Monthly Archives: April 2020

19 posts

Wrapped in Simplicity, An Easter Morning Surprise

This morning, appropriate for our times, it was an Easter sunrise service of one. Two if you count the dog.

Not planned, actually. In lieu of an alarm clock, I now have an old dog who thinks he’s a rooster. At the first gray hint of approaching dawn, he’s outside the bedroom door squeaking like a rusty hinge.

Whining, it’s called in dogspeak.

Eventually he gets his way because the sound is uniquely sleep-unfriendly. So up I got and out we went. Down the street. Past the pond. Over the bridge.

Then, we followed his nose, which followed the usual route into the dewy, sniff-friendly field along the river to the waterfall and the roiling waters below.

There we saw it. That flint-spark atop the still-leafless trees and evergreens to the east. That’s when it dawned on me: Sunrise on Easter morning.

And so, quite spontaneously and while my best friend was otherwise occupied looking down, I looked up and said a nondenominational prayer for all denominations.

The prayer went out in circles like the proverbial ripples in a lake after a pebble falls into its depths.

The circles went so: for my family, my friends, my neighbors, my countrymen, my fellow citizens of the world. For health, for peace, for not only the pursuit of happiness, but its capture. The natural rights of man everywhere.

Amen.

Didn’t seem like too tall an order. At least at the time.

When the moment finally burst and I was just a man standing in a field again, I tugged on the dog’s leash and we continued our journey into the unknown by way of home.

Sometimes holidays come in odd packages, and sometimes they’re the best kind. No matter what the circumstances.

Easter 2020

The Groundhog Pandemic Sees Its Shadow

blathering comma mine poetry

groundhog

Friday. On the Internet, it’s historically a slow day. Why? A lot of folks have already started the weekend. Some take it off with regularity. Others leave for home early.

But now, people who used to work but no longer do because of the pandemic say things like, “I don’t even know what day it is anymore.”

OK, then. Call it Friday. A historically slow day.

One acquaintance told me she has dispensed with days of the week altogether. She says it’s Groundhog Day every day.

Bill Murray and Punxsutawney Phil would be pleased, as would the Buddhists, who are wondering if you are taking this “every day feels the same” opportunity to make yourself a better person.

Are you?

If your house is not chaotic with close-quartered family, you may be reading a lot. Trouble is, a lot of readers are concluding that books they read are “probably not the best choice, given present circumstances.”

I’ve seen this conclusion for most every type of book out there. My conclusion, then? It’s not the book. It’s the reader.

Man, does the first cup of coffee (black) satisfy the most. The second doesn’t quite match it, taste-wise. You can’t go home again. Thus spake Thomas Wolfe, forgotten author.

Speaking of, another friend of political bent emailed yet another “Who’s afraid of Thomas Wolfe” fear: maybe the United States can’t go home again, either. Or any country after this.

Seems thuggish autocrats (as he calls them) are using Covid-19 as cover to advance their agendas and consolidate their powers. It may be, by the time the virus lets up, that democracy (in so-called “democratic” countries) will be the biggest casualty. All while no one was looking. Or while everyone was distracted.

“Wisconsin is the harbinger in the U.S. That and the Supreme Court blessing, 5-4, for risking people’s lives to run a pandemic election that suppressed voter turnout and worked to the advantage of the powers-that-be. That’s Wisconsin-speak for ‘Republicans’.”

Then he said, “If you don’t know what that means for the country as a whole, then your wallet’s being picked while you’re smiling.”

Great. As if the pandemic weren’t bad enough, spider webs in my wallet are being picked while I’m trying to remember how to smile. Cue the Artful Dodger.

Shall I sum this up with a “Happy weekend, friends”? Nah. I can no longer summon the enthusiasm.

Rather, in honor of yet another Groundhog Day, the movie and the Buddhist metaphor, I’ll contemplate the Zen koan: “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”

Questions are so much sweeter than answers, aren’t they?

Quieting the “Chatter of Desire”

poetry reading poetry

hoagland

In our times we face some stark realities. One of them is disappointment. It’s small fry, really, but to many of us it’s a daily gnawing from inside, not to mention a reminder of a selfishness we can’t quite quell.

The ego, I guess. Or id, maybe. It likes to say things like, “Why me?” It likes to feel sorry for itself. And it tries like hell to be sympathetic and empathetic, but more often comes across as simply pathetic. Disappointed.

