June 22: "Quickie Ekphrasis," Art, "Everyday Ekphrasis"

Billy Collins at tea time . . .

Quickie Ekphrasis

by: Billy Collins

I looked at a postcard

of Mount Rushmore

while I cooled my tea with a spoon

then I turned over

the postcard of Mount Rushmore

and bit into a buttered scone.

Art happens every minute of every day.  Ask any poet or painter or quilter or musician.  Sure, every once in a while, inspiration strikes and something new and beautiful is born.  However, if an artist (or poet or musician or fill-in-the-blank) always waits to be inspired before picking up a brush (or pen or violin or fill-in-the-blank), then there would be much less painting and poetry and punk in the world.  (Yes, punk music is an art.)

I have to confess that I don't really believe in inspiration.  My poems are usually written through struggle and stress, each one going through draft after draft.  The trick for me is practice.  I write all the time.  Even if I'm just running to the post office to mail a postcard, I take my journal and pen with me.  Because you never know when a poem will tap you on your shoulder.  You have to be ready.  All.  The.  Time.

And, as I said at the beginning of this post, we are surrounded by art every day.  We just have to train our eyes (or ears or bodies) to recognize it.  Once a person opens up to that recognition, it becomes much easier to write a new poem or paint a new landscape.

It has been raining since I woke up this morning.  It's cool tonight, with no stars or moon.  In short, not a day that inspires anything but naps and comfort food.  Yet, I managed to write this blog post and the poem below.  Through sheer stubbornness.

Saint Marty may write about the callous on his big toe tomorrow

Everyday Ekphrasis

by: Martin Achatz

Isn't every poem

an act of ekphrasis,

including this one

about my dog shitting

in my backyard

as rain turns the grass

into a pond Monet

would have painted?

April 6: Very Very Improbable, Good Improbabilities, Fill Me Up

Zaphod Beeblebrox and Trillian are arguing about the presence of Arthur and Ford on their stolen spaceship . . .

He tapped irritably at a control panel.  Trillian quietly moved his hand before he tapped anything important,  Whatever Zaphod's qualities of mind might include--dash, bravado, conceit--he was mechanically inept and could easily blow the ship up with an extravagant gesture.  Trillian had come to suspect that the main reason he had had such a wild and successful life was that he never really understood the significance of anything he did.

"Zaphod," she said patiently, "they were floating unprotected in open space . . . you wouldn't want them to have died, would you?"

"Well, you know . . . no.  Not as such, but . . ."

"Not as such?  Not die as such?  But?"  Trillian cocked her head on one side.

"Well, maybe someone else might have picked them up later."

"A second later and they would have been dead."

"Yeah, so if you'd taken the trouble to think about the problem a bit longer it would have gone away."

"You'd have been happy to let them die?"

"Well, you know, not happy, as such, but . . ."

"Anyway," said Trillian, turning back to the controls, "I didn't pick them up."

"What do you mean?  Who picked them up then?"

"The ship did."

"Huh?"

"The ship did.  All by itself."

"Huh?"

"While we were in Improbability Drive."

"But that's incredible."

"No, Zaphod.  Just very very improbable."

"Er, yeah."

You know, I've been dealing with the improbable for quite a while.  Some of the faithful disciples of this blog may argue with my use of the word "improbable."  They would say that everything that I write about is fairly common--experiences that many people have every day.  That may be true.  People are diagnosed with lymphoma of the brain every day.  People are displaced from their jobs every day.  People work three and four jobs every day to pay their bills.  People's brother and sisters and parents die every day.  I know all this.  However, to me, my life seems improbable, and I have the same kind of reaction to this improbability that Zaphod has.  I bristle and complain.

I'm sitting in McDonald's this morning, after a fairly emotional week of goodbyes and endings, feeling a little empty.  Like I don't have any more to give at the moment.  In the coming week, I start a new/old job with new hours and duties.  There will be a learning curve for sure.  It's not a job that I'm particularly excited about.  I'm sure my attitude will change eventually.  I'm still adjusting to the upcoming change, and you all know how well I deal with change.

So, indulge me today.  I'm going to try to think about the good improbabilities of my life.  Things that fill me up again.

IMPROBABILITY #1:  I am a poet.  This one has brought into my life many joys.  Friends.  Opportunities.  Ways to do good in the world.  At this moment, my tribe consists of poets who think like me, share my values.

IMPROBABILITY #2:  I am the Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula, for the second time in a row.  This one still blows me away.  There are so many great writers who've been nominated for this position.  Mentors and friends and heroes.  The fact that this plumber's son was chosen still amazes me.

IMPROBABILITY #3:  My daughter.  She's 18 years old, about to graduate from high school.  Smart and beautiful and compassionate and passionate.  She danced into my life one cold December morning, and she fills me with improbable love.

IMPROBABILITY #4:  My son.  My orange child.  He's so much like me that it's frightening.  We butt heads.  A lot.  But he makes me laugh, gives me hope.  (Of course, that hope is sometimes that he doesn't end up in prison, but it's still hope.)  Improbable love, yet again.

IMPROBABILITY #5:  My wife.  Next year will be our 25th wedding anniversary.  We have our share of struggles over the years.  Things that would have broken most marriages irreparably.  Yet, here we are.  Still struggling, but more in love than ever.  Improbable love.

