometimes she talks to herself,   

fondly scolding, sometimes she suddenly   

throws out her arms and screams—high notes   

lying here and there on the carpets   

like bodies touched by a downed wire,

she journeys, she quests, she marco-polos through   

the gilded gleamy loot-rooms, who is she.   

I feel, now, that I do not know her,

and for all my staring, I have not seen her

—like the song she sang, when we were small,   

I wonder as I wander, out under the sky,   

how Jesus, the Savior, was born for, to die,   

for poor lonely people, like you, and like I

—on the slow evenings alone, when she delays   

and delays her supper, walking the familiar   

halls past the mirrors and night windows,   

I wonder if my mother is tasting a life   

beyond this life—not heaven, her late   

beloved is absent, her father absent,   

and her staff is absent, maybe this is earth   

alone, as she had not experienced it,   

as if she is one of the poor lonely people,   

as if she is born to die. I hold fast

to the thought of her, wandering in her house,   

a luna moth in a chambered cage.

Fifty years ago, I’d squat in her

garden, with her Red Queens, and try

to sense the flyways of the fairies as they kept

the pollen flowing on its local paths,

and our breaths on their course of puffs—they kept   

our eyes wide with seeing what we

could see, and not seeing what we could not see.

____________________

I have a poem for this Saint Marty's Day from Sharon Olds, my favorite poet.  Just because I can.

I've loved this poem for quite a while.  It makes me think of my mother.

Saint Marty is a blessed man.

September 23: Foggy Day, VR Birthday Party, Almost Ten

It is the end of a busy weekend and start of a busy week.

This Wednesday, my son will celebrate his tenth birthday.  So, my daughter is graduating from high school this year, and my son is no longer a little boy.  As a person who doesn't deal with change that well, the next eight or nine months are going to be very rough.

This afternoon, we had a birthday party for my son, some of his friends, and family at a Virtual Reality Arcade.  It was a great time.  However, I did learn one thing:  I cannot do VR games.  I put on a head seat, and, within 30 seconds, I felt like I'd been on a roller coaster for about four hours.  Cold sweat, nauseated, dizzy.  That feeling pretty much hung on for the rest of the party.

There is a thick fog hugging the air right now.  If the temperature drops a few degrees, I would say that snow was on the way.  Instead, it's simply bone-drilling damp.  It looks like the scene when Father Merrin arrives in The Exorcist.  Cue the scary music.

I'm pretty exhausted.  So's my wife.  My son won't admit it, but he looks pretty whipped, as well.  I have a feeling that we're all going to be crashing fairly early this evening.  When I get home, I plan on getting in my pajamas, making myself a special hot chocolate, and preparing a lesson plan.  Then maybe work on a new poem.  A Halloween poem.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for butterscotch schnapps.

A poem for my son's birthday party . . .

Rite of Passage

by:  Sharon Olds

As the guests arrive at our son’s party   

they gather in the living room—

short men, men in first grade

with smooth jaws and chins.

Hands in pockets, they stand around

jostling, jockeying for place, small fights

breaking out and calming. One says to another

How old are you? —Six. —I’m seven. —So?

They eye each other, seeing themselves   

tiny in the other’s pupils. They clear their   

throats a lot, a room of small bankers,

they fold their arms and frown. I could beat you

up, a seven says to a six,

the midnight cake, round and heavy as a

turret behind them on the table. My son,

freckles like specks of nutmeg on his cheeks,   

chest narrow as the balsa keel of a   

model boat, long hands

cool and thin as the day they guided him   

out of me, speaks up as a host

for the sake of the group.

We could easily kill a two-year-old,

he says in his clear voice. The other   

men agree, they clear their throats

like Generals, they relax and get down to   

playing war, celebrating my son’s life.

August 5: Book Club, Classic Saint Marty, Sharon Olds

Welcome to Sunday evening.