But disappointment, like most things, has its up side. I think of Tony Hoagland’s lines:

That’s what I like about disappointment:
the way it slows you down,
when the querulous insistent chatter of desire
goes dead calm

Then I feel a little better, because that’s what poetry does. Forces you to look at something from another angle. Slowing down is a good thing, right? We frequently talk about it, in normal times, but seldom indulge it.

And what about that “querulous insistent chatter of desire” we’ve never been able to name (until Hoagland helped)? Isn’t it the opposite of disappointment? Isn’t it as bad or worse?

Well, now that you put it that way, maybe so. Especially if you were Tony Hoagland, a man who, later in life, would have as much to celebrate as to lament.

So, as you read “Disappointment,” you might ask yourself this: Has my life in recent weeks been soaked in self-indulging disappointment, or am I seeing my petty desires a little better for what they are? Petty. And in some cases pitiful.

I don’t know. Maybe the answer will some day make you a stronger and better person. Then again, maybe not. Disappointment, after all, is a pernicious and ubiquitous foe.

Disappointment
Tony Hoagland

I was feeling pretty religious
standing on the bridge in my winter coat
looking down at the gray water:
the sharp little waves dusted with snow,
fish in their tin armor.

That’s what I like about disappointment:
the way it slows you down,
when the querulous insistent chatter of desire
goes dead calm

and the minor roadside flowers
pronounce their quiet colors,
and the red dirt of the hillside glows.

She played the flute, he played the fiddle
and the moon came up over the barn.
Then he didn’t get the job, —
or her father died before she told him
that one, most important thing—

and everything got still.

It was February or October
It was July
I remember it so clear
You don’t have to pursue anything ever again
It’s over
You’re free
You’re unemployed

You just have to stand there
looking out on the water
in your trench coat of solitude
with your scarf of resignation
lifting in the wind.

The Pandemic Strikes Publishing, Too

poetry poetry books publishing submitting poetry

covid

A pandemic wreaks havoc in both obvious and less obvious ways. The obvious ways appear, depressingly enough, on the homepages of our online newspapers and as “breaking news” on our televisions. Less obvious are the effects of being holed up at home, especially if you’re an extrovert or someone in a bad marriage or a kid who relies on schools for breakfast and lunch.

Less obvious than these less obvious items? Covid-19’s effects on publishing. This past week brought two interesting emails to my inbox. One was from a print magazine publisher that had already accepted one of my poems. They said the printing press that usually brought out their publication was not considered “essential,” therefore the magazine would not appear as scheduled. Instead, the editors were working on their first electronic version of the magazine ever.

Be patient, was their bottom line. And pray for us, because we’ve never done this before. I did not reply but my subconscious did: “Uh-oh.”

Another email came from a journal still entertaining a poetry submission I’d sent. They apologized (as if they had to, given the circumstances!) and said the whole pandemic thing had sent their efforts into disarray and that everything would be backed up, with the chance that said “everything” might even be backed up over a cliff like Wiley E. Coyote or something, so don’t expect to hear back from them soon, or at least as soon as they had promised.

Oh. OK.

So if you’re noticing little action on your Submittable page, now you know why. Granted, “action” is a misnomer when it comes to submitting to poetry journals because things move like sludge even in the best of times, but this is sludge in a stubborn mood we’re talking now!

I imagine this chaos extends to book publishing, too. My third manuscript, already seatbelted in and preparing for takeoff next week, is in for a long ride. Perhaps it will see Jupiter outside the window before I hear anything about its fate, good or bad. I’m packing extra sandwiches for the 57 poems, just in case.

Go ahead. Call me a helicopter author. But these are strange times, and all the old rules are going out the window. Like everything else, the publishing industry is either sick or in hiding.

A Little Good News in a World of Bad News

blathering comma mine opinion poetry

cardinal

Talking to friends and family on the phone (and neighbors outside—at a distance), I hear the same refrain: These are awful times.

Of course we state the obvious with these four words, but there are two things to consider: These could be worse times, one. And there are silver linings even in the worst of times, two.

Let’s start with the first. As any reader of dystopian fiction can tell you, a pandemic could be much worse than what we are presently experiencing. While Covid-19 kills at a much higher rate than the usual flu viruses (Types A & B) that infect people each winter, imagine where we’d be if the coronavirus were more lethal still.

