March 11, 2025: "Bread," Letting Go, "Before and Before"

I spent this afternoon participating in a writing workshop led by one of my best friends.  (I almost typed "best writing friends," but we've known each other for over thirty years, which makes our friendship a little more than acquaintances getting together at a coffee shop once a month to scribble in notebooks.)  He knows me and my struggles pretty intimately.

One of the topics my friend and I always wrestle with is staying fresh in our writing.  Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro once said, “My subject matter doesn't vary so much from book to book. Just the surface does. The settings, etc. I tend to write the same book over and over, or at least, I take the same subject I took last time out and refine it, or do a slightly different take on it.”  

So, yes, all writers have subjects they obsess over.  It's the nature of the beast.  I've written so many poems about my daughter and son that I can't count them all.  (Sharon Olds writes about her kids a lot, so I'm in good company.)  Even when I set out to write about something else, my offspring will sneak into the poem as if they were playing hide-and-seek with the words.

Sharon Olds writes about her daughter making some . . . 

Bread

by: Sharon Olds

When my daughter makes bread, a cloud of flour
hangs in the air like pollen. She sifts and
sifts again, the salt and sugar
close as the grain of her skin. She heats the
water to body temperature
with the sausage lard, fragrant as her scalp
the day before hair-wash, and works them together on a
floured board. Her broad palms
bend the paste toward her and the heel of her hand
presses it away, until the dough
begins to snap, glossy and elastic as the 

torso bending over it,
this ten-year-old girl, random specks of yeast
in her flesh beginning to heat,
her volume doubling every month now, but still
raw and hard. She slaps the dough and it 

crackles under her palm, sleek and
ferocious and still leashed, like her body, no
breasts rising like bubbles of air toward the 

surface of the loaf. She greases the pan, she is
shaped, glazed, and at any moment goes
into the oven, to turn to that porous
warm substance, and then under the
knife to be sliced for the having, the tasting, and the
giving of life.

Olds wrote this when her daughter was still young, full of bubbles of yeast, rising in the pan.  So many of my poems over the last 24 years have been about this process of watching my kids grow older and away from me.  That's what parenting is all about--nurturing, loving, teaching, holding your breath, and letting go.

As many of my faithful disciples know, over the last ten years, I've lost a lot of loved ones--family and friends.  I carry the weight of those losses every day.  I'm not saying I'm in a constant state of mourning, but that grief floats to the surface a lot, especially in my writing.  Tonight, I wasn't planning on writing about the empty nest of my heart again, but here I am.

I think I'm a person who falls in love a lot.  I fall in love with poems, books, movies, music, friends, food, trees, birds, weather.  I'm not talking the casual "oh, I love Lucky Charms" kind of love.  I'm talking strong, visceral attachments.  Because of this habit of love, I frequently find myself experiencing nostalgia for past, better times.  

At the end of this coming summer, my daughter will be moving downstate for medical school.  In a year, my son will be a high school graduate (he's already talking about getting an apartment with a friend).  And I'm thinking about how much I miss reading to my daughter at bedtime and watching bad Bigfoot movies with my son.

They are becoming strong, independent people.  That means I did something right as a parent.  However, that doesn't make the letting go any easier.  I'm going to have to redefine who I am soon.  That's part of letting go:  figuring who you are again and again and again.  It's déjà vu.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about the déjà vu of writing a poem, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem about a déjà vu experience.  To strengthen that "I've been here before" feeling and allow your reader to experience it with you, repeat words and images from the first stanza in the stanzas that follow.  If you don't know how to begin, start with I walked into a room I had alread walked into before . . . and see where it takes you.

Before and Before

by: Martin Achatz

after Robert Hayden

I have written this poem before and before,

first on the night her final breath

sat in my eardrum like a trapped

moth, battering its wings against

the corners of my skull and brain.

I have written this poem before and before,

next on the eve of her funeral

when I wandered through strawberry

fields, following God's glowing soles

in the eyelid of dusk.