Book Club ended about an hour-and-a-half ago.  My friend, author John Smolens, was the guest of honor.  We ate, talked, asked questions, drank, and talked some more.  It was a lovely gathering.  My Book Club has been going strong for close to 15 years or so.  That's a pretty good track record.  Members have come and gone.  Meeting nights have changed.  We've added a Secret Santa gift exchange at Christmas.  (Okay, I forced that one on everyone, but nobody's complaining.)  I can honestly say that some of my best friends are in this group of people.

They've seen me through a lot of ups and downs in my life.  They were there when my wife and I separated.  They were there when we reunited.  They've seen both of my kids grow up.  And, when my brother and sister and father died, they were at the funerals.  That's the kind of friends I have. 

I've been very lucky to have this group of people in my life for so long.  They really have lifted me up, over and over and over.

And a Classic Saint Marty from about three years ago . . .

August 4, 2015:  Felix the Cat, "Jaws," Sharon Olds, "Wonder"

Later, because it was Christmas, Ives had somehow felt compelled to leave the nice watch he'd bought his son in the room, instead of returning it to the store.  He put it in his top drawer, as if his boy would come in anytime now to claim it.  That drawer was stuffed with school paraphernalia, prayer cards, baseball cards, playing cards, a Felix the Cat comic that Ives had illustrated himself, years before.  And pamphlets, a dozen of them, from different seminaries, clipped together, one of them with the sun's rays extending outward in the shape of a cross, the title:  In God's Service.  On a shelf Robert had a edition of the World Book Encyclopedia, which he had bought when he was ten with his own money; an Oxford Book of Saints, his marker left on the page describing Saint Francis of Assisi.  A row of books on sciences, a picture book of pretty flowers from Celeste.  A paperback novel called Invasion of the Star Creatures and a book on ancient Egypt.  He saw that in a row on the inside cover his son had drawn three symbols:  that of an ankh, chrismon, and crucifix, one leading to the next.  In a bag he found a copy of Fanny Hill, which had one of his son's friend's names in the margin, certain pages marked off.  It made him laugh.  Then on Robert's desk, where each night he had worked by lamplight on his schoolwork--what "good" youngsters do--he found an edition of A Christmas Carol, which Annie had given him, opened to one of the middle chapters.

Ives is surrounded by reminders of his son.  The Christmas following Robert's death, Ives goes into Robert's room and catalogs his son's belongings--his books and cards, scribbled notes.  It's almost as if Robert is going to walk through the door, sit down, pick up his copy of A Christmas Carol, and start reading where he left off.  Robert's story is incomplete, and Ives wants him to return to finish it.

Greetings from Munising, Michigan, on the shores of Lake Superior.  Actually, I'm in a hotel in Wetmore, which is a couple of miles beyond Munising.  It has been a fairly pleasant day, discounting a disappointing lunch and messed-up hotel reservations.  My kids spent several hours at a swimming pool with a water slide, and I got to watch America's Got Talent. 

As I sit on my bed typing this post, I'm wearing one of my favorite tee shirts, with the classic logo for the movie Jaws on it.  For years, I'd wanted this shirt.  Every time I hit Old Navy, I'd scour the vintage tee shirt racks looking for it without success.  Then, one year, I found it--in my six-year-old son's size.  We bought it for him, and he wore it all the time.

One day, my son and my sister (the one who is currently a patient at the University of Michigan hospital) handed me a package.  Inside was a vintage Jaws tee.  My sister ordered it from Amazon.  Every time I wear it, I think of her.  I think of how my son loves my sister, and vice versa.  They probably planned my tee shirt surprise for over a week.

Like Ives, I feel like my sister's story isn't complete.  She's supposed to come to my daughter's high school graduation, show up for my son's school Christmas programs.  This morning, my son saw me wearing my Jaws shirt, and he said, "Me and Aunt Sally bought that for you."

"Yes," I said.  "You sure did."

My son touched the shirt and said, "I miss Aunt Sally."

I nodded and said, "Me, too, buddy."

I'm still hoping that my sister, by some miracle, beats this cancer.  Still hoping that she's around to see my son graduate from high school and my daughter go to college.

Saint Marty isn't on vacation from hope.

