April 16: "4'33" by John Cage," Silence, "Pin Drop"

Billy Collins indulges in some quiet jazz . . .

4'33" by John Cage

by:  Billy Collins

As I listened,

the scales

fell from my eyes.

If you're not familiar with 4'33" by John Cage, this poem simply won't work for you.  Watch a video, and you will see someone sitting at a piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds playing . . . absolutely nothing.  There's music sitting in front of the performer, and, every once in a while, the pianist may turn the page or lift a hand to the keyboard, but no sound is made.  Not a note.

If you've ever sat in forced silence, you know it isn't easy.  There's a human impulse to fill moments of prolonged nothing.  Almost five minutes of noiselessness is tantamount to waterboarding for some individuals.

Quiet doesn't bother me, but I'm a poet.  I need absence (of sound and people and distraction) to get words down on paper.

So, John Cage is right up Saint Marty's alley.

Pin Drop

by:  Martin Achatz

If you can

hear a pin drop,

pick up the bastard

before I step on it.

June 1: Spendthrift Genius, John Coltrane, "The Mad Feast"

It is, then, a small world there in the goldfish bow, and a very large one.  Say the nucleus of any atom in the bowl were the size of a cherry pit; its nearest electron wold revolve around it one hundred and seventy-five yards away.  A whirling air in his swim bladder balances the goldfish's weight in the water; his scales overlap, his feathery gills pump and filter; his eyes work, his heart beats, his liver absorbs, his muscles contract in a wave of extending ripples.  The daphnias he eats have eyes and jointed legs. The algae the daphnias eat have green cells stacked like checkers or winding in narrow ribbons like spiral staircases up long columns of emptiness.  And so on diminishingly down.  We have not yet found the dot so small it is uncreated, as it were, like a metal blank, or merely roughed in--and we never shall.  We go down landscape after mobile, sculpture after collage, down to molecular structures like a mob dance in Breughel, down to atoms airy and balanced as a canvas by Klee, down to atomic particles, the heart of the matter, as spirited and wild as any El Greco saints,  And it all works.  "Nature," said Thoreau in his journal, "is mythical and mystical always, and spends her whole genius on the least work."  The creator, I would add, churns out the intricate texture of least works that is the world with a spendthrift genius and an extravagance of care.  This is the point.

Dillard loves focusing on the minutia of creation.  Atoms and electrons and algae and dauphnias (which is a small freshwater crustacean used to feed aquarium fish).  The tiniest matter of the universe, for Dillard, holds the key to understanding the universe.  Rather than looking always to the stars to find the face of God, Dillard looks downward and inward.  She finds divinity in the capillaries of a goldfish tail.  Prophetical nature.

I, of course, agree with Dillard.  You only have to look at the fractal landscape of an icicle to know that there's something more at work than frozen water.  The creator, as Dillard says, invests as much genius in snowflakes as black holes.  We are surrounded by extravagant design every day, and Dillard finds great inspiration in it.

I am not a biologist or physicist or naturalist.  I appreciate nature in all of its complexity and beauty, could spend hours watching the breakers of Lake Superior on a stormy November day.  On a daily basis, however, I am indoors a majority of the time, with little exposure to windows.  Therefore, I must glean my daily inspiration from other sources.  Most of time, those sources are writers.

For instance, at the moment, I am rereading a book by a friend and colleague of mine.  It's called The Mad Feast, and it's a collection of essays about food.  No, it's not a cookbook, although it does contain recipes.  Matt, the author, sort of explodes the meaning of food.  For instance, in an essay about Okie Sirloin (barbecued bologna), he contemplates the Dust Bowl, migration, and the evolution of the parking meter.  It's weird and, at times, frustrating to read.  But it excites me, the way, I imagine, listening to John Coltrane excites a jazz musician.  It pushes the boundaries of food writing and travel writing and writing, in general.

Now, will I ever write like Matt?  Probably not.  It's just not me.  However, reading his book gives me license to be weird, attempt things I wouldn't normally attempt.  I have poems to write for an editor.  Poems that are pushing me in an artistic direction that makes me a little uncomfortable.  That's okay.  This is the point of creation, to invest an extravagance of care in the least works.  I need to surrender myself to that extravagance, the way Dillard and my friend, Matt, do. 

Saint Marty is on the prowl for a little spendthrift genius tonight.

November 30: Poet of the Week, Peter Thabit Jones, "Afternoon in May," "Ives" Dip, Off the Top of My Head

The Poet of the Week is Peter Thabit Jones.

I only recently found his collection, Poems From a Cabin on Big Sur, in a bag of books given to me by a friend.  I was immediately drawn to the title because I had the good fortune of spending five days in Big Sur, writing poetry with poet Sharon Olds.  That week seems like a dream now.  Ocean waves crashing all day and night.  A fat moon swimming in stars.  Sulfur baths.  And poetry.  A lot of poetry.

Thabit Jones spend a month in a cabin in Big Sur as a poet-in-residence.  His book is filled with the poems he wrote during that time, and they really capture the rugged simplicity and beauty of the area.  The first poem, especially, reminds me of the afternoons I spent standing on a cliff's edge, searching the Pacific for signs of a whale (I never saw one):

Afternoon in May

by:  Peter Thabit Jones

A whale?  Basking shark?
Something like a supple log,
The colour of rock,
Brownish, greyish, trawls its way
Through the Big Sur waves.
Seen, unseen, then seen, unseen.

I can almost smell the salt air reading that poem, and I can see the sea otters playing in the beds of brown kelp breathing on the waves.

Yes, on this first day back at work, I am being nostalgic for an experience that still fills me with great pleasure.  For five days, I didn't have to worry about work or teaching or money or car problems.  I woke in the morning, got dressed, and went for a walk.  I'd find a bench somewhere, pull out my journal, and start writing.  Breakfast.  Then more poetry.  Talking with Sharon.  Lunch.  Another walk.  More poetry.  Talking with Sharon.  Dinner.  More poetry.  All my days had this wonderful rhythm.  I felt like a real writer for a brief time in my life.

And, on this last day of the month of giving thanks, I am grateful for the gift of writing in my life.  The gift of poetry.  I am able to put words down on a page and have those words mean something to other people.  That is a great, great gift that God has given me.

My Ives dip question is this:

Will I ever feel like a real writer again?

The phonograph music would fill the living room, and she would find her head turning and digging deep into the easy-chair headrest in rhythm to the beat, as if she were a 1940s bobby-soxer, and she would daydream about the time when Robert had used their living room as a rehearsal studio for a kind of jazz group he put together with kids from the neighborhood.  Some knew what they were doing, others didn't, and the neighbors knew it too.  During those sessions he played a snare drum with brushes and foot-tapped a high hat and felt so honored, so formal about jazz, despite his ecclesiastical training, that he used to shine his penny loafers and put on a tie before playing.

Ives' son, Robert, feels like a real jazz musician in the above passage.  He dresses the part.  Jams with some of his friends.  He commits himself fully to the formal study of jazz.  He's not an amateur.  He's a serious student.

I have committed myself for over twenty years to the study, teaching, and practice of creative writing.  Maybe that makes me a real writer.

Or maybe that makes Saint Marty a complete idiot.

Off the Top of My Head