GOODITIS

Excerpt from this excellent photo of geranium leaves, by Flickr...

Thu, 09 May 2013 13:14:20 -0700

Excerpt from this excellent photo of geranium leaves, by Flickr user Horticultural Art. (Be sure to click through to see the very pretty large size image.)

Poetry Bootcamp: Five Steps to Learn How to Love Poetry Again

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 01:03:00 -0700

For National Poetry Month, I wrote an article for our local paper which was published today. Along with sharing my fondness for poetry, I urged readers to give poetry a second chance. Many of you last read a poem in 5th grade! Your view of poetry might be, it’s a bunch of nonsense about daffodils, fair maidens and walking in the woods. Well, poetry is interested in everything. Growing up as a mixed-race child. The war in Iraq. Love. Artichokes.

Maybe you’re astonished to learn people still read—and write—poetry. The average American, like Edgar Allen Poe’s raven, might be quoted on the subject of poetry: “Nevermore!”

C’mon people, give poetry a chance! Join the housewives, blue collar workers and pop stars who write, and appreciate poetry.

So consider this poetry bootcamp. I’m going to introduce you to a five simple, easy-to-understand poems that will get you off your miserable, potato-chip-eating, entertainment-bubble metaphorical couch, and into the world of imagination and mystery. There will be no yelling or standing in squadron formations, but you will have to make some effort to leave behind the civilian world and enter the world of poetry.

Whether you arrived here from that column, or you’re just curious about poetry, below are some suggestions of poems/poets that I like, that I think you might like. Think of these as some warm up stretches. Think of these as a poetry appetizer course. Perhaps after sampling these bite-sized pieces of deliciousness, you may be hungry for more. Perhaps after doing these five poetry “push-ups” and running a 5K, you may want to run a poetry marathon, i.e., read an ENTIRE POETRY BOOK!

A good place to find more poetry is your local library. Or, thanks to the Internet, you can search topics (“daffodils” “fair maidens” “artichokes”) and poets, at the wonderful Poetry Foundation website.

___________________

Poem 1

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean— the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

~Mary Oliver

(From The House Light, Beacon Press Boston, 1990)

*Mary Oliver is currently America’s best-selling poet. Some more formal, academic poets see her as low brow, and even sentimental. She writes in a simple, restrained and emotional style—often about nature, or the human spirit. Maybe that’s why the average citizen likes her poetry. (I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.)

Oliver has written hundreds of glorious nature/spirit poems: here’s one more, The Kingfisher, where she asks, “How could there be a day in your whole life / that doesn’t have its splash of happiness?”

___________________

Poem 2

After a Death

Once there was a shock that
left behind a long, shimmering comet tail.
It keeps us inside. It makes the TV pictures snowy.
It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.

One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun
through brush where a few leaves hang on.
They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories.
Names swallowed by the cold.

It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat
but often the shadow seems more real than the body.
The samurai looks insignificant
beside his armor of black dragon scales.

~Tomas Tranströmer
translated by Robert Bly

(From The Winged Energy of Delight: Selected Translations by Robert Bly, published by Harper Collins. Copyright © 2004 by Robert Bly.)

*When I first read “After a Death,” I felt like it both punched me, and kissed me. I felt awe. I could eat those two first lines for dinner, every night, and never be hungry again.

It’s a beautiful poem, about a difficult subject. The poet stays away from sappy cliches and trying to offer false comfort. I feel a bit lonely when I read this, a bit disconnected—much like my state of mind after losing my mother. (A good poem allows you to feel something real, not just tell you how you should feel.)

Tranströmer won the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature and is one of Sweden’s greatest poets. Two more poems, if you like Tranströmer’s sparse, contemplative style.)

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Poem 3

Miscegenation

In 1965 my parents broke two laws of Mississippi;
they went to Ohio to marry, returned to Mississippi.

They crossed the river into Cincinnati, a city whose name
begins with a sound like sin, the sound of wrong—mis in Mississippi.