Wonder

by:  Sharon Olds

When she calls to tell me my father is dying
today or tomorrow, I walk down the hall
and feel that my mouth has fallen open
and my eyes are staring.  The planet of his head
swam above my crib, I did not understand it.
He lay, behind bevelled-glass doors, beside
the cut crystal decanter, its future
shards in upright bound sheaves.
He sat by his pool, not meeting our eyes,
his irises made of some boiled-down, viscous
satiny matter, undiscovered.
When he sickened, he began to turn to us,
when he sank down, he shined.  I lowered my
mouth to the glistening tureen of his face
and he titled himself toward me, a dazzling
meteor dropping down into the crib,
and now he is going to die.  I walk down the
hall face to face with it
as if it were a great heat.
I feel like one of the shepherd children
when the star came down onto the roof.
But I am used to it, I stand in familiar
astonishment.  If I had dared to imagine
trading I might have wished to trade
places with anyone raised on love,
but how would anyone raised on love
bear this death?

May 30: Sharon Olds, "The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb," Nostalgia

The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb

by:  Sharon Olds

Whatever he needs, he has or doesn't
have by now.
Whatever the world is going to do to him
it has started to do.  With a pencil and two
Hardy Boys and a peanut butter sandwich and
grapes he is on his way, there is nothing
more we can do for him.  Whatever is
stored in his heart, he can use, now.
Whatever he has laid up in his mind
he can call on.  What he does not have
he can lack.  The bus gets smaller and smaller, as one
folds a flag at the end of a ceremony,
onto itself, and onto itself, until
only a heavy wedge remains.
Whatever his exuberant soul
can do for him, it is doing right now.
Whatever his arrogance can do
it is doing to him.  Everything
that's been done to him, he will now do.
Everything that's been placed in him
will come out, now, the contents of a trunk
unpacked and lined up on a bunk in the underpine light.

_________________________

Just because I love Sharon Olds.  And I love this poem.  And summer is coming, where my daughter and son will go away to camp for a week.  And I'm feeling a little nostalgic for when my kids were kids, which is dangerous.

It seems like yesterday that I was braiding my daughter's hair on her first day of kindergarten.  Packing goldfish crackers in her Disney Princess lunchbox.  Or we were loading my son on a bus and sending him off to preschool.  I remember he looked so small climbing up the steps of that bus.  He had to take them one at a time.

We keep on packing their bags for them, with lessons and food and advice, until they look at us and say, "Geez, would you back off?  I got this!" 

Saint Marty is still stocking up on the goldfish crackers until that time.

March 20: Momentous Men, Obsession, Book Manuscript

Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of Cape Cod; and hence, according to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky; neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with an indifferent air; and while engaged in the most imminent crisis of the chase, toiling away, calm and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged for the year. Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his whaleboat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all invited guests. He was as particular about the comfortable arrangements of his part of the boat, as an old stage-driver is about the snugness of his box. When close to the whale, in the very death-lock of the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and off-handedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer. He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the most exasperated monster. Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted the jaws of death into an easy chair. What he thought of death itself, there is no telling. Whether he ever thought of it at all, might be a question; but, if he ever did chance to cast his mind that way after a comfortable dinner, no doubt, like a good sailor, he took it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble aloft, and bestir themselves there, about something which he would find out when he obeyed the order, and not sooner.

What, perhaps, with other things, made Stubb such an easy-going, unfearing man, so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a world fail of grave peddlers, all bowed to the ground with their packs; what helped to bring about that almost impious good-humor of his; that thing must have been his pipe. For, like his nose, his short, black little pipe was one of the regular features of his face. You would almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk without his nose as without his pipe. He kept a whole row of pipes there ready loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand; and, whenever he turned in, he smoked them all out in succession, lighting one from the other to the end of the chapter; then loading them again to be in readiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first putting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his mouth.

I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least of his peculiar disposition; for every one knows that this early air, whether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of the numberless mortals who have died exhaling it; and as in time of the cholera, some people go about with a camphorated handkerchief to their mouths; so, likewise, against all mortal tribulations, Stubb's tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort of disinfecting agent.

