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Writing about what I have been reading and encountering in the media. |
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WELCOME TO MY BLOG! I comment on things I am reading, thinking about, encountering in media, and spiritual issues. I hope you will find something interesting. PS. I love feedback... |
| I am reading William Carlos Williams’ book, Spring and All, published in 1923. At that time William Butler Yates, T.S.Elliot, Marianne Moore, and Ezra Pound were eminent. Hitler had just completed his first push and the “western” world was recovering from WWI and the Spanish flu. He was involved in a new movement in poetry, imagism. It focused on sensory, concrete images to communicate “universal” ideas. The publisher ran 300 copies of the book, most of which didn’t sell, according to the introduction by C.D. Wright. William Carlos Williams (WCW) begins with a response to critics who are concerned with the loss of rhyme and rhythm in poetry and who respond to his writing by saying: “I do not like your poems. You have no faith whatever. You seem neither to have suffered nor, in fact, to have felt anything very deeply. There is nothing appealing in what you say but on the contrary, the poems are positively repellant. They are heartless, cruel, they make fun of humanity. What in God’s name do you mean? Are you a pagan? Have you no tolerance for human frailty? Rhyme you may perhaps take away but rhythm! why there is none in your work whatever. Is this what you call poetry? It is the very antithesis of poetry. It is antipoetry. It is the annihilation of life upon which you are bent. Poetry that used to go hand in hand with life, poetry that interpreted our deepest promptings, poetry that inspired, that led us forward to new discoveries, new depths of tolerance, new heights of exaltation. You moderns! it is the death of poetry you are accomplishing. No. I cannot understand this work. You have not yet suffered a cruel blow from life. When you have suffered, you will write differently?” It seems to me this could be said almost exactly the same way substituting the word “religion” or even “Christianity” for “poetry.” Doing so, you would be joining the dropouts from religion and those who engage in “literal interpretation of scripture.” Or, you could substitute “democracy” for “poetry” and join the people who wear MAGA hats and t-shirts saying “the founding fathers would be shooting by now.” You would be joining the originalists who want to resurrect jim crow and put women back into the kitchen barefoot and pregnant. WCW responds by talking about “Imagination.” Among other things, he says “imagination is essential to freedom.” He says: “Lifeless in appearance, sluggish /dazed spring approaches. They enter the new world naked,/ cold, uncertain of all,/ save that they enter…” Why you might wonder, am I sharing this? I identify with WCW when I read the attack on his writing. I admire his resilient, determined response. It hurts when your creative response to life, your expression of your experience gets trashed, or even simply ignored. It hurts when you are ready to move forward but those around you fear change. It is hard to pull your own hope, your own energy, your own perspective out of the trash heap they have built for you and continue to smile and share and create. It takes courage, but more than simply courage, it takes a certain internal coherence, a depth of thought that is well organized and anchored to the substance of your life. It takes faith in your own ability to make sense out of experience and to build something substantial. It also takes an attachment to the past that is not an anchor but is instead a source of energy, of inspiration, and wisdom. This attachment builds confidence and trust in life itself. It builds a kind of faith that others cannot hurt. It is the fuel that, like coal and oil, has passed through time in a way that has concentrated its value, its usefulness but unlike hydrocarbon fuels, it does not pollute, but instead simply propels us into the renewal of spring, or as Christianity teaches, resurrection and life. May you enjoy this in your own life. |
| Smith, Maggie, Good Bones, Tupelo Press, North Adams, Mass., 2017. (poetry) The title poem of this book has been widely disseminated. The collection, like the title poem, is about parenting, about seeing the world in new ways through the eyes of the child as well as the screen of parenting. The writing is straight forward and, initially, I thought it rather bland. I think that is because I looked up and read the title poem first. Don't do that. Just start at the beginning. The depth of awareness that grows in the parent grows in the book. Maggie Smith writes small poems about small events that open one's mind. I really enjoyed reading this and think anyone, even someone who rarely reads poetry would enjoy this book very much. Hugo, Richard, The Triggering Town: lectures and essays on poetry and writing, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, and London, 1979, 1992, and 2010. I read it on Kindle. This small book is full of play and wisdom. The triggering town is the town Richard Hugo imagines as a setting or a main character in writing poetry. The author encourages writers to avoid getting too attached to specific facts while writing. While he doesn't encourage stating falsehoods as facts, he is talking about getting to the part of the truth that is revealed by the facts in one's writing. This book has humor and pathos and was the most delightful read I have encountered about writing since Anne Lamott's book Bird by Bird, which I read quite a number of years ago. |