I have written this poem before and before,

on the night I saw her constellation

in the heavens, bright as Orion

in January, each star freckling

the darkness with her face.

I have written this poem on her birth

and death days, sitting in my car

near her grave, when my son became

a teenager and my daughter graduated

from high school then college, before

and before and before and before,

and now I write this poem before

I go to sleep, because a dog

is barking and barking outside, reminding

me of grief's austere and dogged hunger.

March 14: Best Friend, David Baker, "Mongrel Heart"

Tonight, I have a poem for a friend who lost her best friend yesterday.

Saint Marty sends his love.

Mongrel Heart

by:  David Baker

Up the dog bounds to the window, baying
     like a basset his doleful, tearing sounds
          from the belly, as if mourning a dead king,

and now he's howling like a beagle--yips, brays,
     gagging growls--and scratching the sill paintless,
          that's how much he's missed you, the two of you,

both of you, mother and daughter, my wife
     and child.  All week he's curled at my feet,
          warming himself and me watching more TV,

or wandered the lonely rooms, my dog shadow,
     who like a poodle now hops, amped-up windup
          maniac yo-yo with matted curls and snot nose

smearing the panes, having heard another car
     like yours taking its grinding turn down
          our block, or a school bus, or bird-squawk,

that's how much he's missed you, good dog,
     companion dog, dog-of-all-types, most excellent dog
          I told you once and for all we should never get.

September 25: Old Gang of Mine, Best Friend, Lobotomized

Now an optometrist called for attention.  He proposed a toast to Billy and Valencia, whose anniversary it was.  According to plan, the barbershop quartet of optometrists, "The Febs," sang while people drank and Billy and Valencia put their arms around each other, just glowed.  Everybody's eyes were shining.  "The song was "That Old Gang of Mine."

Gee, the song went, but I'd give the world to see that old gang of mine.  And so on.  A little later is said, So long forever, old fellows and gals, so long forever old sweethearts and pals--God bless 'em--And so on.

Unexpectedly, Billy Pilgrim found himself upset by the song and the occasion.  He had never had an old gang, old sweethearts and pals, but he missed one anyway, as the quartet made slow, agonized experiments with chords--chords intentionally sour, sourer still, unbearably sour, and then a chord that was suffocatingly sweet, and then some sour ones again.  Billy had powerful psychosomatic responses to the changing chords.  His mouth filled with the taste of lemonade, and his face became grotesque, as though he really were being stretched on the torture engine called the rack.

I am luckier than Billy.  I have close friends and best friends.  I'm not talking about people on Facebook who send you greetings on your birthday.  (Don't get me wrong.  Those are wonderful messages to receive.)  I'm talking about people who get me on a much deeper level, who have seen me at my absolute best and worst and still love me.  Billy really doesn't have that.

It may be a cliche, but my best friend really is my wife.  She knows me like no other person.  I would like to believe that all married couples have that, but, if Billy and Valencia are any indication, I know that is not always the case.  People fall out of love with each other all the time.

I'm lucky.  My wife and I have had our share of troubles, for sure.  Addictions and mental illness.  Separation.  Almost divorce (we even had custody papers drawn up).  But love won for us.  I wish I could provide some sage marital advice to couples out there, struggling to stay together.  I can't.  I really don't know what saved my marriage.  Forgiveness certainly.  Compromise.  Acceptance.  The ability not to judge, to remember why you fell in love in the first place.

Of course, all that has to come from both sides.  If only one person is doing all the work, the marriage is doomed.  I guess my wife and I are stubborn people.  We never gave up.  We came close, but we never took the final step.  And our secret is that both of is keep forgiving, compromising, and accepting.  We keep falling in love every day in small ways.

Sure, we still irritate the shit out of each other.  Sure, we yell sometimes.  Sure, we disagree about whether Fannie Flagg is a good writer or not.  That's normal.  Well, maybe not the Fannie Flagg thing, but the rest is regular as oatmeal.  Love doesn't mean you're lobotomized. 