The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha's Vineyard. A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think that the great Leviathans had personally and hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of honor with him, to destroy them whenever encountered. So utterly lost was he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic ways; and so dead to anything like an apprehension of any possible danger encountering them; that in his poor opinion, the wondrous whale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least water-rat, requiring only a little circumvention and some small application of time and trouble in order to kill and boil. This ignorant, unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in the matter of whales; he followed these fish for the fun of it; and a three years' voyage round Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted that length of time. As a carpenter's nails are divided into wrought nails and cut nails; so mankind may be similarly divided. Little Flask was one of the wrought ones; made to clinch tight and last long. They called him King-Post on board of the Pequod; because, in form, he could be well likened to the short, square timber known by that name in Arctic whalers; and which by the means of many radiating side timbers inserted into it, serves to brace the ship against the icy concussions of those battering seas.

Now these three mates- Starbuck, Stubb and Flask, were momentous men. They was who by universal prescription commanded three of the Pequod's boats as headsmen. In that grand order of battle in which Captain Ahab would probably marshal his forces to descend on the whales, these three headsmen were as captains of companies. Or, being armed with their long keen whaling spears, they were as a picked trio of lancers; even as the harpooneers were flingers of javelins.

There you are--the Holy Trinity of the mates on the Pequod.  Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask.  Each, as Ishmael describes them, good and trustworthy men.  Each with his own set of peculiarities.  And Ishmael has yet to clap eyes on the Old Testament God of the ship--Ahab himself.  Of course, if you are familiar with Moby-Dick at all, you already know Ahab's singular, driving motivation.  Spoiler alert:  it's big and white and swims in the ocean.

Everyone has some force that motivates them.  For Stubb, it seems to be his pipe.  For Ahab, it's a whale.  Me?  I guess it's writing.  The best part of my day is when I sit down to write these blog posts and then, afterward, when I try to scratch out a new poem in my journal.  I feel really alive at these moments.

That is not to say that I neglect my duties as husband or father.  Never.  Wasn't raised like that.  Today, for instance, I have to cut my writing time short to take my daughter dress shopping.  She has a choral concert on Thursday and needs an appropriately black and modest outfit.  So, in about two hours, I will be standing in Kohl's, arms laden with possibles, as my daughter scours the racks.

That is my life, and I've been doing it for quite some time.  Frankly, I don't know what I'd do with eight or nine hours of writing time in a day.  Once in my life, I went to a writing workshop retreat in Big Sur.  It was a week long and overseen by poet Sharon Olds.  In the morning, I would wake up with the sun and go walking along the cliffs above the Pacific with my journal and pen.  Then I would go to workshop.  In the afternoon, I would go for another walk with my journal and pen.  Then I would go to workshop again in the evening.  All that was expected of me was to write.  All day long.

At the end of those five days, I had working drafts of ten new poems.  It was a glorious time, driven only by the motivation to create poetry.  That was my white whale in Big Sur.

Since my life is more complicated now with work worries and family worries, I rarely get long stretches of writing time.  Instead, I steal time from other activities.  Five minutes here.  An hour there.  If I'm lucky, a two hour stretch of uninterrupted concentration before I have to pick up my daughter from her dance studio.  Small whaling voyages rather than extended excursions around the Cape of Good Hope.

Yesterday, I cobbled together a couple hours to piece together a book of Christmas essays that I've been working on.  It felt pretty good to have an actual, honest-to-God manuscript in my hands.  It's nowhere near done, but it felt like I had landed a pretty big fish.

So, you see, I'm just like Ahab or Starbuck or Stubb or Flask.  A little obsessed.  A little driven.

Saint Marty is thankful today for a new book, even if it's a little rough around the edges.

February 13: Close Encounters with Grief, Sharon Olds, "The Mortal One"

You will have to forgive me if I dwell on my father's life and death this week.  Until I am done with funeral home and funeral and funeral lunch, I'm sort of stuck in this limbo of holding on and letting go.  It's very easy to obsess in this state.

