April 27: "The Milky Way," Awards Day, "Stargazing"

Billy Collins enjoys some Rice Krispies . . . 

The Milky Way

by:  Billy Collins

A mother's face

hidden in the night sky,

stars clustered at her breasts.

In the morning

I pour her over cereal

with a scattering of berries.

Beauty is everywhere, from the constellations spinning above you to the milk spinning in your bowl at breakfast.  It's just a matter of stopping and noticing.

Today at the poetry festival was what I call Awards Day--when the winners of the Teen Poetry Contest are announced, and the winners of the 3-Day International Chapbook Contest read from their books.  It's one of my favorite moments.  I love seeing the teens' faces light up or go completely dumbfounded when their names are called.  And the chapbook authors sharing their words with the world for the first time.  It's almost like watching roses bloom in time lapse--slowly revealing something truly wondrous.

Saint Marty had a huge helping of beauty today.

Stargazing

by:  Martin Achatz

I make up names

of constellations to impress

my son.  Wait until

he grows up and realizes

there is no Mary Oliver

beaming down on him

from the heavens.

April 26: "Medium and Message," Beauty, "Mind Blown"

Billy Collins admires beauty . . .

Medium and Message

by:  Billy Collins

If John Keats

had ever held in his hand

a photograph of Marilyn Monroe,

his mind would have been blown twice, at once.

One of John Keats' most famous quotes is this:  "A thing of beauty is a joy forever; its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.  Beauty is truth, truth beauty that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

I think, in a way, this is what Collins' poem is about.  Keats wrote about beauty (and mortality and immortality, among other things).  He was very aware of the fragility and transience of life.  Lilacs bloom and wither in the space of a few weeks.  Sunrises give way to day.  Sunsets, to darkness and stars.  Notre Dame cathedral was destroyed by fire.  

Tonight, I took part in a poetry reading for the Great Lakes Poetry Festival.  Several authors from Harvard Square Press read from their books, and the venue was standing room only.  The highlight of the evening for me was a reading by a great friend whose chapbook was just published.  The poems were dazzling, and I was thrilled listening to my friend give them breath.

Saint Marty's mind was blown, and he wasn't even holding a picture of Marilyn Monroe.

Mind Blown

by:  Martin Achatz

It doesn't take much, just

a line of poetry so strong

it could flatten a Kansas

town with the tornado

of its breath.

Picture courtesy of Sarah Still

April 25: "Art Revolutionaries," Indigenous Poetry Night, "Beauty"

Billy Collins admires painters . . .

Art Revolutionaries

by:  Billy Collins

Pollock yes,

but let's not forget

whoever it was

that painted the first

still life without fruit.

Indigenous poetry night at the festival.  Two wonderful poets read, and then we honored the memories of two other poets who passed away in the last year or so.  The poetry was full of delirium and heartbreak, and the room felt sacred and alive.  

One of the poets even dedicated one poem (about the Anishinaabe wild man--Bigfoot) to me.  

He sang it, and it was fine art for Saint Marty

Beauty

by:  Martin Achatz

They say it's in

the eye of the beholder,

which explains

parachute pants

and mullets.

December 9: "The World I Live In," STEM Education, Christmas Lights

Mary Oliver refuses to live in an orderly house . . .

The World I Live In

by:  Mary Oliver

I have refused to live

locked in the orderly house of

     reasons and proofs.

The world I live in and believe in

is wider than that.  And anyway,

     what's wrong with Maybe?

You wouldn't believe what once or 

twice I have seen.  I'll just

     tell you this:

only if there are angels in your head will you

     ever, possibly, see one.

The majority of poets I know never live in the orderly house of reasons and proofs.  To be a poet, you must live in a house of Maybe, as Oliver says.  Wonder is necessary for poets; certainty is not.  In fact, I would venture to say that certainty is the antithesis of poetry.

Of course, modern life doesn't leave a lot of room for wonder.  STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education has become a buzz word in schools and universities.  Disciplines like mythology or literature or poetry or painting are now viewed by academia as frivolous, only for daydreamers and fools.  (Thank you, Bill Gates.)  The focus of education now is critical thinking and problem solving.  Black-and-white answers.  Equations and logic.