A year later they moved to Canada, followed a route the same
as slaves, the train slicing the white glaze of winter, leaving Mississippi.

Faulkner’s Joe Christmas was born in winter, like Jesus, given his name
for the day he was left at the orphanage, his race unknown in Mississippi.

My father was reading War and Peace when he gave me my name.
I was born near Easter, 1966, in Mississippi.

When I turned 33 my father said, It’s your Jesus year—you’re the same
age he was when he died. It was spring, the hills green in Mississippi.

I know more than Joe Christmas did. Natasha is a Russian name—
though I’m not; it means Christmas child, even in Mississippi.

~Natasha Trethewey

*Natasha Trethewey is the current U.S. Poet Laureate. I included an excerpt from her poem “Flounder” in News Tribune article. Trethewey is one of the most powerful modern poets to speak on identity, race, otherness and belonging in very personal ways. I love how this poem is playful about the names of cities, and the story of Jesus, but it’s about a very serious subject.

Trethewey is a poet of geography: the South, Mississippi where she grew up, the land of her mixed-race childhood, the no-man’s land of identity. She’s not a fancy or modernist poet with complicated structures. The thing I most love about Trethewey, that made her my favorite poet of 2012, is her bravery. She is fearless in a strange, compassionate way, and she talks about a foundational subject—race—that is easier to avoid because of controversy and complicated feelings.

Want to read more? The New York Times has four other beauties from Trethewey. The first one—about fishing with her father—is in my favorite poems file.

___________________

Poem 4

Are All the Break-Ups in Your Poems Real?

If by real you mean as real as a shark tooth stuck
in your heel, the wetness of a finished lollipop stick,
the surprise of a thumbtack in your purse—
then Yes, every last page is true, every nuance,
bit, and bite. Wait. I have made them up—all of them—
and when I say I am married, it means I married
all of them, a whole neighborhood of past loves.
Can you imagine the number of bouquets, how many
slices of cake? Even now, my husbands plan a great meal
for us—one chops up some parsley, one stirs a bubbling pot
on the stove. One changes the baby, and one sleeps
in a fat chair. One flips through the newspaper, another
whistles while he shaves in the shower, and every single
one of them wonders what time I am coming home.

~Aimee Nezhukumatathil

*Aimee Nezhukumatathil is one of my favorite poets—not just because she has a super-long last name like myself. Or because she’s Asian-American like me. Well, I do like both those things, but her poetry is full of wonder, wit, science, nature, human foibles, wry observations.

If you enjoyed this imaginative poem, try Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, another one that I love—you don’t have to have an extra long name like Gudaitis or Nezhukumatathil to appreciate her humor and beautiful language.

Her book “Lucky Fish” was my top poetry book of 2010. I fell head over heels in love with that book, and wanted to kiss every page.

___________________

Poem 5

The Hurt Locker

Nothing but hurt left here.
Nothing but bullets and pain
and the bled-out slumping
and all the fucks and goddamns
and Jesus Christs of the wounded.
Nothing left here but the hurt.

Believe it when you see it.
Believe it when a twelve-year-old
rolls a grenade into the room.
Or when a sniper punches a hole
deep into someone’s skull.
Believe it when four men
step from a taxicab in Mosul
to shower the street in brass
and fire. Open the hurt locker
and see what there is of knives
and teeth. Open the hurt locker and learn
how rough men come hunting for souls.

~Brian Turner

*This is one of my very favorite poems ever. If you’ve seen the movie “The Hurt Locker,” you may recognize the ending of this poem, which was the inspiration for the title of Kathryn Bigelow’s award-winning film.

Poets have been writing about war and warriors for thousands of years. Soldier poets like Turner have been defying society’s stereotypes throughout history. He’s a poet who also patrolled the streets of Iraq.

Turner has an amazing eye for detail, for compressed language that feels tense and ready to explode. One of his poems, Hwy 1, has a couple of lines about a crane that made me stop breathing for a few seconds.

He’s a master at not just telling you what war is like, but allowing you to feel what it’s like there. All the poems in “Here, Bullet” are fine, powerful pieces of writing. You can read my other favorite Turner poem here.)

