An auspicious debut

A bookseller in NY, who makes a decent living reading poorly-written Ph.D. dissertations in the field of Education, wrote to me to ask for the SPD (Small Press Distribution) catalog, that I had slipped into my conference bag at the AWP in Atlanta.  From his own funds, he plans to buy a selection of SPD books for spring, perhaps for Poetry Month.  His sales are woefully meager, though his designs for bookselling are exquisite.  He is a genius, a musical prodigy at age 3.  He wrote, conducted, and produced his compositions for orchestra in Pittsburgh, while he was yet a graduate student.  I say "yet a graduate student," because an auspicious debut, in a realistic world, would lead to a next life as a composer.  Unfortunately, ours is an unrealistic world.  With so much mediocrity in teaching & academe -- and who can deny it? -- the debut in certain very talented people is the finale.

I genuinely believe that poetry is better than that, that it is a better community, whether inside or outside academe, and that is probably why my prodigious composer friend has turned to it out of love.  I happily gathered up catalogs I had gleaned at the conference.  I took out a mailer, filled out the mailing sticker, selected the best materials, and prepared to ship them to him.  I was full of useful happiness because I get to go to the post office on official poetry business today.  I want to be a paid secretary in poetry (again -- ).

They laugh!  They always laugh.  I know who they are and they laugh.  I say "paid secretary," and they think of nothing but laughter.

The Daily Bread of Poetic Justice

[Excerpt: title link above leads to full article.]

by Karen Hering

“Words can be a weapon against injustice.”     —Richard Wright

Despite Richard Wright’s bold assurance of the ballistic potential of language, I would have to say, and sadly so, that when we in the United States swagger out onto the frontiers of injustice, it is not often poetry that we put in our holsters. No. Whether we pack a Smith & Wesson or go out into the world wholly unarmed, we are more likely to treat our poetry like a collection of keepsakes in a curio cabinet than to use it as a weapon or tool in the cause of justice. Every so often we take a few poems out for dusting and buffing; we might even hold them up for admiration at inaugurations and other occasions of pomp and circumstance. But to actually employ poetry in a cause, to aim it, load it, and fire it like a weapon, with injustice squarely in its sight, this has not often been our way. Political engagement, the argument goes, will at best tarnish the poetic impulse, and at worst it will leave a smoky trail in our verse where instead we seek more effulgent, if potentially irrelevant, scents and aspirations. (We do have exceptions, of course, even in the United States, including the poetic response to our current war, and I am grateful for these.)

In other parts of the globe, however, poetry has a more practical—and sometimes more political—presence. Nicaragua, Central America’s self-proclaimed “nation of poets,” is one example. Forget about innocence; here is a place where it is said, “Everyone’s a poet until proven otherwise.” Here is a place where poetry is right up there with the fork and the spoon as a utensil of daily living. It only makes sense that poetry would also be used as a tool by those working for justice. “Poetry,” Ernesto Cardenal once said, “can serve a function—to construct a country and create a new humanity, [to] change society.”

Vernal equinox

Q: By the way, what is your favorite flower? What kind of flower are you?

A: My favorite flower is lily-of-the-valley. We have them here in the early summer, late spring. I also love crocuses and daffodils and tulips and lilacs -- all the spring flowers; we have roses, too, and peonies. I love wild grasses and aspens and maples and evergreens. My mother gardens expertly, and when she is no longer here, I fear there won't be flowers anymore. I did not inherit her green thumb, but I inherited a love for the garden, for botany, for fragrances ...

Barthelme's Ghost

In early 1997, the night of the ice storm in Houston, my boyfriend-fiance's mother was dying, but I didn't know she was dying. I thought she would recover; she had had a small stroke. My boyfriend turned cruel -- due to his distress -- and I left their house to stay at Sonia's while she stayed at her boyfriend's. The ice was dripping from the evergreens. It was very beautiful, but hard on the trees. The planes were grounded. Electricity was out in her apartment. The temperature indoors seemed to be about 40, outdoors 25. I got in her bed, piled all her clothes on top of me, and tried to sleep. An animal was in the window, between the glass and the screen. I could hear it but not see it. I fervently hoped it wasn't a rat so high up -- a tall second-story. In the dark, I lay covered under garments. In a previous year, Sonia's bedroom had been our friend VC's office. It was the room in which he had written his first, long, well-received novel and composed his short stories for The New Yorker and Paris Review. There had been parties in that apartment; I had met Marion Barthelme, the widow of Donald Barthelme, there. I thought of those nights, of literary parties, to cheer myself as I lay in worst forms of physical and emotional discomfort, steeling myself to it, and cringing at the animal's digging sounds. Just before I slept, I was aware of Donald Barthelme standing in the room away from the bed, facing it. I could perceive his brown shadow, his hands folded in front of him, a patient stance, a grave expression. I live with a name that means "ghost," yet I am not superstitious. Partly, there he stood, a brown ghost on the dark, fantastical night of an ice storm; I knew it meant Barthelme, that this shadow of a father, a man, was not condemning me, not more than anyone is ever condemned, one day, to die. Partly, it was the father in Hamlet, the ice palace in Fitzgerald.

Twill skirt

S., the beloved dog, is 10. A Weimaraner with a club foot, his annual budget is as high as mine. At the vet, he is "private-pay," never humiliated. In his house, he is loved, never neglected. He and my sister live in a love-bond. A love-bond could be made with just about any living animal. Our Wally, a younger cat from the humane society, is our love-bond. My mother and I share him. As a middle child, I am very intrigued by sharing. Who loves what is human, what is female? We would not all have to live as neglected. Religion is not-law. Last summer, the lawyer called my knee-length, beige brushed twill skirt "licentious," as if he were on duty, scouting arguments, seeing resources, at Caribou. I looked too hour-glass in it, I thought sadly, knocking on wood against ceilings and jailings. I rarely watch TV. All our negotiating for our own lives went in defiance not of law but of property.

Credo

A work of writing is old and new. It's old because words are old and meanings are familiar. It's new because words move causally and causelessly to new tempos and creeds. Creeds are old and new. A creed is an issue. A child is an issue. A writer is a child. An issue is a word. An issue is: I miss you. Or a political issue, the old insoluble. Or a personal issue, I miss you. All the same issue. In writing there's meaning, bent, and shape but there's you and I miss you. I missed you is the same issue. We missed the boat, or also, we missed the landing. We missed church or switched church. The practitioner misses tea for church or God for earth, some combination like that. Some missing, which is a word for fail. Failing is saying no to grace. Missing the boat or the landing, one of those. Grace is letting issues be creeds, new, old, too many to name, all the same.

(ca. 1982)