| On August 14, 1935, Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. It provided payments to older Americans, unemployment insurance, aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children, funds to promote maternal and child welfare, and public health services. None of these had previously existed in any form. Francis Perkins, the first woman cabinet member and longest-serving secretary of Labor led the effort. Among other formative experiences, she was raised in the New England Congregational Christian tradition. As a young woman, she joined the Episcopal Church and expressed her belief that "the need to make the Kingdom of God in this world would be a source of strength and commitment throughout her life," * and it was. She committed herself to build economic justice and the protection of workers. The purpose of the Social Security Act was two-fold: 1. Provide a social safety net that would be equtable through a nation where wealth and poverty were not equitable; 2. Stimulate the economy. The vast majority of Americans have always supported this effort. A powerful but small minority have always opposed it. It has succeeded in its goals in every way. *https://francesperkinscenter.org/ |
| Read Isaiah 5:1-7 The Song of the Vineyard 5 I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. 2 He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. 3 “Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. 4 What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? 5 Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. 6 I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it.” 7 The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah are the vines he delighted in. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. This has been a difficult year for gardeners, especially in southern Howell County where the draught was worse than here. I talked with a friend this week who got almost no beans, her melons and squash didn’t germinate even though she planted them twice, and her okra plants aren’t even knee high. I suspect she feels about the same way the farmer in Isaiah felt. It just makes a body want to tantrum, which is just what happened in Isaiah. If that had happened here in the Ozarks, what briars do you think would have grown up in the destroyed garden? How about blackberries? Don’t you just love their sweetness when you pick them on a hot day in July, warm from the sun? But this year, they were just skin-covered seeds on our plants. Not even the birds would eat them. It seems this year we can easily identify with the farmer in Isaiah, put ourselves there, looking at that non-productive plot. It is not so easy to understand why this tale has lasted almost three millennia. After all, it is so clear and understandable, but what makes it important? Perhaps a look at the gospel lesson for the day will help clarify this. Read Luke 12: 49-56 Not Peace but Division 49 “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50 But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! 51 Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. 52 From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. 53 They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” Interpreting the Times 54 He said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. 55 And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. 56 Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time? Well, how do like that? “I brought you fire and wish it was already kindled.” Jesus came to bring division. And in Isaiah, God gave the people of Judah fertile ground, but it didn’t produce. How do these verses go together? The writers of the lectionary seem to have thought they do. Let’s think this through. Isaiah was a prophet who was widely respected. Over about three periods of rule beginning in the 8th century BCE when the prophet Isaiah lived and taught through the end of Assyrian rule, the Babylonian exile, and Persian dominance, the teachings, and prophecies of others were added to Isaiah’s words to make the book of Isaiah. The focus of this book is on Jerusalem and that city’s “relationship with YHWH, and the question of righteousness, both divine and human.” “Jerusalem is intended for a glorious future as the world’s center, the home of YHWH’s temple, the destination of nations who seek to learn the ways of peace.” (p.256)* The people of Jerusalem were seen to make up a flawed society, “once righteous but no longer so.” The near destruction of Jerusalem is interpreted as “severe punishment from God in order to attain moral and ethical purity, to become the righteous city in which God delights.” And then here comes Jesus a few centuries later, as Isaiah predicted. And what does he say when asked? He says he came to bring division, not peace. Doesn’t that sound a bit like the citizens of the USA who want our society to be morally and ethically pure but have divergent ideas about how to make this happen? Here we sit, a small gathering of people of God, like the people of Judah, trying to figure out what righteousness is and how to find peace through righteous behavior. It seems to me the key words for consideration are righteousness and division. A simple Webster’s definition of righteousness is “morally good: following religious or moral laws” * clarified as Justice; equity between people." Division is defined as: "disagreement between two or more groups, typically producing tension or hostility." It seems at first glance these two words stand in opposition to each other. What I make of this is that righteousness is defined and redefined within the social context and language of a society and the process by which this happens is dialogue among persons with divergent ideas on the subject. In fact, the entire book of Isaiah focuses on defining righteousness and putting the definition into action. Jesus came to his way of understanding first through dialogue in the temple, and then through dialogue with people he met along the way. He took time in the desert to think it all through. He taught what he learned in this way. We examine ancient texts in the Bible translated into our modern language by persons who have studied history and archeology, theology and languages. They have done so with the goal of making this ancient wisdom understandable to us. Yet, we struggle to understand. I had a teacher named John who said, “trust the process.” He was talking about how change and growth come about through dialogue among persons which considers both information and emotion. For example, a mother and teenage son were in conflict about the son’s changing need for privacy. John asked each to describe the problem as