But love does mean that you have someone to come home to at the end of the day who knows your failures and still, for some reason, thinks you're pretty damn cool.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for the love of his wife.

March 28: Father Tom, God's Love Number Thirty-Nine, Elizabeth Bishop, "The Moose," New Cartoon

When he met with Father Tom in a French restaurant up on Fifty-third Street, they greeted each other, embracing, the priest amused by Ives' white hair as Ives was by his own--it seemed like yesterday when Father Tom would hurry into the studios at the Art Students League, his collar stuck away in a drawer while, his face burning red, he would sketch beautiful young women.  That he'd stayed in the order so long had amazed Ives, considering how he seemed to like women, but for the most part the priest had lived the "hard life" in Rome, and his letters over the years had been filled with more good news than bad and the names of many interesting and holy places.  About once a year, usually around Christmas, he came back to the States to visit with his family in the northeast Bronx, and he and Ives would get together and get drunk and talk about the existence of God and the Bible and death and the soul to their hearts' contentment.

Father Tom is one of Ives' oldest friends.  While they only see each other once a year, they are a part of each other's lives.  Ives tells Father Tom about his struggle with forgiveness, his marriage difficulties.  Father Tom talks to Ives about healing and friendship.  It's a relationship that endures, despite distance and time apart.

This morning, I spoke to one of my best friends on the phone.  We haven't connected in months.  In fact, I think the last time I heard from him was last May, just after my brother died.  My friend is a pastor in downstate Michigan.  He used to be a pastor in the U. P., and, over seven years, we developed the kind of friendship that Ives and Father Tom have.  Even though we hadn't spoken to each other in almost a year, I felt comfortable, happy, speaking with him today.

We discussed our families, our jobs (he's moving to a different church in July), and our mutual acquaintances.  I won't say I caught him up on the gossip, because that's not a Christian thing to do.  But, I did share some stories of a sensitive nature without credible corroboration.  (Read into that state what you want.)  I'm going to call him again tonight, when I get home from church.

That's God's love number thirty-nine:  a best friend who loves gossip and poetry and God.

I was going to end Elizabeth Bishop week with her most famous poem, "The Fish."  But then I remembered another poem of hers that I love.  It's a long, gorgeous meditation on life and nature.  It could almost be a U. P. poem.

Saint Marty has to work on his Easter poem now.

The Moose

by:  Elizabeth Bishop

From narrow provinces
of fish and bread and tea,
home of the long tides
where the bay leaves the sea
twice a day and takes
the herrings long rides,

where if the river
enters or retreats 
in a wall of brown foam
depends on if it meets
the bay coming in,
the bay not at home;

where, silted red,
sometimes the sun sets
facing a red sea,
and others, veins the flats’
lavender, rich mud
in burning rivulets;

on red, gravelly roads,
down rows of sugar maples,
past clapboard farmhouses
and neat, clapboard churches,
bleached, ridged as clamshells,
past twin silver birches,

through late afternoon
a bus journeys west,
the windshield flashing pink,
pink glancing off of metal,
brushing the dented flank
of blue, beat-up enamel;

down hollows, up rises,
and waits, patient, while
a lone traveller gives
kisses and embraces
to seven relatives
and a collie supervises.

Goodbye to the elms,
to the farm, to the dog.
The bus starts.  The light
grows richer; the fog,
shifting, salty, thin,
comes closing in.

Its cold, round crystals
form and slide and settle
in the white hens’ feathers,
in gray glazed cabbages,
on the cabbage roses
and lupins like apostles;

the sweet peas cling
to their wet white string
on the whitewashed fences;
bumblebees creep
inside the foxgloves,
and evening commences.

One stop at Bass River.
Then the Economies 
Lower, Middle, Upper;
Five Islands, Five Houses,
where a woman shakes a tablecloth
out after supper.

A pale flickering.  Gone.
The Tantramar marshes 
and the smell of salt hay.
An iron bridge trembles 
and a loose plank rattles
but doesn’t give way.