In Emily St. John Mandel’s novel, Station Eleven, for instance, 99% of the world population is wiped out in short order by a virus. Before we leave that sobering number, consider how ill-prepared we were for the present pandemic. Will nations of the world learn their lessons once a vaccine is found for Covid-19 and be better prepared for the next crisis, or will they slip back into complacency and cut programs designed to stockpile and ready ourselves for something even worse?

Now that I’ve depressed you (I fear we each had the same answer to that question, given the “leadership” we’ve seen in the present pandemic), let’s move to the silver lining.

One of the eeriest memories I have from 9/11 is the empty skies. I looked up and it was nothing but God’s blue. No silver specks slowly moving across the celestial vault. No contrails stitching sky. No distant drones of airplane engines.

These past few weeks, I’ve noticed something similar but much less eerie. I go out on long walks and our street, typically semi-busy, is all but empty. Completely empty, if you go out between 6 and 8 a.m.

The dog and I walk the middle of the road like it’s a wide pedestrian path. Instead of the sound of tires on tar, the sounds of nature are magnified. The cardinals, nuthatches, and flickers. The chickadees. Ducks from the pond. A red squirrel chittering. Spring peepers from the bog.

The lack of competition from man-made sound has gifted us with the sounds of nature our forebears once enjoyed, sounds with no competition from human invention. The quiet, even interrupted by the tapping of a Pileated Woodpecker, seems so…gentle. And lovely, too.

Maybe it’s not much, but in awful times like these, we have to reach for “not much” and cherish it. Humans hunkered down means nature unleashed, as if our surroundings have, overnight, become game preserves and nature conservancies, all magnified by the rites of spring.

That’s right. Spring. A budding branch of normalcy populated with “life is as it should be” actors who go about their usual rituals.

Take it, I say. It’s good for the soul and nourishes the body. Silver linings like that shouldn’t be passed up.

Philosophy Needs Metaphor Like Cookies Need Milk

philosophy poetry reading poetry

They say we stand apart from animals on one count and one count alone: we think metaphorically. What’s more, if you want to show off by thinking philosophically, metaphor is surely your friend.

This knowledge, paired with something that you as a writer hold deep knowledge of, is literary gold. Philosophically speaking (like Plato or Aristotle might if you gave them another chance), what is your pastime, passion, or skill like?

If you were to hew a poem from such a question, it would require descriptive and narrative skills (important stuff only, please) as well as the gift of comparing two unlike things that readers would agree are alike in some way, after all. Do it well and even the lion might crown you king of the beasts!

Wondering what this might look like? Today’s poem, by Jeffrey Harrison, gives us both a pastime (fly fishing) and a cliché (the same river twice) in order to create metaphor.

Could you do the same for something you love to do, Mr. or Mrs. or Miss Philosopher Slash Poet or Short Story Writer or Essayist? Rhetorical question, of course.

The Same River
Jeffrey Harrison

Yes, yes, you can’t step into the same
river twice, but all the same, this river
is one of the things that has changed
least in my life, and stepping into it
always feels like returning to something
far back and familiar, its steady current
of coppery water flowing around my calves
and then my thighs, my only waders
a pair of old shorts. Holding a fly rod
above my head, my other arm out
for balance, like some kind of dance,
trying not to slip on the mossy rocks,
I make my way out to the big rock
I want to fish from, mottled with lichen
that has dried to rusty orange, a small
midstream island that a philosopher
might use to represent stasis
versus flux, being amidst becoming,
in some argument that is larger
than any that interests me now
as I climb out dripping onto the boulder
and cast my line out to where the bubbles
form a channel and trail off in a V
that points to where the fish might be,
holding steady amid the river’s flow.

Getting Mad as Hell and Not Taking It Anymore

blathering comma mine opinion poetry

cut

One weird development (of many, trust me) in this Year of Living Virally is what people are doing with extra time at home.

Yes, you’ve read a lot about people Netflixing but not chillin’. Eating. Taking up a hobby. Eating. Painting a room and ceiling. Eating. Reading War and for the hell of it, Peace. Eating. Getting in touch with one’s “Who’s a Nerd Now?” spirit and riding one’s overpriced Peloton bike. Eating. Baking, and even though it hasn’t gone in the oven yet and there’s egg in the dough, eating.

But I’m talking about getting mad as hell about something that’s disappearing like sand through our fingers: money.

