August 8: "Drawing Class," Marquette Poets Circle, Kindness

It has been a long day, and I'm not feeling particularly wise or smart right now.  

In the evening at the library, I hosted the monthly meeting of the Marquette Poets Circle.  I've been a part of this group for almost a decade now.  In the last year or so, I slowly took over leadership of the group from one of my best friends, an amazing individual who has been THE cheerleader for poetry in our area for a very long time.  I have learned so much from her as a poet and person.  There is no one nicer, kinder, and more generous with her time and talent.

 Tonight, there were about eight people present for the Poets Circle.  We spent the first 45 minutes or so writing.  I think we did three prompts.  I didn't write anything I'm going to share tonight, but it felt good to flex my poetry muscles.  Then, it was Open Mic.  Lots of great writers sharing, some for the first time.  

Funny, I never feel like I'm good enough to lead this group.  Yes, I can organize.  Sure, I can write poems and read poems and talk about poems.  However, I don't think I've ever learned how to lead with the humor and grace and generosity of my friend who used to lead the group.

Eventually, I may learn, lust like Billy Collins learns something new in today's poem . . . 

Drawing Class

by: Billy Collins

If you ever asked me

how my drawing classes are going,

I would tell you that I enjoy

adhering to the outline of a thing,

to follow the slope of an individual pear

or the curve of a glossy piano.

And I love trailing my hand

over the smooth membrane of bond,

the intelligent little trinity

of my fingers gripping the neck of the pencil

while the other two dangle below

like the fleshy legs of a tiny swimmer.

I would add that I can get lost

crosshatching the shadow of a chair

or tracing and retracing

the slight undercarriage of a breast.

Even the preparations call out to me--

taping the paper to a wooden board, 

brushing its surface clean,

and sharpening a few pencils to a fine point.

The thin hexagonal pencil

is mightier than the pen,

for it can modulate from firm to faint

and shift from thin to broad

whenever it leans more acutely over the page--

the bright yellow pencil,

which is also mightier than the sword

for there is no erasing what the sword can do.

We all started with the box and ball

then moved on to the cup and the lamp,

the serrated leaf, the acorn with its cap.

But I want to graduate to the glass decanter

and learn how to immobilize in lead

translucent curtains lifted in the air.

I want to draw

four straight lines that will connect me

to the four points of the compass,

to the bright spires of cities

the overlapping trellises,

the turning spokes of the world.

One day I want to draw freehand

a continuous figure

that will begin with me

when the black tip touches the paper

and end with you when it is lifted

and set down beside a luminous morning window.

On the way home tonight, I drove into a blazingly beautiful sunset.  I found myself reflecting on how I came to be in this position with the Poets Circle.  I've learned a lot in my life.  I started as a Computer Science major as an undergrad before switching to English.  I focused on fiction during my Master's program.  Finally, a little less than ten years later, I earned my MFA in poetry.  

Yet, the most important lesson I've learned in my life is this:  kindness.  Yes, assholes can rise to important positions (think of a certain former President of the United States with an orange complexion).  However, the people I admire most--whom I'm also privileged to call friends--are all incredibly kind.  That's something I try to remember every day of my life.

Saint Marty hopes he will be remembered for his kindness as well as his poetry.

February 27: Bug-Eyed with Terror, Anit-Semitic Acts, Kindness

Billy was helped to his feet by the lovely boy, by the heavenly androgyne.  And the others came forward to dust the snow off Billy, and then they searched him for weapons.  He didn't have any.  The most dangerous thing they found on his person was a two-inch pencil stub.

Three inoffensive bangs came from far away.  They came from German rifles.  The two scouts who had ditched Billy and Weary had just been shot.  They had been lying in ambush for Germans.  They had been discovered and shot from behind.  Now they were dying in the snow, feeling nothing, turning the snow the color of raspberry sherbet.  So it goes.  So Roland Weary was the last of the Three Musketeers.

And Weary, bug-eyed with terror, was being disarmed.  The corporal gave Weary's pistol to the pretty boy.  He marveled at Weary's cruel trench knife, said in German that Weary would no doubt like to use the knife on him, to tear his face off with the spiked knuckles, to stick the blade into his belly or throat.  He spoke no English, and Billy and Weary understood no German.