they saw it, then to notice the feelings they had as they were talking. This led to development of a very simple solution that both mother and son thought would work well. The next time they met with John, they said it worked just as they had hoped. We as people of God are part of a conversation that has been going on for millennia. It didn’t start with Isaiah, and it didn’t end with Jesus. We gather to participate in the conversation, and we will not end it. This discussion among ourselves and with God will continue long after we are gone. We need to trust that the interactions among us will be fruitful. Even after tearing up the garden in Isaiah we figured the land would still be productive. Remember the blackberries? We need to keep at it even when we can’t see harvestable fruit this season. God didn’t abandon the people of Jerusalem and didn’t abandon the people around Christ and God won’t abandon us. The prophets interpreted calamity as God punishing his people in order to teach them. A lot of people today think that way, too. I think the calamities we experience are just what happens under certain circumstances. We don’t have control of all circumstances and cannot be responsible for them. God set things in motion and put us in the middle to live just as the animals and plants around us are here to live. Life is the gift and difficulties become our teachers when we take the time to notice the information within the difficulty and our feelings about it. When we talk these things over with others, we improve our chance of developing an accurate picture. When we shut people out who are sharing the difficulty, or persons struggling with a different problem, we weaken our learning. We need to listen to each other. We need to examine the nature of the problem with all intellectual tools available to us. In this way, our wisdom may look different from that of a previous or a next generation. It is, nevertheless, wisdom and it can guide us into righteous behavior. We need to trust this process and understand the problem is a gift as much as the solution is a gift. *Newsom, Carol A., Sharon H. Ringe and Jacqueline E. Lapsley Ed., Women’s Bible Commentary, Third Edition, Rev. and updated, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, K Y, 1992, 1998, 2012. |
| (Written for a community memorial service>) Do you remember the old Yellow Pages Ad? “Let your fingers do the walking.” The internet has given a whole new meaning to “walking fingers.” Recently I had a conversation with a friend about buying shoes online. We live in an area where odd sizes are unavailable locally, so I order three pair, try them on, keep the pair that fits best and return the others. I notice that a lot of people wear the same brand that I wear, which I like because they are made in my state. However, no one would be able to identify me by my shoes. After the massacre at Uvalde, Texas, a child was so damaged by the shots to her body by an AR15 gun that she could be identified only by her shoes. Even when we don’t remember her name, we remember her shoes, green because she was a ten-year-old environmentalist. We don’t talk about the shooter’s clothing. We don’t talk about his values. We talk about his gun and what he did with it. We talk about him as if he were not a person. We grieve the victims, but not the shooter. We who were not there know about the event, have feelings about it, but don’t feel a part of it. It is as if our fingers are walking through endless words that float in cyberspace. We don’t need shoes for this. There is no ground under our feet. We have ordered the story and received it written in a number of different ways. We pick the version that fits our perspective and ignore the rest. This privilege belongs only to those persons not present for the event. Had our hearts been ripped from our bodies, had our spirits been perforated by rapidly fired bullets, that version would be unavoidable to us. What, then, do we need? How do we determine what we need? Do we need to understand what really happened, or do we need a story about it that fits our preconceived understanding of events? Do we need to go through such a thing ourselves in order to understand? What will make us value shooters before they acquire a gun? What do we need in preparation for loving the shooter as we love the victims? How can we ever understand the dynamics of the situation without empathy for everyone involved: the children, the teachers, the police, the shooter, those who love these people and those who don’t? We are painting shoes green and hanging them in the sun, in public in an attempt to connect with the event. We want to remember, to overcome the strong desire to forget. We want to learn what to do next. We want to do what is right in our community. We pray for our spirits to connect with the tattered and begin the work of mending as our spirits become more whole each time we engage in healing while walking with others toward peace. |
| What he said: Black women in New York City have more abortions than any other group in the USA. What she said: They love their children. What she didn’t say: Why would they bring a child into a world filled with people like you? What she said: The largest number of abortions in the country is middle aged women who have raised their families and feel unready or unable to parent again. When did you last hear of a “change of life baby?” What he said: I need to not discuss this stuff. What she didn’t say: I need to find another broker. |
| Guerin, Paulette, Wadding through Lethe, Futurecycle Press, Athens, GA, 2022. Before opening this lovely volume of lyric poetry, I asked why the title was chosen and what it said about the content. After all, one is supposed to drink the waters of the Lethe, not wade in them. The first poem is about holding on vs. letting go. As I read, I came to see a line, like a horizon, or the bank of a river, that one might cross, or having crossed already, one carries memories to the other side. There may be "desires concealed like tree rings," "a burst of yellow," or "her smell. I had already learned to let go, not expecting the grip of bergamot, of cloves." They may return "like a forgotten letter in her own handwriting or a snapshot of herself she can't remember being taken." The memories may appear annually as ghosts connected only to the past, with no present and unwilling to consider the future as in the poem, "Visit." If you consider memories, in the way Paulette Guerin does in this slim volume while facing the river Lethe, perhaps you, too, will choose to wade rather than drink, at least for now. |