On the left, a red light
swims through the dark:
a ship’s port lantern.
Two rubber boots show,
illuminated, solemn.
A dog gives one bark.

A woman climbs in 
with two market bags,
brisk, freckled, elderly.
“A grand night.  Yes, sir,
all the way to Boston.”
She regards us amicably.

Moonlight as we enter 
the New Brunswick woods,
hairy, scratchy, splintery;
moonlight and mist
caught in them like lamb’s wool
on bushes in a pasture.

The passengers lie back.
Snores.  Some long sighs.
A dreamy divagation
begins in the night,
a gentle, auditory,
slow hallucination. . . .

In the creakings and noises,
an old conversation
--not concerning us,
but recognizable, somewhere,
back in the bus:
Grandparents’ voices

uninterruptedly
talking, in Eternity:
names being mentioned,
things cleared up finally;
what he said, what she said,
who got pensioned;

deaths, deaths and sicknesses;
the year he remarried;
the year (something) happened.
She died in childbirth.
That was the son lost
when the schooner foundered.

He took to drink. Yes.
She went to the bad.
When Amos began to pray
even in the store and
finally the family had
to put him away.

“Yes . . .” that peculiar
affirmative.  “Yes . . .”
A sharp, indrawn breath,
half groan, half acceptance,
that means “Life’s like that.
We know it (also death).”

Talking the way they talked 
in the old featherbed,
peacefully, on and on,
dim lamplight in the hall,
down in the kitchen, the dog
tucked in her shawl.

Now, it’s all right now
even to fall asleep
just as on all those nights.
--Suddenly the bus driver
stops with a jolt,
turns off his lights.

A moose has come out of 
the impenetrable wood
and stands there, looms, rather,
in the middle of the road.
It approaches; it sniffs at
the bus’s hot hood.

Towering, antlerless,
high as a church,
homely as a house
(or, safe as houses).
A man’s voice assures us
“Perfectly harmless. . . .”

Some of the passengers
exclaim in whispers,
childishly, softly,
“Sure are big creatures.”
“It’s awful plain.”
“Look! It’s a she!”

Taking her time,
she looks the bus over,
grand, otherworldly.
Why, why do we feel
(we all feel) this sweet
sensation of joy?

“Curious creatures,"
says our quiet driver,
rolling his r‘s.
“Look at that, would you.”
Then he shifts gears.
For a moment longer,

by craning backward,
the moose can be seen
on the moonlit macadam;
then there’s a dim
smell of moose, an acrid
smell of gasoline.

Confessions of Saint Marty

December 30: A Tremendous Thing, Best Friend, Prayer for a Coworker

“You have been my friend," replied Charlotte. "That in itself is a tremendous thing...after all, what's a life anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die...By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.”

Charlotte's definition of friendship is pretty powerful.  It's all about sacrifice.  By helping Wilbur, she makes herself a better spider.  I think that's why E. B., White's book has endured for so long.  Charlotte is noble, selfless, and true.  We all want to have a Charlotte in our lives.

Last night, one of my best friends came to my house for a visit.  Let's call him Frodo.  Frodo was the best man at my wedding.  I've known him longer than I've known my wife.  In fact, he introduced me to my wife.  After he graduated from high school, he lived in Hawaii.  Then New Zealand.  Recently, he settled in California.  That's why he's home for the holidays this year.  He's only half a country away instead of half a hemisphere.

So, last night, we played the original version of Trivial Pursuit.  Genus Edition.  That means there were questions about the Soviet Union.  The West German Flag.  Things that don't exist any more but were relevant when the game was invented.  It was fantastic.  It was like stepping into a time machine.  We were back in the 1990s.  Young.  Passionate.  Full of hope.

And then we tried to get up off the living room floor without grunting and muttering things like, "Why didn't we sit at the dining room table?" and "I'm going to regret this tomorrow morning."  We had a wonderful time.  That's why I didn't post last night.  I was reliving my youth for a few hours.  By the time my friend left, it was close to midnight, and I was exhausted.

