March 10, 2025: "The Missing Boy," Roz Chast, "Riding with Kendrick"

I spent over a year and a half planning for today.  

Putting together a large, grant-funded programming series takes a lot of things.  Imagination.  Organization.  Courage.  And a little stupidity.  I have written an NEA Big Read grant three times for the library where I work.  Two times, I was successful, and tonight, Roz Chast--a brilliant cartoonist from The New Yorker and author of the graphic memoir Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?--appeared at the library virtually.  She joined us via Zoom and was everything I expected:  wildly funny, incredibly insightful, and painfully truthful.

Sharon Olds confronts a painful truth . . . 

The Missing Boy

by:  Sharon Olds

(for Etan Patz)

Every time we take the bus
my son sees the picture of the missing boy.
He looks at it like a mirror--the dark
blond hair, the pale skin,
the blue eyes, the electric-blue sneakers with
slashes of jagged gold. But of course that
kid is little, only six and a half,
an age when things can happen to you,
when you're not really safe, and our son is seven,
practically fully grown--why, he would
tower over that kid if they could
find him and bring him right here on this bus and
stand them together. He sways in the silence,
wishing for that, the tape on the picture
gleaming over his head, beginning to
melt at the center and curl at the edges as it
ages. At night, when I put him to bed,
my son holds my hand tight
and says he's sure that kid's all right,
nothing to worry about, he just
hopes he's getting the food he likes,
not just any old food, but the food
he likes the most, the food he is used to.

It's a heartbreaking poem--Olds' son confronting the danger of the world as only a little boy can:  with hope and assurance.  If you're not familiar with the story, Etan Patz was a six-year-old from SoHo in Lower Manhattan who disappeared on his way to school one morning in 1979.  After a massive manhunt, Etan was never found and eventually declared dead.  In 2012, as a result of new evidence, a man was arrested and charged with Etan's kidnapping and murder.  

Of course, little kids always believe in happily every after.  Thus, Olds' son is sure "that kid's all right," even without any evidence.  The story of Etan Patz became the stuff of legend, inspiring the creation of National Missing Children's Day in the United States.  

All this happened one year after Roz Chast published her first cartoon in The New Yorker, 22 years before the 9-11 attacks, and 35 years before Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? was published.  I'm sure, as a New Yorker and former resident of Brooklyn, Chast knew the story of Etan Patz pretty intimately.  (I vaguely remember Etan's story in the news when I was a kid.)  These days, very few people remember Etan's name, I'm sure.  He's become a footnote in Wikipedia.  

On the other hand, Roz Chast's Wikipedia page is pretty extensive.  She commands large fees for any appearance she makes.  (I won't reveal how much of the almost $17,000 NEA grant went directly to Roz, but it was substantial.)  Let me just say that, if I could make the same amount of money as Chast for sitting in a one-hour Zoom meeting, I would work exactly one month per year and then spend the rest of my time writing poems on a beach in the Bahamas.

I'm not saying Chast wasn't worth her fee.  She was witty and intelligent, a great storyteller.  Worth every penny it took to get her to appear.  During the event, it felt like I was having a conversation with a close friend or relative.  I'm pretty sure the audience felt the same way.

I wrote a poem for tonight about meeting a famous person, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this day in 1965, Neil Simon's play, The Odd Couple, debuted.  Write a poem in which two famous people you wouldn't expect to see together interact.  The people can be dead, living, or fictional.  Think Frida Kahlo having a conversation with Bugs Bunny, or Elvis Presley doing a crossword puzzle with Elvis Costello.  Feel free to use any two people or characters one would never expect to see together.  Put them in a poem and see what they do.

CONFESSION:  Saint Marty may not have followed these rules explicitly.  

Riding with Kendrick

by:  Martin Achatz

My son educates me about T-Pain, 

Denzel Curry, Lil Yachty on our

drives to and from school these days.

I resisted at first, me stuck in the 1980s

with Cyndi Lauper and Simple Minds.

But each day, like a Harvard professor 

unraveling details of constitutional law,

my son talks about breathing, hooks,

samples, diss tracks.  He is so passionate,

I drive and listen to his lectures the way

I used to listen to my grad school profs

speak about red wheelbarrows and 

cold plums.  Last night, my son played

"King Kunta" with its pounding bass,

tongue-twisting lyrics.  It was 60

degrees out, a warm March night.