IMPROBABILITY #6:  I lived to see the first African American President of the United States.  This one gives me hope, even in the dark time we're in right now in my country.  We got it right once.  We'll get it right again.

IMPROBABILITY #7:  My friends.  All of them.  I have a large tribe of people who genuinely care about my welfare.  When I'm feeling down, they reach out, do things that life me up.  When I have something to celebrate, they are the ones putting the candles on the cake.

IMPROBABILITY #8:  My brothers and sisters.  Dysfunction is always a part of familial relationships.  Yet, I know that these people have my back, will do anything to help me out when the chips are down.  They'll just bitch about it when I've crawled out of the hole.

IMPROBABILITY #9:  My wife's family.  These individuals welcomed me into their clubhouse over 25 years ago.  Recognized a fellow freak, I guess.  They continue to fill my life with acceptance, humor, and love.  Plus, they serve alcohol at Christmas dinner.

IMPROBABILITY #10:  The future.  I don't always think about the future as happy and fulfilling.  I'm a pretty pessimistic person a lot of the time.  However, in the past few weeks, as I've been struggling with my job and life situation, so many people have told me, "There's something better coming for you.  There is."  So, here's to something better.  Amen.

There you go.  I embraced goodness and hope this morning.  Don't worry.  Tomorrow, I'll be back to my old, cynical self tomorrow.

Today, however, Saint Marty is all about good improbabilities.

May 28: Maya Angelou

Today, poet Maya Angelou died.

My wife and I had the privilege of seeing Ms. Angelou speak two times.  She was an amazing person, and the world will be a slightly less beautiful place without her.

I will say no more.  I'm going to let Maya Angelou speak for herself.

Saint Marty's going to say a little prayer for her this evening.  A prayer of thanks.

December 15: The City, "The Triggering Town," Richard Hugo, New Cartoon

Once upon a time--of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve--old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house.  It was cold, bleak, biting weather:  foggy withal:  and he could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement-stones to warm them.  The City clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already:  it had not been light all day:  and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighboring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air.  The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms.  To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.

The scene above is Charles Dickens describing one of his favorite subjects:  London.  Dickens lived the majority of his life in the city, with brief sojourns in Paris and a couple of trips to Italy and the United States.  But, when push came to shove, he always returned to his beloved town.  Much of the stereotypical images we have of Great Britain come straight from the novels of Dickens.  London was Dickens' triggering town.

The poet Richard Hugo first published his book The Triggering Town:  Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing in 1979.  I first encountered Hugo's text in a poetry workshop I took as a grad student.  I expected writing that was dry and academic, a poet expounding on issues of rhythm and meter and prosody.  Hugo's first paragraph proved my expectations wrong:

I often make these remarks to a beginning poetry-writing class.

 never be a poet until you realize that everything I say today and this quarter is wrong.  It may be right for me, but it is wrong for you.  Every moment, I am, without wanting or trying to, telling you to write like me.  But I hope you learn to write like you.  In a sense, I hope I don't teach you how to write but how to teach yourself to write.  At all times keep your crap detector on.  If I say something that helps, good.  If what I say is of no help, let it go.  Don't start arguments.  They are futile and take us away from our purpose.  As Yeats noted, your important arguments are with yourself.  If you don't agree with me, don't listen.  Think about something else.

Richard Hugo and his crap detector were refreshing changes for graduate school.  Hugo gave me the right to listen to his advice and my instructors'  advice, absorb what worked for me and my writing, and dismiss the rest as interesting but useless.  The thing about Hugo's book is that most of his wisdom is right on target, for beginning and experienced poets alike.  I have kept returning to his text through the years, and I continue to learn from it.

The title of his book comes from his second chapter.  In it, Hugo says, "...The poem is always in your hometown, but you have a better chance of finding it in another.  The reason for that, I believe, is that the stable set of knowns that the poem needs to anchor on is less stable at home than in the town you've just seen for the first time...You must take emotional possession of the town and so the town must be one that, for personal reasons I can't understand, you feel is your own."  This "triggering town" is the basis, the launch pad, for a poem or short story or, in Dickens' case, novel.  Whether Dickens was living in England or France or Italy, he kept returning to London in his work.

Hugo gives other practical writing rules to follow (or ignore), as well:

• Use a number of pencils.
• Don't write with a pen.
• Pen or pencil, write with what gives you the most sensual satisfaction.
• Write in an hard-covered notebook with green lined pages.
• Don't erase.  Cross out rapidly and violently, never with consideration if you can help it.
• Make your first line interesting and immediate.
• Use "love" only as a transitive verb for at least fifteen years.
• No semicolons.  Semicolons indicate relationships that only idiots need defined by punctuation.  Besides, they are ugly.

You get the idea.  Hugo is opinionated about a lot of things when it comes to writing poetry.  I don't follow all of his rules, but he gives me the freedom to realize that each poet is as unique as a fingerprint; if I want to use a semicolon, I can.  If I agree with Hugo, I can avoid them.  The whole book is one great lesson on how to be yourself as a poet and person.

 Richard Hugo is a great friend to all writers.  His book is a triggering town for me, a place to which I keep returning when I want to live in Hugo's neighborhood and be reminded of the streets he travelled, the verbs and nouns in his backyard.

Saint Marty plans on having a cup of tea with Hugo this afternoon.  Maybe some blueberry muffins, too. 

Confessions of Saint Marty