"Nice playthings you have," the corporal told Weary, and he handed the knife to an old man.  "Isn't that a pretty thing?  Hmmm?"

A gruesome little passage, Billy and Weary facing their captors.  Billy--the innocent, unarmed and already beaten--seems to be pitied by the German soldiers.  Roland, on the other hand, armed to the teeth and caught pounding the shit out of Billy, is treated with suspicion.  Violence begets violence.

Before I came to my university office this afternoon, I heard a news report on NPR about the increase in anti-Semitic acts across America.  Bomb threats being phoned in to Jewish schools.  Jewish cemeteries being vandalized.  At the end of the report, the commentator actually said, "There's no indication as to why there has been an increase in anti-Semitic acts . . ."  I sat in my car and actually said out loud, "Are you kidding me?"

I suppose the commentator was trying to be unbiased and/or objective, not wanting to connect the dots between Donald Trump and the rise in acts of hate.  It seems to me, however, that the Roland Wearys have been given the keys to the car in this country, and, until someone comes along and takes those keys away, there are going to be a lot of innocent bystanders who are going to get hurt.

So, I guess my job in this mess is to be kind.  Just like violence begets violence, I think kindness begets kindness.  At least, that's how I'm going to respond, by making a difference one kind act at a time.  That's my message for tonight.  Short and sweet.

Saint Marty is thankful this evening for the apple juice he drank at dinner.

January 27: Intolerance and Distrust, Naomi Shihab Nye, "Kindness"

Tonight, I've been thinking a lot about kindness.

I think that kindness is in short supply in the world today.  Instead, people seem to embracing anything but kindness.  Intolerance.  Anger.  Distrust.  Violence.  From all sides.  That's what I see on the news every day.  It's more than disheartening.

So, tonight, Saint Marty has a poem about kindness.

Kindness

by:  Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

April 21: Happy Birthday to My Sister

Tonight, I want to wish my sister a happy birthday.

She may not see this post tonight.  Or tomorrow.  Eventually, however, she will find it.  And I want her to know how much I appreciate her kindness and generosity and love every day.  My kids adore her.  My wife and she are good friends.  She's bailed me out of many a tough scrape over the last year or so.

So, happy birthday, sis!

Saint Marty sends you a big saintly blessing this evening.

P. S. Save me a piece of carrot cake!

Make a wish, cut the cake

May 1: The Kind Hand, Change of Heart, Summer Schedule

The kind hand trembled.

Any person reading the above sentence, knowing that it comes from A Christmas Carol, could choose from a whole bevy of characters to whom this kind hand may belong.  Bob Cratchit.  Tiny Tim.  Any of the Cratchits, really.  Fred the nephew.  Fezziwig.  Belle, Scrooge's former fiance.  Fan, Scrooge's sister.  Not a single person would guess the actual owner of that hand. 

That hand belongs to...(insert drum roll here)

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.  Yes, the phantom whom Dickens describes as being silent and grave.  When this Ghost first appears, Dickens writes, "...in the very air through which the Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery."  There isn't a whole lot of kindness to be found in this manifestation at the beginning of Stave Four.  But, by the end of the chapter, the Ghost's hand, as Scrooge pleads for his life and future, begins to shake and tremble.   Kindness breaks through the gloom and mystery.

Today, things change for me.  I officially enter my summer schedule.  No more leaving one job to go teach.  No lessons to plan.  No quizzes to grade.  Just the medical office.  All day.  I'm looking forward to the change.  Yes, I just used the phrase "looking forward to" and "change" in the same sentence.  I'm not off my meds, and I haven't snapped under the pressure of finals week.  This is a change I expect every year.  I'm ready for it.

That is why the hand of the future, for me, is "kind" this morning.  It's pointed to May and June.  To summer and heat.  To swimming and 90-degree afternoons.  To long dusks and trips to the local ice cream parlor.  It's a future I know.  It's a future I'm comfortable with, for the most part.

Saint Marty hasn't had a change of heart about change.  He still hates it.  Saint Marty's just looking forward to a little sunshine.

I wanna hold your hand...