Let’s start with the elephant on your television: cable TV. These clowns pretend to offer savings via “bundles” (as in “bundles” of money into their coffers and out of your wallet), but they take home some $180 a month or, in many cases, more.

And for what? Hundreds of channels, of which you watch, maybe, eight. Oh. And there remain dozens of channels STILL that cost EVEN MORE because you have to pony up more lucre comma filthy if you want to see them.

But the big driver in the piggish profits of cable companies is sports. Pity the non-sports fan paying for cable. All that money to watch a sappy Christmas Hallmark movie in April (recently ruled “cruel and unusual punishment” by the World Court at the Hague).

Major league sports, with their major league player salaries and their major league millionaire / billionaire owner profits cost a lot of money to broadcast. They are Culprit #1 behind bloated prices in the cable industry.

But what about now, with no live sports to speak of being televised and none scheduled for a very long time (unless you want to watch close-ups of Covid-19 viral proteins jousting with the armies of people’s immune systems)? Has cable television responded to the complete absence of sports by lowering your monthly bills?

That would be a “no,” as in big-time “no,” as in “it is to laugh” no.

I remember years back when a landscaping company sent notices to all of its customers saying it was raising prices on lawn-cutting jobs by $10 because of a horrific spike in the cost of gasoline.

Guess what happened months later when the gas prices went back down? You got it. Nothing. Telling us that, in this country, what goes up does *not* necessarily come down.

So, yes. Some of you sheltered-in folks have smartened up, become mad as hell, and called your cable company to tell them they can take their bloated cable box and…

Oh, wait. This is a family blog. Let us draw the curtains of courtesy over the remainder of that line and start streaming stuff on our TVs with something cheaper and a little less greedy and sports-driven.

Moral of the Post: Now that we’ve lost our jobs and the social fabric as we once knew it, it’s high time we think about ways to save ourselves a little money, starting with the most bloated offender in the house, cable television.

Cut the cord, then celebrate your savings by having something to eat.

cord cutting

Everything’s Gone Viral (And Other Sad Thoughts)

blathering comma mine humor opinion poetry random thoughts

seuss

It’s been a while since I did a “Random Thoughts” post. On this gloomy, rainy, viral Friday, maybe it’s time to open the stream of consciousness anew…

Looking at rain drops wobbling down the window glass always reminds me of Dr. Seuss’s book The Cat in the Hat, which I read frequently as a kid.
In fact, I often refer to rainy days as “Cat in the Hat Days.”
I feel like saying this is Day #___ of the coronavirus slash Covid-19 hunkering-down slash shelter-in-place slash lockdown crisis, but really, who knows where this really “began”?
I’ve a friend who has started a pool on when it “ends,” but again, this means we need to make like Webster and define “ends.”
Supposedly the virus has brought on a resurgence in reading.
And family sniping.
And eating.
A lot (thus the toilet paper shortage).
Helpful Hint: Food for Thought (packaged in books) brings zero calories. Compare to the nutrition panel on the side of ice cream half gallons.
Oh, wait. They don’t make half gallons anymore. Whatever smaller size it is, then. Packaging shrinks. Prices rise. To the tune of “America the Beautiful (Corporatocracy).”
It’s times like these that bring us together as a world. If the virus has no use for nationality, religion, race, or class differences, why should we? We’re all in this fight together, and hopefully, when it ends, we won’t forget its lessons.
Main lesson: People everywhere just want to be happy, to love their families, to live in peace. They have little use for leaders (of their country or others) who have other ideas, ones that have to do with power, war, and corruption.
April is National Poetry Month. Can you feel the joy? I received my final issue of Poetry, the magazine, this week. I let the subscription lapse because I wasn’t feeling a lot of joy over the editorial selections there.
That said, the April issue does include a new Ocean Vuong poem.
Which includes a stanza that reads: “Once, at a party set on a rooftop in Brooklyn for an “artsy vibe,” a young / woman said, sipping her drink, You’re so lucky. You’re gay plus you get to / write about war and stuff. I’m just white. [Pause.] I got nothing. [Laughter, / glasses clinking.]”
Sic semper artsy young white woman writers from Brooklyn. Vuong can be both funny and edgy.
Speaking of poetry, have you ever noticed, should you happen to get two acceptances in a row from poetry markets, that you feel invincible, like you’ve finally been “discovered”?
“Fool me once…”
Or how about those contests you occasionally enter. When you still haven’t heard back and the “decide by” date is but two days away, you conjure a big, shiny conference table surrounded by editors discussing the three finalists, one of which is your baby.
“Fool me twice…”
It’s hard being creative and flattening curves at the same time. (See previous reference to ice cream.)
On rainy days like today, I get my exercise by walking up and down the stairs for 20 minutes.
Helpful Hint: It goes much faster to music you like. Your brain focuses more on the rhythm and beat and less on the dog at the foot of the stairs staring at you like you’re some plain fool.
Easter approaches and, for many of us, we will be hamming it up alone with our spouses (pass the horseradish). Nearby family might as well be far away family when each person you used to hug and kiss is the sum of every person he or she has met in the past 14 days.
Man, do I hate doing math like that. Welcome to 2020, the Year of Living Dangerously.
With the libraries out of business, I’ve been scouring my shelves for books I own but haven’t read. A New York Times article on books to read during the Coronavirus Captivity recommended Goncharov’s Oblomov, a book I actually own. “Huzzah!” I said (because I so seldom get a chance to say, “Huzzah!”)
The excitement didn’t last, however. The book I am presently reading: Anton Chekhov: A Life in Letters, includes a screed where Chekhov tells a friend that, after rereading Oblomov, he found it entirely lacking.
Even dead men can take the wind out of your sails.
Poor Chekhov. I cringe every time he coughs up blood and tells his brothers or sister not to tell Mama or Papa!
As I sip my morning sanity: Thank God there have been no coffee bean shortages.
(Shhh! Don’t give anyone ideas.)
Stay safe, be productive, and be kind.