It's always nice to be reminded of the strength of friendship.  I haven't seen Frodo for almost three years.  Yet, we didn't miss a beat.  It was like the Soviet Union still existed, and the Berlin Wall wasn't in a million little pieces on people's mantles across the globe.  Frodo is the same.  I'm the same.  Our friendship is the same.  And I felt incredibly lucky last night.

Today, at work, one of my coworkers tried to harm herself.  It was an incredibly sad day.  "Mandy" is one of the kindest people in the office.  Always helpful and funny.  Always going the extra mile for patients.  She's spoken to me about her previous struggles with depression, but I never would have known she was struggling again.  Mandy's safe in the hospital now, thank goodness.  But she has a long recovery ahead of her.

I'm lucky.  I know I have family and friends, like Frodo, who love me.  I knew that last night.  I'm just hoping Mandy knows how much she is loved.

That's my prayer this evening.  I'm praying for Mandy, and I'm asking you to do the same.  Pray for her health and happiness.  Pray for her little boy and girl.  Let them all feel God's loving embrace.  Let them know the love and strength of friends and family.  There is Light in the darkness.

That is Saint Marty's solemn prayer this evening.

 This is for Mandy...

VOTE FOR ME FOR U. P. POET LAUREATE (voting ends tomorrow, December 31):

U. P. Poet Laureate Voting 

May 3: Brighton, Best Friend, "Traveling Through the Dark," William Stafford

Greetings from Brighton, Michigan.  Yes, dear disciples, I have ventured into the lower part of Michigan for this first time in almost a year.  When I left my home, snow and sleet were pelting the road, and fog hung in the air like a New Year's Day hangover.  Here, in Brighton, the temperature is close to 80 degrees, and the people are walking around in shorts and sandals.

It was a long day of travel.  We stopped in Roscommon to have lunch with my best friend who pastors the local United Methodist Church.  We weren't able to stay long, but we made plans to get together later this summer when I have a couple weeks of vacation.  He's been in Roscommon for close to three years now, but I still miss him a great deal.  If I'm lucky, I see him once or twice a year.

It took us about three hours to drive from Roscommon to Brighton.  The traffic was heavy, but we managed to arrive with very few wrong turns and missed exits.  The power was out in the hotel when we arrived, but it was restored shortly after we checked in.  My daughter has to be at the dance competition by 7 a.m. tomorrow.  I did a trial run to the competition site tonight to make sure I knew where I was going, but it was in the dark.  Everything looks different in the dark, and I hate driving after sundown.

Tonight, I'm giving you one of my favorite poems by William Stafford.  It's about traveling and darkness.

Saint Marty needs to get to bed.

Traveling Through the Dark

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason--
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all--my only swerving--,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

Saint Marty and his best friend

 

May 2: Saint Marty on the Road

For the next four days, I will be abandoning the usual format of Saint Marty.  I will be taking a road trip, Friday through Monday.  Therefore, I will be posting only once each day.  I will also be leaving Holden and company behind, as well.  Basically, I will be writing a travelogue.  Expect descriptions of snow and flooding and pestilence, although we are avoiding Flint this time.

The reason for the trip is dance.  We are traveling to Howell, Michigan. for the Cathy Roe Dance Competition.  No, I'm not breaking out my Village People headgear to Y-M-C-A downstate.  My daughter is competing.  I will simply be driving and spending way too much money.

Tomorrow will be one of the highlights of the weekend.  I will be meeting my best friend in Roscommon for lunch.  When I called him this evening to confirm, he told me it was 78 degrees today in his neck of the woods (to quote Al Roker).  After I got off the phone with my friend, I added a pair of shorts to my suitcase.  At the moment in my little section of the Upper Peninsula, we are experiencing ice and snow and freezing rain.  To the west, a winter storm warning is in place.  Flood warnings pretty much cover the entire U.P., too.  Pretty much, it's Armageddon above the Mackinac Bridge at the moment.