___________

Well, there now. That wasn’t so bad. If you’d like to find some more good poetry, here’s a link to all the poems on this blog. A few of my favorite poems are there, plus a couple of mine. If you enjoyed reading poetry, perhaps you might even think of writing one yourself. It’s not really that hard to cook an artichoke, or write a poem, or do anything unfamiliar. The important thing is to enjoy and express yourself.

National Poetry Month is a great time to remind ourselves that poetry has been around for tens of thousands of years—before writing was invented, before Twitter and Jersey Shore and Call of Duty. If you’d like to hear some fine local poets here in Tacoma, come out and support the arts/poetry community tonight (Tuesday, April 23, 6:00 pm at the downtown library) at the Tacoma Poet Laureate ceremony). More info here, about halfway down.

Small addendum: if you’re reading this on your phone, the smallness of the screen totally screws up the line breaks. Sad face. Line breaks (where poets choose to stop each line of a poem) are super important. As important as the finish line of a race, or the line you sign your name on to get married. Until the Internet figures out how to handle poetry in a better manner, it may be best to read poetry on a larger screen like a laptop or iPad.

Photo credit: J Brew, used with permission under Creative Commons

I Am the Columbia Bar

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 23:24:00 -0700

I read this poem at the National Poetry Month event “Gods, Goddesses, Myths” hosted by Tacoma poet laureate Josie Emmons Turner at Tacoma Community College on April 19.

Myths are not just about warriors, Greek deities, talking tigers. Some of the greatest myth-making we do is about ourselves.

This poem is the result of me trying to understand myself. Trying to make sense of my Korean-Lithuanian heritage, trying to honor all people who are bi-racial, or feel like they live in two worlds. The Other. Exiles. Hapa. Mixed-race kids.

Second, it’s the direct result of my fascination for the Columbia Bar, a real place where the mighty Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. Also known as the Graveyard of Ships. One of the most dangerous stretches of water on the planet.

_________

I AM THE COLUMBIA BAR

I am the Columbia Bar,
the tumult where river hits
ocean. Site of sandbanks,
shipwrecks, sunken lives,
cross currents. See
the warning signs:
Danger. Carry flares.
Know not even the largest
vessel may survive
ebb tide’s force.

I am the Columbia Bar.
Here wind chops waves
into violent slaps. Hidden
sandbars impede. Eight-foot
swells toss boats like toys.
Add to this millions
of gallons of rain daily
punching the Pacific.
A million gallons a second
of a thousand miles of river
pummel the ocean
at my intersection.

I am the Columbia Bar,
a silver necklace attached
to the turquoise deep.
Here fish swim in salt,
or leave krill behind
and find their way back
to gravel in conifer shade.
Here is transition, uncertain
angles. Here waves
are cut in two, come at you
in both directions.

I am the Columbia Bar.
I love the waters that spawned me,
my double worlds of immersion,
torsion. I am both brine
and ice melt river.
Swell me, mark me,
swamp me: my life is
a thumbprint of silt
and agitation.

Find me between the jetty
pilings and rock lines.
I am every half world,
every slur, all of purity’s
scorn, every mixed-up kid
with no expert pilot.
I am the yellow Coast Guard
craft, tossed by turmoil.
Unswampable.

I am the Columbia Bar.
I swallow ships.
I am the hydraulics of opposites.
I could never be a lake.

Stranded on the Roof of the World

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:44:00 -0700

This is a lovely, evocative, startling essay on the life of Afghanistan’s Kyrgyz nomads, who live in one of the most high altitude, arid, hostile environments in the world. There’s so much rich detail in Michael Finkel’s writing.

But for now, with no car and no road, the reality is a yak. The khan is holding one by a rope strung through its nose. Other yaks are standing by. It’s moving day; everything the khan owns needs to be tied to the back of a yak. This includes a dozen teapots, a cast-iron stove, a car battery, two solar panels, a yurt, and 43 blankets. His younger brother and a few others are helping. The yaks buck and kick and snort; loading them is as much wrestling as packing.

