Poet’s Corner
My undergraduate college—steeped in Catholicism and football—wasn’t exactly an arts and literature mecca. But I am thankful for the bright spots of my time there: a theater department where an inexperienced enthusiast could direct a show, a jazz festival that brought in seasoned stars to judge a competition of college ensembles, and the Sophomore Literary Festival, a yearly week of readings and workshops that more or less introduced me to serious literature.
Those years came back to me recently when I came across Time and Materials, a poetry collection by Robert Hass. He was one of the guests of the festival when I was a student in 1977, reading from his debut collection, Field Guide. He is now 84.
I still have a copy of Field Guide, along with books by the other poets I heard and often met as a festival groupie. The list is impressive: three future Nobel laureates (Louise Glück, Czesław Miłosz, Seamus Heaney), several U.S. Poet Laureates (Robert Pinsky, Glück, Charles Simic, Robert Hass), and a host of various prize winners, including Allen Ginsberg, playwright David Hare and avant-garde icon John Cage.
Some lasting memories:
Watching Cage listen attentively at a reception to a local man playing an Irish bodhrán, and clapping with childlike delight after he was through.
Allen Ginsberg, after reading William Blake poems accompanying himself on a harmonium, led a packed auditorium in meditation, urging members of the crowd to let thoughts float away into the clouds if they intruded on their calm mindfulness. After a few silent minutes, a shout from the balcony pierced the silence: “I can’t believe you’re getting paid for this!” Without missing a beat, Ginsberg said, “Just let that thought float off into the clouds.”
Reading Hass took me back to vague memories of those readings and receptions. It also took me back to my former self. Who was this 19-year-old, slogging through civil engineering classes but curious about poetry and the writing life? What did my young mind make of Miłosz’s dark meditations on the legacy of World War II? Of Heaney’s loamy reminiscences of Irish life and spirit. Of Hass’s California dreams.
If the festival was where I found poetry, it wasn’t long before I lost it again. I went for decades with only occasional dives into verse. Lately, however, I have found it again, courtesy of passionate friends and changes in the rhythms of my days. I also think I have lost that edgy insistence to like and understand everything. Poetry—past and contemporary—contains multitudes: maudlin, esoteric, sing-songy, rambling, impenetrable, transcendent. I find poetry that speaks to me, gives me pleasure. The more I read, the more I discover—including poems that would have prompted a “huh?” if I read them a year ago.
Today, of course, it’s easier than ever to make poetry a daily habit. Poets.org and the Poetry Foundation each offer “poem-a-day” subscriptions: sestinas and sonnets directly to your inbox. The New York Times recently featured a wonderful appreciation of “Recuerdo,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay.” April is over, but you can still cultivate a new poetry habit. Check out 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month.
Synergy
Near the end of his life, Czesław Miłosz moved to Kraków, Poland, where his family had deep roots. But that didn’t keep him from collaborating with Robert Hass on translations of a series of poems via email and telephone. The quartet was called “O!”. One of the poems was inspired by a favorite painting of mine, Edward Hopper’s Hotel Room.
“Hotel Room” by Edward Hopper.
O what sadness unaware that it’s sadness!
What despair that doesn’t know it’s despair.
A business woman, her unpacked suitcase on the floor, sits on a bed half undressed, in red underwear, her hair impeccable; she has a piece of paper in her hand, probably with numbers.
Who are you? Nobody will ask. She doesn’t know either.
Water, Water Everywhere
It’s not exactly Times Square or the Vegas strip, but Milwaukee’s downtown has seen a minor explosion of giant video screens throwing their cathode colors on cars and pedestrians alike. Amid all this shimmer, you might not notice a living-room sized flatscreen nestled in a storefront on Wisconsin Avenue. But attention is due.
“Persian Lattice,” a still from Dick Blau’s The Same River Twice.
Dick Blau’s The Same River Twice, is a meditative paean to the Milwaukee River. A series of abstracted photographs of the river surface, digitally manipulated to varying degrees, fade in and out in a silent procession. In some images, you can see the glint of sunlight on waves or distorted reflections from surrounding buildings. In others, the image has been transformed into a field of pure geometry: a microscopic cross section of a mineral deposit perhaps, amoebic and shimmering.
”I think that I shall never see…”
Photo by Dale Skaggs.
My friend Dale is fond of early morning walks on the Milwaukee lakefront and was particularly fond of a particular tree. He’s honored it with several stunning photographs and shared them generously. It was cut down last year.
On a recent spring walk, I found a different particular tree. While my friend’s is lush and majestic, “my” tree is perhaps a little better suited to our times.
My tree is drooping, but not dying (at least I don’t think so—I’m not an arborist). It doesn’t so much reach for the expanse of the sky as it struggles against the pull of the earth below.
For me right now—and perhaps for many of you—it is a tree for our time: battered but resilient, craggy with age, but content to still have its place in the sun.
Put Up Your Duke
With National Poetry Month in the rear view mirror, it’s also appropriate to pay tribute to the great poet of American music, Duke Ellington, who was born on April 29, 1899. His work is as vast and diverse as America itself—spirituals to honky-tonk, dance-hall swing to introspective tone poems. Here’s one of my favorite recent interpretations of “Sophisticated Lady,” featuring Cécile McLorin Salvant accompanied with a lush orchestral arrangement by Darcy James Argue.
See you next time.