My daughter just got back from a school trip to Appleton, Wisconsin.  She's tired and cranky.  She just screamed something like, "Stop it!  Stop talking to me!  I'm not going to do this anymore!"  I'm ready to strangle her.

Saint Marty doesn't want to spend nine hours trapped in a car with this creature.

Anybody know the number of a good exorcist?

May 4: Greetings from Howell, Long Drive, Best Friend

Greetings from tropical Howell, Michigan.  We left home after an hour of frantic searching for part of my daughter's dance costumes.  We found the missing shoes and finally were on our way by 8:15 a.m. 

It was a very loooong drive.  We did stop in Roscommon to visit with one of my best friends who pastors the local Methodist church there.  We met at McDonald's and had a great time.  And then we followed my friend's directions to Howell and spent the next five hours making the three-hour trip.

And now we're in our hotel room.  We only got about an hour of swimming in the pool, much to my son's consternation.  I'm ready for bed.  We have to be at the competition site at around 7 a.m. tomorrow.

Sorry, no Charles Dickens or Scrooge tonight.  Too tired.

Saint Marty lives for dance.

Saint Marty and his friend

February 24: Ali Baba, Lost in Books, Imagination

"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy.  "It's dear old honest Ali Baba!  Yes, yes, I know!  One Christmas time, when yonder solitary child was left here all alone, he did come, for the first time, just like that.  Poor boy!  And Valentine," said Scrooge, "and his wild brother, Orson; there they go!  And what's his name, who was put down in his drawers, asleep, at the Gate of Damascus; don't you see him!  And the Sultan's Groom turned upside down by the Genii; there he is upon his head!  Serve him right.  I'm glad of it.  What business had he to be married to the Princess!"

Here is Scrooge gushing like a young schoolboy.  He's observing a younger version of himself, abandoned in an empty boarding school at Christmas time, and the younger Scrooge is obviously reading Arabian Nights, which, if memory serves, was one of Charles Dickens' favorite books.  Really, this passage is about the power of the imagination to transport a person out of a miserable life situation.  Scrooge speaks about these characters as if they are real people, good friends, who stop by for a visit.

I think that's one of the reasons why I became an English professor.  I love talking about books, teaching about writing.  I love gushing, sort of, like Scrooge does in this scene.  I'm sure I come across like some geek fanboy in the classroom sometimes.  Just give me a couple of hours to talk about a favorite book like A Christmas Carol or Slaughterhouse Five, and I'll have Ebenezer Scrooge or Billy Pilgrim sitting in the room with us, having a hot dog and talking politics.  That's the exciting part of the job.

For almost two months now, I've been writing about Scrooge at least once a day.  I feel as if I'm really getting under his skin.  I understand him when he's joyful and foolish, as in the above passage, and I'm beginning to understand him when he's cruel and vindictive, complaining about the surplus population.  Reading this book this closely is like reading Scrooge's blog.  He's becoming a flesh-and-blood person for me, as, I'm sure, long-time disciples of Saint Marty see me as a flesh-and-blood person, as well, even though we've never met (and probably never will).  That's the power of language and literature.

My best friend Sharon

I once had a workshop with the poet Sharon Olds.  For a week, I sat in the same room with her, listened to her talk about my poems, poetry in general, and life in general.  I went into the experience as the ultimate Sharon Olds geekboy.  I'd been a fan for years, had read all her books.  I felt like I was meeting a long lost relative.  It's an easy thing to do with Olds.  Her poetry is about such painfully personal experiences that being in the same room with her was like Scrooge being in the same room with Ali Baba.  It was all I could do not to invite her to my next birthday party.  That's the power of literature and writing and imagination.  Even though I'd never met her, she was one of my best friends.

So, if you think of me as one of your best friends, I'll take that as a compliment.  That means I'm connecting with you through my writing.  You and I have a shared experience.  That shared experience is language.  Through words, I'm standing in front of you right now, completely unclothed, baring everything.  There's an image for you.

Invite Saint Marty in for tea today.  Bake him some cookies.  He promises not to sit his naked ass on your sofa.