We rolled down our car windows, 

bounced our heads, ran the game

as Kendrick, sitting in the backseat, 

grooved us all the way home under

a bright bullet hole of moon.

July 6: "Daisies," Questions and Answers, Kids and Poets

Mary Oliver takes what is given . . .

Daisies

by:  Mary Oliver

It is possible, I suppose, that sometime

     we will learn everything

there is to learn:  what the world is, for example,

     and what it means.  I think this as I am crossing

from one field to another, in summer, and the

     mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either

knows enough already or knows enough to be

     perfectly content not knowing.  Song being born

of quest he knows this:  he must turn silent

     were he suddenly assaulted with answers.  Instead

oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly

     unanswered.  At my feet the white-petaled daisies display 

the small suns of their center-piece--their, if you don't

     mind my saying so--their hearts.  Of course

I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and

      narrow and hidden in the roots.  What do I know.

But this:  it is heaven itself to take what is given,

     to see what is plain; what the sun

lights up willingly; for example--I think this

     as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch

the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the

     daisies for the field.

It was a strange day.  Productively busy.  As a programmer for a library and a university professor, I spend most of my daytime hours answering questions, from both library patrons and my students.  That's really all Oliver does in her poems, too:  she grapples with big, big questions about small, small things.  Like daisies.  Notice, I didn't say that Oliver tries to answer those big, big questions.  Nope.  I think she knows that, most of the time, questions are much more interesting than answers.

So, today I designed documents, printed flyers, finalized projects, and prepared for a poetry workshop that I led this evening.  A lot of these tasks was busy work--stuff that didn't require a whole lot of brain power to complete.  Necessary everyday/every month busy work.  It had to get done.

Then, I spent over an hour on the phone with my medical insurance company, trying to clear up problems that I've been experiencing with my new prescription plan.  It was a long conversation, asking lots of questions until I finally got the answers I was looking for.

As you can see, life (or at least my life) is mostly about questions.  Even my approach to poetry is all about questions.  As Oliver says, a poet (herself) is either the one "who knows enough already" or the one who "knows enough to be / perfectly content not knowing."  Poets don't need to know answers.  They just need to ask really interesting questions.  That's it.

The poetry workshop I led tonight was all about summertime.  We wrote poems about fruit picking  and fireflies and bounty.  Everyone has different ideas about summer.  Those ideas are based on personal experiences, most of them from childhood.  Writer Willa Cather once famously said, "Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen."  So, the question that ruled the evening was, "What does summer mean to you?"

And the answers to the question were multitude, each person bringing very different, very personal childhood visions of summertime, from the surreal to the sublime.

Childhood reality is different than adult reality.  As a child, you can accept magic and mystery without question.  Reindeer CAN fly.  There IS something living under your bed.  Fireflies ARE summer fairies.  And you CAN stop rainstorms by chanting "rain, rain, go away, come again some other day."  No science or Google or Wikipedia needed.  

Hence, summer can be a season of questions without answers.  Summer is hot because it is.  Blueberries are blue because they are.  Owls hoot because they do.  The corner house is haunted because it is.  As a kid, I never thought about climate change or blueberry ripeness or owl predation or human tragedy.  As I said before, explanations are just not that interesting.  Mystery--that's where it's at, especially for kids and poets.  I think Oliver would agree with me.

The next time you hear a weird sound in the woods, don't whip out your phone and try to identify it.  It's Bigfoot letting you know he's hungry.  If you find a field of beautiful blue flowers you've never seen before, just lie down in it.  It's a fairy garden.  If a white light streaks across the heavens tonight, make a wish on it.

Saint Marty prefers making wishes to making beds, any day.

The Unknown Creature in my Backyard

after Edward Thomas

by:  Martin Achatz

It gallumphed across the lawn, its hunch

of back swaying the way an elephant

sways as it glides over savanna

grass, full of slow dignity and mission.

We were miles from river 

or lake, but my mind said "beaver," even 

though I knew that was wrong.

That night, and many nights after,

I waited for my visitor to reappear,

waited for my next chance to name

and catalogue and thereby own it.

I never saw it again, except 

in my dreams where it lived 

in an underground kingdom

of warrens and tunnels lined

with daisies and hematite.

Yes, it nodded at me, I am

here, filling the world with

unknowing, forcing you to exist

in a state of mystery, the way

Joseph did every day with Jesus,

not quite sure what to do

with this little piece of God

living under his roof.