Where does wonder fit into this new world order?  

The one word answer:  nowhere.

Don't misunderstand me.  I think STEM subjects are necessary.  Important.  For example, we need to understand how to stop climate change.  (Yes, poets believe in climate change.)  That requires science and technology and engineering and math.  (If you don't believe in climate change, let me offer you some advice/wisdom:  MAGA hats make you look stupid, and Donald Trump and his family are criminals and grifters.)  

However, wonder and beauty are just as necessary as the "hard" disciplines.  Some of history's greatest scientists/mathematicians were also accomplished artists.  Albert Einstein studied and played violin.  Isaac Newton wrote poetry.  Galileo was a painter.  If these men didn't have the wonder of a poet or artist or musician, perhaps we wouldn't have quantum physics.  Or an understanding of gravity.  Or a heliocentric model of the universe.

My point is that everyone needs wonder in their lives, from nuclear physicists to sanitation engineers.  This evening, after dropping our son off for a school dance, my wife and I visited a beautiful local Christmas light display.  We wandered through each glowing tableau filled with child-like wonder.  It was a perfect melding, for me, of science and technology and art, and I was surrounded by dumbstruck kids, smiling adults, and one or two dogs.  All there for the wonder.

Saint Marty does have angels in his head, and tonight he saw some.

October 18: "At Blackwater Pond," Beautiful Things, Love and Wonder

Mary Oliver and a beautiful thing . . . 

At Blackwater Pond

by:  Mary Oliver

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled

after a night of rain.

I dip my cupped hands.  I drink

a long time.  It tastes

like stone, leaves, fire.  It falls cold

into my body, waking the bones.  I hear them

deep inside me, whispering

oh what is that beautiful thing

that just happened?

Like Oliver's bones, we are all sometimes shocked by beautiful things that happen to us.

Sometimes, that beautiful thing is an unexpected letter, card, email, or text.  My niece sent me this text right before the awards ceremony on Sunday, where I was named Writer of the Year:

I won't make it tonight to your ceremony, but I am soooo proud of you!  There's no one more deserving than you!

My daughter, the day after I received the award, sent me this message:

just wanted to tell you how proud i am to have you as my father, im so happy to see you be recognized for your work last night as you're the hardest working person i know.  the foundation you set for me in english, poetry, art, and music has allowed me to never be afraid to express myself and always be a creative soul.  i love you sooo much and i'm forever grateful that i somehow got lucky enough to have someone as caring, thoughtful, kind, and supportive as you to be my dad.💓💓

I not ashamed to say that I cried when I got both of these texts.  A lot.  Two beautiful things that fell out of the sky into my hands.  I know that my niece loves me.  I know that my daughter loves me.  But to have my niece say she's proud of me, to have my child say that she's lucky to have me as a father . . . Well, it was better than the award itself.  Pardon my language, but it proved to me that I've done something fucking right in my life.

And tonight, I had two more beautiful things happen:  beautiful readings by two poet friends--Dennis Hinrichsen and Andrew Collard.  It was an hour of absolute joy listening to them read from their new books, Sprawl and Flesh-plastique.  Their poems were moving, astonishing, challenging, and true to the bone.  I was blessed by their words.

So, if you can't tell, Saint Marty is sort of blissed out this evening.  The world contains so much love and wonder and beauty.

January 14: "Stebbin's Gulch," Ordinary Saturday, Beauty

Mary Oliver, beauty, and perfection . . . 

Stebbin's Gulch

by:  Mary Oliver

by the randomness

of the way

the rocks tumbled

ages ago

the water pours 

it pours 

it pours

ever along the slant

of downgrade

dashing its silver thumbs

against the rocks

or pausing to carve

a sudden curled space

where the flashing fish

splash or drowse

while the kingfisher overhead

rattles and stares

and so it continues for miles

this bolt of light,

its only industry

to descend 

and to be beautiful

while it does so,

as for purpose

there is none,

it is simply

one of those gorgeous things

that was made

to do what it does perfectly

and to last,

as almost nothing does,

almost forever.