| Some time ago, I had a long Facebook exchange with a young friend who takes care of homeless people who are excluded from homeless shelters due to problematic behavior. He does this in his home. We discussed the issue of abortion. I presented the metaphor of someone moving into your body without your permission and the state saying you must keep them, and they need care for several years from someone. His response is that he would take them in even in his body because that is what he does. Following is my response: You would react to that differently! ☺️You do welcome intruders. However, those intruders are there because you welcome them. Therefore, they aren't intruders. When you invite them, that changes their definition. When you invite a child into your body, it isn't an intruder. My experience with grief over losing my fertility, after 15 years of deliberately not conceiving, taught me some things. Since no one else grieved my lost children, I came to realize they were imaginary. I concluded that children come into being when you imagine them, when you decide they are a child and this happens at different times. There was a law, around the time of Roe v. Wade, in another state, that said a woman could get an abortion if two doctors agreed that her health was at risk if she continued the pregnancy. Sometimes, it took so long to get through that process, the pregnancy would be into the second trimester. The mother could have died in that time, or the fetus could be decaying in her body and poisoning her. This stopped with Roe v. Wade. Now, states are putting up so many barriers, women are back in the same position in some states. The whole thing seems to me to focus on who gets to decide what that tissue in that woman's body is. When someone else decides, the outcome is very different than if the woman decides. What if the police decided that your guests are intruders and just came and rounded them all up and hauled them off? That would be the state deciding rather than you deciding. Or what if the state decided you had to let anyone in and let them do what they want taking away your control of the situation? What if they rounded up everyone they could find and hauled them in and dropped them at your place with no provision for meeting their needs and said they must stay on your property and you must meet their needs. It would be a whole different experience, wouldn't it? The issue is not should someone get an abortion. The issue is who decides who will carry a child and give birth. Pro-lifers want the state to decide. Pro-choicers want the woman to decide with advice and support from the people she chooses to help her. The Pro-lifers can befriend her, can give her support, can offer to love and raise the child, one on one, in person, and make a difference in the outcome. Instead, the Pro-lifers have all been herded into a social ghetto and have decided that pro-choicers are their enemy and their enemy won't even listen to what pro-lifers are saying. The community can support a process that defines that tissue as a child in each individual woman by welcoming the women even when they don't agree with what they believe or think and make a difference, just like you are doing with the people you are choosing to help. However, pro-lifers shoot doctors and harass pro-choicers. I feel hated in my own community by people who have never asked what I think. I feel very unsafe around pro-lifers because they have expressed so much hatred and vitriol. Hatred just makes it harder for women to deal with an unwanted pregnancy. Why aren't those pro-lifers joining Planned Parenthood and helping reduce the number of abortions through prevention? Because they have become pawns of people who care less about the issue than getting power for themselves. |
| Malone, Dave,Tornado Drill, Kelsay Books, American Fork, Utah, 2021 Opening a window to small-town life, Dave Malone begins by watching a storm while others hide for safety. In this, his latest book of poetry, Mr. Malone moves the reader gently through the climate of small-town life. There is no denial of fear, but no acknowledgment either. Just how bad is it for Icarus to fall “upside down,” and by implication, see his father fly away? The women in the town walk slowly, purposefully, “as if they know something I don’t.” It appears to the young boy that God is “barely perceptible” until he notices the light dancing on the cypress floor and he suspects the instructor is missing the whole thing. He goes into darkness, experiences shaking “with the stomp of the unknown,” and when it all seems a bit too much, like the young herons, he flies to hide among the cedars. His grandmother shows that trees bring solace, even when fearing loss or facing it. Among them, one can stay “a long time, longer than life.” Dave Malone’s voice is that of one who is curious, independent in his thinking, and like many rural people, he speaks with an attitude that is somewhat fatalistic with an attitude of acceptance. His writing is rich with imagery and flows like the water that runs through the rivers of the Ozarks. |
| BOOK: Kooser, Ted, The Poetry Home Repair Manual: practical advice for beginning poets, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, London, 2005. This was recommended to me by the poet, Dave Malone. I got it through Amazon and read it immediately because I like Ted Kooser so much. The title tells the truth. His advice is practical and his examples clear. Mr. Kooser's discussion is often entertaining and funny. Even though this is written for beginning poets, some of his suggestions were new to me. Over all, it was just a darn good read. I hope you will enjoy this useful book, too. |
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