A Poem About Poets? Must Be April.

poetry reading poetry

hofmann

April is poetry month. Calloo! Callay! (As they used to say.)

To celebrate, the august and top-paying poetry journal, Poetry, penciled in Michael Hofmann as its lead-off batter in their April 2020 edition. The poem? “Famous Poets.”

Until the last stanza, the poets are plural and the pronouns “he” and “she” are used. But, in the end, the poem finishes with the line “On his way somewhere,” leading one to believe it might be about a particular famous poet (as if there were many to choose from).

I would say the tone is humorous throughout, with a more serious undercurrent, but then, what do I know, being a poet five times removed from his distant cousin in Kazakhstan, fame.

I’ll say this. The poem dares to use the word “plethora,” a word famous for being avoided. Cheers for that. And Hofmann himself, though he apparently has written five collections of poetry, is not famous. Or at least not famous enough for me to know. (Consider the source, however, as the only famous living poet I know is St. Billy of Collins.)

Note, too, how the final stanza swings its elbows more with the opinions, as if Hofmann’s alter ego took over for the finish with a flourish. Previous to that, it’s almost avuncular in its approach, as if Hofmann knows the ropes and is gently amused. In the end, though? Less so.

I’m not sure I appreciate it as much as I would if I were a veteran warrior of the poetry circuits. I’m not. Me, I’ve only had minor experience with poets and learned a few hard lessons about a few personalities, all decidedly not famous but all willing to dream the dream and express their opinions as if they were.

How about you? Are you famous enough to understand all the allusions Hofmann offers? Give it a go and let me know!

Famous Poets
Michael Hofmann

Privileged inhabitants of a biotope of vouchers,
disbursements and residencies; miracles of state support
and a surprising plethora of who-knew international systems;
experts at putting the bite on the hand.

Languishing behind iconic early photographs
of themselves in camps, at borders, over war zones,
canvassing the trouble spots;
no longer to be met with at home, wherever that was.

Un peu partout, then (means: angry everywhere).
Their one vein is praise, though only
of the austerely praiseworthy. Bread. Tea. Salt.
Their second: speechless indignation, yards of it.

They put the bien in pensant. Papabile in age (though see also: mamabile).
The love life makes an agreeable pasture.
The personal is/is not political.
Faithful bonds, or, conversely, his/her sterling appetites.

But orthodox stuff. Mother and father position.
Comfortingly behind the times. The men strong, silent,
oh-so-performing, the women granted/claiming all of two modes:
the abject pine and the wowingly satisfied.

Poems that, because anyone might have written them,
appeal to everyone. That resist the understanding not at all,
that barely engage it. Atlanta airport. A vision of Yevtushenko
in yellow. A loud suit. On his way somewhere.

"Famous Poets" Michael Hofmann