One thing, among many, that Mary Oliver is good at is recognizing everyday beautiful things.  Like pouring water and silver fish in silver pools and a kingfisher gliding and diving in a blue sky, being as perfect as it can be for as long as it can.

I had a pretty ordinary Saturday.  I practiced music at three churches.  Ran a few errands.  Picked up some prescriptions at the pharmacy.  Read some poetry.  Went to the 4 p.m. Mass and made some noise on the pipe organ.  Then had pizza and a game night with my family.  Like I said, completely ordinary.  Almost perfect.

The sun made an appearance today, and the world sort of turned to water a little.  Icicles dripped and got shorter and flashed with light.  And it was beautiful.  I just stood in my backyard this afternoon, listened to snow melt.  Most people don't realize that melting snow makes noise.  Probably because most people don't or won't take the time to notice.  Snow snaps and sort of sighs when it melts, like it's tired of being so cold all the time and is letting its defenses down.  You know how, when you sit in one place for a long time and finally get up and move, your body cracks and groans?  That's the best way I can describe it.

And that noise was beautiful this afternoon, along with all the tree branches shifting and dropping clumps of white.  There were birds.  I'm not sure what kind of birds they were, but they sat up high in a pine and keened at me with high piccolo notes.  And that was beautiful, too.

As I said, every day is filled with moments like this.  It's just a matter of slowing down long enough to let the world catch up with you.  Of course, as Mary Oliver notes, beauty and perfection can't last forever, not matter how much you want them to.  And there is no purpose in beauty.  It simply is . . . beautiful.  

So, I hold on to this afternoon, with its melting snow and snapping light.  Eating pizza and playing silly games with my family.  And then writing this blog post to try to make it all last forever.

Saint Marty had a beautiful, ordinary, perfect day.

August 3: Ambergris, Eventful Week, Beauty

Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that subject. For at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day, the precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem to the learned. Though the word ambergris is but the French compound for grey amber, yet the two substances are quite distinct. For amber, though at times found on the sea-coast, is also dug up in some far inland soils, whereas ambergris is never found except upon the sea. Besides, amber is a hard, transparent, brittle, odorless substance, used for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and ornaments; but ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy, that it is largely used in perfumery, in pastiles, precious candles, hair-powders, and pomatum. The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter's in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavor it.

Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the cause, and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to cure such a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering three or four boat loads of Brandreth's pills, and then running out of harm's way, as laborers do in blasting rocks.

I have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris, certain hard, round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought might be sailors' trowsers buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they were nothing, more than pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that manner.

Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be found in the heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee of that saying of St. Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and incorruption; how that we are sown in dishonor, but raised in glory. And likewise call to mind that saying of Paracelsus about what it is that maketh the best musk. Also forget not the strange fact that of all things of ill-savor, Cologne-water, in its rudimental manufacturing stages, is the worst.

I should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal, but cannot, owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made against whalemen, and which, in the estimation of some already biased minds, might be considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said of the Frenchman's two whales. Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous aspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is throughout a slatternly, untidy business. But there is another thing to rebut. They hint that all whales always smell bad. Now how did this odious stigma originate?

I opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the Greenland whaling ships in London, more than two centuries ago. Because those whalemen did not then, and do not now, try out their oil at sea as the Southern ships have always done; but cutting up the fresh blubber in small bits, thrust it through the bung holes of large casks, and carry it home in that manner; the shortness of the season in those Icy Seas, and the sudden and violent storms to which they are exposed, forbidding any other course. The consequence is, that upon breaking into the hold, and unloading one of these whale cemeteries, in the Greenland dock, a savor is given forth somewhat similar to that arising from excavating an old city graveyard, for the foundations of a Lying-in Hospital.