Moving is what nomads do. For the Kyrgyz of Afghanistan, it’s from two to four times a year, depending on the weather and the availability of grass for the animals. They call their homeland Bam-e Dunya, which means “roof of the world.” This might sound poetic and beautiful—it is undeniably beautiful—but it’s also an environment at the very cusp of human survivability. Their land consists of two long, glacier-carved valleys, called pamirs, stashed deep within the great mountains of Central Asia. Much of it is above 14,000 feet. The wind is furious; crops are impossible to grow. The temperature can drop below freezing 340 days a year. Many Kyrgyz have never seen a tree.

One thing that struck me was the glorious red, adorned outfits worn by the women who are milking goats, finding firewood, raising children.

Read the full article online at National Geographic:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/02/wakhan-corridor/finkel-text

[Photos above by Matthieu Paley, from NationalGeographic.com]

Top photo: “Nomads by necessity, the Kyrgyz move their herds across the Wakhan—a panhandle of alpine valleys and high mountains in northeastern Afghanistan.”

Second photo: “”A girl carries a pair of lambs to be reunited with their mothers for the night. On especially cold days the vulnerable young animals are kept warm in cloth bags hung in the herders’ huts. The Kyrgyz complain that their winters are brutal. But would they want to call any other place home?”

www.paleyphoto.com

The Fantastic Four: Four Poets, Four Books

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:22:00 -0700

Poster graphic I created for a National Poetry Month event in Tacoma.

PROCESS OF CREATING THE ART FOR THIS POSTER

I love performance art, computer-generated art, found art…all kinds of creativity that either sets up constraints, or breaks down traditional forms.

This poster uses computer-generated word/tag clouds.

How this is done: I took four poems from each of the four poets, and entered them separately in the online tag cloud generator Tagxedo. Tagxedo analyzed the words, then graphically displays the text by size to emphasize or minimize words, based off how many times a word is used. The larger the word, the more frequent it appeared in that poem.

I tweaked the results so each word cluster corresponded with the colors of the author’s bookcover.

For example, here’s the cover for Arlene Kim’s book, What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes?—along with the word cloud generated from these four poems of hers, Bird Call, Tiger Brother, Wilderness, and American Gothic: Revival.

Although I read through about ten poems from each poet, the poems I chose to enter for their tag clouds were mostly randomly chosen. I liked the idea that this art was somewhat chancy, and assembled by computational method.

These four poets all touch on the concrete, the magical, the everyday and the bizarre. Having a poster that’s a bit prosaic (words arranged by a machine) plus specific and meaningful (in color and in highlighting their word choices) felt nicely tense.

(Hope to see you at the reading, if you’re local. It’s going to be a great event!)

THE FANTASTIC FOUR

THURSDAY • APRIL 4 • 7 PM • FREE!

4 POETS / 4 BOOKS / Derek Sheffield, Arlene Kim, Marjorie Manwaring & Rebecca Hoogs

Reading selected poems from their newest works.

Hosted by Allen Braden, TCC professor & author of A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood and Elegy in the Passive Voice.

KING’S BOOKS / 218 ST. HELENS AVE. TACOMA, WA 98402 / kingbookstore.com / Event Details Online

What a beautiful book cover! ransomcenter: T. C. Boyle, whose...

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:47:37 -0700

What a beautiful book cover!

ransomcenter:

T. C. Boyle, whose papers are housed at the Ransom Center, will give a reading Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. in Avaya Auditorum in an event organized by the Michener Center for Writers.

See how you can enter to win a signed copy of “The Tortilla Curtain” by Boyle.

Really sweet song—the first space-to-earth...

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 11:30:27 -0800

Really sweet song—the first space-to-earth collaboration—featuring astronaut Chris Hadfield, the band Barenaked Ladies and the youth choir Wexford Gleeks. The song is I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing).