Of course, I have distractions:  work, teaching, my children, my house.  However, these things take my mind away from my dad for a little while, and then he asserts himself again.  This afternoon, I was eating a blueberry paczki because it is Fat Tuesday.  In the middle of a bite, I had to stop, because I suddenly remembered how my father loved paczkis.  For a small man, he could easily eat two or three in a sitting.  At that moment, I found myself completely drowning in sadness.

That's my life right now.  A series of close encounters with grief.

Again, I turn to Sharon Olds, who wrote an entire collection of poems centered around the loss of her father.  It's sort of a tonic to read her struggles with mortality and grief and acceptance.

Please forgive Saint Marty if he occasionally wallows.

The Mortal One

by:  Sharon Olds

All my life I had seen that long
glazed yellow narrow body,
not like Christ but like one of his saints,
or a hermit in gilt, all knees and raw ribs--
the ones who died of nettles, bile,
the one who died roasted over a fire.
I am glad we burned my father before
the bloom of mold could grow from him,
maybe it had begun in his bowels but we burned his bowels,
cleansing them with fire.  Now I am learning
to think of his corpse without shock,
almost without grief, to take
the thought of it into each day, the way
when a loom parts the vertical threads,
half to the left half to the right, one can
throw the shuttlecock through with the warp-thread
tied to its feet, that small gold figure of my father--
how often I saw him in paintings and did not know him,
the tiny naked dead one in the corner,
the mortal one.

February 9: Mount Rushmore, Sharon Olds, "His Stillness"

Strange.  I have been looking for pictures of my dad on my cell phone.  I found one, taken at his 90th birthday party this summer.  That's it.

I'm not sure if that is my fault.  He was more than willing to pose for pictures.  Yet, out of over a thousand pictures, I found exactly one good picture of my father.  Maybe I just assumed he was always going to be there, like the Grand Canyon or Mount Rushmore.  Sort of permanent and immovable.

I was wrong.

A poem from Sharon Olds tonight about finding your father in yourself.

Saint Marty is still searching for his father on his phone.

His Stillness

by:  Sharon Olds

The doctor said to my father, "You asked me
to tell you when nothing more could be done.
That's what I'm telling you now."  My father
sat quite still, as he always did,
especially not moving his eyes.  I had thought
he would rave if he understood he would die,
wave his arms and cry out.  He sat up,
thin, and clean, in his clean gown,
like a holy man.  The doctor said,
"There are things we can do which might give you time,
but we cannot cure you."  My father said,
"Thank you."  And he sat, motionless, alone,
with the dignity of a foreign leader.
I sat beside him.  This was my father.
He had known he was mortal.  I had feared they would have
to tie him down.  I had not remembered
he had always held still and kept silent to hear things,
the liquor a way to keep still.  I had not
known him.  My father had dignity.  At the
end of his life his life began
to wake in me.

February 8: Without Words, Sharon Olds, "Death"

Sharon Olds wrote so beautifully of her father's death in her collection The Father..

I found myself taking her book off my shelf and reading it this evening.  It was a salve.  It said things I couldn't express.

Saint Marty is without words this evening.

Death

by:  Sharon Olds

Last night I saw James Cagney die
as Lon Chaney, he spelled out I love you
with his hands.  He eyes were wry, narrowed,
as if savoring a cigar and a brandy, he spelled out
Forgive me with that keen savoring look,
then his head feel to the side.  My father
was a reptile lifting its skull, his shoulders
rose up steadily, he was a lizard
approaching an insect,
his mouth was open as if he were pursued,
his hair sluicing back in motionless action.
When the hero dies, they draw away,
as if the dead need more space--
I was bent above my father as he curved up,
and when he died I wanted him to rise up
into me or me to climb down
into his body, we were like two baskets
ripped at the sides which could now be woven together.
He lay there, a child barely conceived
lying on the floor of heaven in a heap
with no one to go to.  He darkened, then,
as if the room were getting brighter,
the way the lights come up at the end and you
look around--surely this
is not the world--