I partly surmise also, that this wicked charge against whalers may be likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, in former times, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, which latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in his great work on Smells, a text-book on that subject. As its name imports (smeer, fat; berg, to put up), this village was founded in order to afford a place for the blubber of the Dutch whale fleet to be tried out, without being taken home to Holland for that purpose. It was a collection of furnaces, fat-kettles, and oil sheds; and when the works were in full operation certainly gave forth no very pleasant savor. But all this is quite different with a South Sea Sperm Whaler; which in a voyage of four years perhaps, after completely filling her hold with oil, does not, perhaps, consume fifty days in the business of boding out; and in the state that it is casked, the oil is nearly scentless. The truth is, that living or dead, if but decently treated, whales as a species are by no means creatures of ill odor; nor can whalemen be recognised, as the people of the middle ages affected to detect a Jew in the company, by the nose. Nor indeed can the whale possibly be otherwise than fragrant, when, as a general thing, he enjoys such high health; taking abundance of exercise; always out of doors; though, it is true, seldom in the open air. I say, that the motion of a Sperm Whale's flukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dress in a warm parlor. What then shall I liken the Sperm Whale to for fragrance, considering his magnitude? Must it not be to that famous elephant, with jeweled tusks, and redolent with myrrh, which was led out of an Indian town to do honor to Alexander the Great?

So, an entire chapter on the perfume of whales.  Again, this is one of Melville's digressions, which take up a majority of the entire novel.  Yes, whales were the source of perfumes back in the day.  And yes, the source of ambergris is a little disgusting.  However, I would venture to say that many beautiful things in the world have very unbeautiful sources.  As the old saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

First, I must apologize for my prolonged absence.  I have had an eventful week of . . . well . . . events.  A tribute to poet Judith Minty on Wednesday night, for which I wrote a brand new poem.  A poetry workshop last night.  In between, I've been doing publicity and making arrangements for a Keweenaw Flood Relief event that I've organized for next Wednesday night.  That has included arranging readers and donations, doing interviews, trying to set up something with the local television station, and contacting a caterer.  Like I said, an eventful week.

But I did have many moments of beauty in the midst of all this chaos.  The Judith Minty tribute was beautiful and funny and moving.  I loved hearing the stories from friends and acquaintances.  And I loved hearing Minty's poems read aloud by so many different voices, including a singer/songwriter who put a couple of them in musical settings.  So inspiring.

That was the first beautiful thing in a week of chaos.

At this event, I also had a very unexpected compliment come my way.  I was speaking with the chair of the English Department before things got rolling, and she said, "I want you to know how impressed I've been with the work you've done as Poet Laureate.  How you've used the position to focus on charities and different causes.  That's been really wonderful."

I don't deal with praise well.  Don't think what I do is all that unique or special.  I do what my mother taught me when I was very young:  I try to use the gifts that I've been given to do some good in the world.  Plain and simple.  So, given a position like Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula, I view it as a wonderful vehicle not only to demystify poetry for the public, but also to focus a little more attention on things like homelessness and hunger and, next Wednesday, flood relief.

I thanked my boss for the compliment and said something like, "It's something that I feel very strongly about."

That was the second beautiful thing in a week of chaos.

Last night, I was given the opportunity to lead my monthly poetry workshop.  These workshops have become one of the highlights of my time as Poet Laureate.  At the university, I'm not given many opportunities to talk about and teach poetry.  That's saved for the full-timers.  So, being able to share my passion for poetry with a group of like-minded people is very fulfilling.  It recharges my poetic batteries.

And that was the third beautiful thing in a week of chaos.

Next week promises more chaos.  A poetry workshop, open mic, and the Flood Relief event.  However, I know there will also be moments of beauty, as well.  And that makes it all worthwhile.

Saint Marty is thankful this evening for chaos.

April 8: Lyricism, Billy Collins, "Litany"

I am sorry that I wasn't able to provide a poem last night.  Ran out of time.  Too busy.  Too tired.  Too overworked.

Tonight, I'm still out of time. Still busy.  Still tired.  Still overworked.  Yet, I need some poetry to keep me sane.  Billy Collins poetry.

I have a love poem this evening.  A Billy Collins love poem.  That means there's not going to be a whole lot of "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" or "How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways."  It's a poem about real love.  Messy love.  Love that recognizes limitations, that sees reality.  It's also love that indulges in beauty and lyricism.

Saint Marty needs a little lyricism tonight.

Litany

by:  Billy Collins

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon
You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.

I prefer white wine, myself