T.S. Eliot and the Online Text Cloud Generator

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:35:00 -0800

This is the result of entering one of my favorite poems, T.S. Eliot’s “The Four Quartets,” into Tagxedo (a free, online word cloud generator).

WHAT ARE TAG CLOUDS?

Tag clouds (or word clouds) are computer-generated, visual representations of data. Simply put, a tag cloud generator is a program that counts how many times you use words in a block of text (or website). It then generates a “tag cloud” or “word cloud” of your most frequent words. There are controls, so you can list the top 100, top 50, top 10, etc. terms, or skip frequent words like “the” or “is.”

On the right sidebar of this blog, I use a tag cloud generator to show my most common tags/subjects. It’s useful too, because you can click on a term, and all the articles/blog posts that are labeled with that term will be “gathered up” and displayed in your browser.

WHAT CAN THEY BE USED FOR?

Tag clouds can be used for much more than just creating a hierarchy of blog posts and topics.

Creative projects that represent goals, or that attempt to understand concepts, are possible. Things like a family values statement, or New Year’s resolutions. You can examine an academic paper for word frequency. Or enter a favorite song and generate a visual. Some people use it to send their sweetie a custom card or gift. Tag clouds can be useful for teachers, businesses and even artists.

Besides Tagxedo, which I used above, there are a couple of other well-regarded tag cloud generators. (Wordle is most frequently mentioned, but since it runs on hinky JAVA, I couldn’t get it to function quite right.)

(Tagxedo requires Silverlight, a free Microsoft program you may have to install. It works on both Macs and PCs. If you’ve watched MLB or NBA video, NBC Winter Olympics, etc., you may already have it.)

HOW DOES TAGXEDO WORK?

I’ve played around with Tagxedo for a few days now, and it’s my favorite. Here’s a pretty good tutorial on how to get started in Tagxedo.

Creating a tag cloud in Tagxedo is pretty intuitive. Either enter a website link, or click on Start Now to get to a text entry box. On the Creator page, choose Load (top left side) to enter text. Then Submit.

The Shape menu (click on the arrow) offers squares, circles, birds, quotes and more shapes. There are many more sliders and adjustments to tweak your settings, or try your luck with the circular arrow to Respin.

Example of a tag cloud generated on Tagxedo using the text

One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven

When you’re done, choose Save/Share. Tagxedo is great because it offers you the option of up to a 16mb file—large enough for a decent quality 8.5 by 11 printout, or a lower resolution poster.

SOME HELPFUL TIPS

Paste in a long list (such as your favorite books, or the numbers in the example above). The first list items will be displayed as your most important, bigger tags.

You can “cheat” by pasting in one item (“Korean food”) multiple times, and listing all other items only once, to create a chart like the classroom roster below.

Paste in a couple of paragraphs (or a poem like I did above, or the entire King James Bible as the creator of Tagxedo did). The program analyzes how many times you use each word, and gives emphasis accordingly.

You can control the “biggness” of important versus less important text by going into Word/Layout Options/Layout. Change the Normalize Frequency / Spread. Larger numbers mean a greater difference.

Tagxedo defaults to repeating some words/tags to fill up gaps. If you want a tag cloud with just one of each term, change the Word/Layout Options/Layout option of Allow Replication to “no.”

Here’s an example of a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, “Spring.” I extra-emphasized the poem’s title by copying and pasting “Spring” about twenty times at the top. For shape, I chose a bird.

I had to play around with the controls to get Tagxedo to completely fill up the bird. Tightness controls how close the words are to each other. Maximum Word Count allows the program to fill gaps with repeat words. Spread controls the contrast between common and uncommon words.

Settings used to fill this bird form were: increased Tightness, raised the Maximum Word Count to 402, and under Normalize Frequency, changed the Spread to 175.

Here’s the text I loaded to generate the poem tag cloud:

Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –
   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,
   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

________

EXAMPLES AND CREATIVE USES OF TAG CLOUDS

The Tagxedo gallery has some pretty nifty examples. (Many of these are generated using a photo shape. The site allows you to upload your own images in black and white, or color, and then match the words to the tone…lots of possibilities, which I haven’t even tried out yet.)