January 6: The Spouter Inn, Color of Snow, New Kind of Rabbit

With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of "The Crossed Harpoons"- but it looked too expensive and jolly there. Further on, from the bright red windows of the "Sword-Fish Inn," there came such fervent rays, that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice from before the house, for everywhere else the congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement,- rather weary for me, when I struck my foot against the flinty projections, because from hard, remorseless service the soles of my boots were in a most miserable plight. Too expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing one moment to watch the broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within. But go on, Ishmael, said I at last; don't you hear? get away from before the door; your patched boots are stopping the way. So on I went. I now by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward, for there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns.

Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. At this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of the town proved all but deserted. But presently I came to a smoky light proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which stood invitingly open. It had a careless look, as if it were meant for the uses of the public; so, entering, the first thing I did was to stumble over an ash-box in the porch. Ha! thought I, ha, as the flying particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed city, Gomorrah? But "The Crossed Harpoons," and the "The Sword-Fish?"- this, then must needs be the sign of "The Trap." However, I picked myself up and hearing a loud voice within, pushed on and opened a second, interior door.

It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church; and the preacher's text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered I, backing out, Wretched entertainment at the sign of 'The Trap!'

Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly representing tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words underneath- "The Spouter Inn:- Peter Coffin."

Ishmael is on the search for an inn to lodge.  He's in a strange city.  Knows nobody.  He is walking by instinct, trying to find a place that seems in keeping with his situation.  His boots are worn.  He has little money.  Some of the establishments are too bright and crowded.  Others, too rundown and questionable.  Even The Trap, an African American church, fills Ishmael with a feeling of unwelcome.  And then he happens upon The Spouter Inn, run by Peter Coffin.  Whales and death in one little sign.  Like the Holy Family, Ishmael finally finds a place to stay, even if it isn't ideal or particularly amenable.

It's strange.  Ever since I started Moby-Dick six days ago, the language of my blog posts has changed.  I find myself using words like "amenable" and phrases like "in keeping with his situation."  It's as if Herman Melville's prose is seeping into mine.  That's okay, though.  I don't mind if Ishmael finds a room in my words.  I love the density of the phrases and sentences and paragraphs.

There's something very postmodern in Melville's tale, I think.  A kind of self-consciousness in Ishmael's words.  This becomes even more obvious later in the book, when Melville spends pages talking about the color white.  I'm not sure how the manuscript of Moby-Dick would fare in a graduate school fiction writing workshop, however, let alone with the contemporary publishing industry.  Melville may have had to self-publish it as an e-book.

Yet, Moby-Dick was published in 1851.  Not too much fanfare or acclaim.  Over time, it has grown in stature and importance in the American literature canon.  Dissertations are written about it.  Movies.  Television.  Even the film Jaws owes something to Melville, with the shark hunter, Quint, coming across as some modern-day Ahab on the trail of his great white shark.  It's amazing, really.

That's what happens with great works of art.  They sneak into culture in strange and non-obvious ways, just like Melville's writing style has sort of sneaked into my blog posts these last few days.  Maybe, at the end of this year, I will be writing long, digressive posts on the color of snow or the legs of snowflakes.  That's what writers do.  They steal the best things from writers they admire.  

I can say that my work has been greatly influenced by quite a few poets--Sharon Olds, Galway Kinnell, Billy Collins, Judith Minty, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman . . . I could go on for a long time.  I learn things from other writers.  Throw their tricks into my magic top hat, wave my magic wand, and, hopefully, pull out a new kind of rabbit.  One that is wholly mine.

I don't mind wandering around the dark streets with Ishmael.  Don't mind getting lost in Melville's maze of language.  There's something comforting in it, like being in a classroom with a teacher you love but not really understanding the lecture completely.  Listening to Albert Einstein speaking about time.  Stephen Hawking about black holes.  Barack Obama about civic responsibility.  Herman Melville about whaling.

Saint Marty is thankful today for great writing and great art.