I love the way technology branches out from one purpose to other creative, unrelated applications. Tag and word clouds began as a way of analyzing and displaying keyword frequency on websites. See below how other industries and interests are using tag clouds.

Example of a teacher using a word cloud as a creative classroom roster

Proportional tag cloud of population of countries of the world

More visually-based word cloud, using the shape of a bear to create a sports homage

Using a tag cloud for a non-profit event logo

Some beautiful Bible word clouds

President Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address word cloud

The Red Cross generated a word cloud to see what words are frequently used on their blog

Grammy Awards did some very fine artist word clouds. (This one is Coldplay.)

02/28/2013: I edited this post and put in another example (the “Spring” poem plus the screenshot of my settings) to help make things clearer.

Love this sinuous, kinetic art project! The beautiful &...

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 14:55:33 -0800

Love this sinuous, kinetic art project! The beautiful & unsettling “A Million Times” by Stockholm-based studio HUMANS SINCE 1982.

Gorgeous stuff on their website also.

"To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness."

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 12:01:26 -0800

“To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”

- Bertrand Russell

National Poetry Month -- Call for Local Events in Tacoma

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:54:00 -0800

Last year I gathered information for fourteen events in the area in April, and produced a National Poetry Month poster of local poetry happenings. (The graphic is by Chin-Yee Lai, from the American Academy of Poets, one of the official organizers of National Poetry Month.)

2012 Tacoma Poetry Month Poster

It was fun to have so many great events and collaborations in the community last year. Having a central info flyer was helpful, so I’m doing this again for 2013. If you’re an individual, school, arts group or other poetry sponsor—and are putting together an event in April—can you email me your info for inclusion in this year’s Poetry Month flyer?

( TacomaPoetry@gmail.com )

We’ll compile all the local events and happenings, and send out a PDF to the local community in late March. Last year, several media outlets printed the list, so expect some good publicity as a result.

I’ll also keep a running list of events on a National Poetry Month page on this blog here. Feel free to check back to see what’s been added, and to download the 2013 poster and events list which will be available on March 20.

Winter weeds looking a lot like undersea creatures.

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 09:02:18 -0800

Winter weeds looking a lot like undersea creatures.

Introducing Myself at the Poetry Workshop

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:01:30 -0800

Bring a Postcard Showing
Some Aspect of Yourself

Like the flowers of this Winterthur Museum print…
I’m a mixed bouquet. The Delaware Winterthur Estate
and I both contain gardens, research libraries and museums.
In Switzerland, there’s also a town called Winterthur.
I live there, at the junction of its seven crossroads.
The joyful traffic of Koreans, Lithuanians, soldiers,
single moms, blue collar workers, immigrant, poets—
they collide and collaborate on my interior byways.
I really live in the little town of DuPont. By chance, it’s
named after the family who founded the Winterthur Estate.
Their flowering dogwood tree was called “The Bride.”

Like Mr. Henry Francis du Pont, I am a bridge, destined
to create something “special, accessible and astonishing.”

_________

On February 2, I attended a Groundhog Day writing workshop with two fine Seattle poets, Kelli Russell Agodon and Susan Rich, on the subject of “Generating New Work.” There were eighteen student, several poetry prompt exercises, a poetry “Mad Lib” and much more (hope to write a blog post about it soon).

One cool and challenging thing Kelli and Susan asked us to do was to choose a postcard that meant something to us (representing some part of our identity or self). Then we had to write a brief introduction of no more than fourteen lines. At the beginning of the workshop, we shared our cards and then read our introductions.

I selected the vintage botanical print postcard of a marigold, zinnia and lily because I love flowers, gardening, vintage things and curious illustrations. I am a messy, mixed bouquet like this set of flowers. Doing a little research, I found out some remarkable facts about the Winterthur Estate (and the du Pont family) that coincided with my life—including the fact that the town I live in is named after their family. I also loved reading that in the actual Swiss town of Winterthur, the perfect number of distant crossroads meet in a seven-fold nexus of connection.

The quote at the end of my poem/introduction comes from the first chapter of Ruth Lord’s book about her father, “Henry F. du Pont and Winterthur.” She notes his passionate focus, artistic insatiability, love of beauty, fondness for gardens, and dedication to his land—qualities I both admire and share, to some degree.

It was just a short writing exercise for a workshop. Just a box of notecards I fell in love with at an exquisite gift shop. But then I discovered there was a tiny wildflower of the prophetic in our backstories. The connection between vintage botanical illustrations, an impulse purchase from a decade ago, and one of America’s most famous Gilded Age millionaires: that’s poetry.

SO CHRYSLER MADE A POETIC SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL While watching...

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 11:01:05 -0800

SO CHRYSLER MADE A POETIC SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL

While watching the 2013 Super Bowl with a group of friends, there was only one commercial that got everyone quiet: Dodge Ram’s “So God Made a Farmer.” Its cadence and imagery caused an almost holy hush in our non-stop football fan chatter.

As a writer and poet, I couldn’t help but feel satisfied that among the bombardment of music, video and excitement—even though this is a commercial, an advertisement, a short clip to sell a product—it’s undeniable that good writing is a show-stopper. Words that are carefully chosen and crafted have a power to move people. To capture their attention. To quiet a crowd.

Yes, it’s a bit sappy. Yes, there is romanticism going on here. One of the most powerful tools of attention is sentimentality, and this Dodge Ram advertising has a tractor pulling the heartstrings. Still, the visuals are gorgeous, the editing is impeccable, and it’s obvious Paul Harvey was a man who knew how to communicate clearly and memorably.

I suppose I like this because it sounds simple and specific, and the rhythm reminds me of the best of old time preaching.

____________

SO GOD MADE A FARMER

And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a caretaker!” So God made a farmer.

God said, I need somebody to get up before dawn and milk cows and work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board. So God made a farmer.

I need somebody with strong arms. Strong enough to rustle a calf, yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry and have to wait for lunch until his wife is done feeding and visiting with the ladies and telling them to be sure to come back real soon…and mean it. So God made a farmer.

God said, I need somebody that can shape an ax handle, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, make a harness out of hay wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And, who, at planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty hour week by Tuesday noon. Then, pain’n from “tractor back,” put in another seventy-two hours. So God made a farmer.

God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop on mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor’s place. So God made a farmer.

God said, I need somebody strong enough to clear trees, heave bails and yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink combed pullets. And who will stop his mower for an hour to mend the broken leg of a meadow lark. So God made a farmer.

It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight, and not cut corners. Somebody to seed and weed, feed and breed, and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk.

Somebody to replenish the self-feeder and then finish a hard day’s work with a five-mile drive to church. Somebody who’d bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who’d laugh and then sigh, and then respond with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life “doing what Dad does.” So God made a farmer.

According to Wikipedia, radio broadcaster Paul Harvey received a poem in the mail from an anonymous sender, which he edited slightly and then used in a speech at Future Farmers of America convention in 1978. Chrysler paid a fee to FFA to use Harvey’s “So God Made a Farmer” speech in their commercial (and is using the Super Bowl publicity to promote FFA on their YouTube site).

Rust and Bone: Film Review

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 10:45:30 -0800

This is a long review, and it’s filled with spoilers.

Don’t proceed unless you have a boat. The boat is: you can read a very long, edited essay that’s overly analytical. And you’ve seen the movie.

(Beware: past this point, there be theoretical dragons.)

True and Transcendent

“Rust and Bone” is a highly-acclaimed French film that got a lot of buzz at Cannes last year. On the surface, it is about an orca trainer’s terrible accident, and the mixed-martial arts fighter who helps her transcend tragedy. It is a strange premise. Yet it succeeds.

French director Jacques Audiard tells that story, and much more.

“Rust and Bone” is a film about wolves. Ravenous wolves. Wolves of the sea, wolves of brutal men. The hunger of desire. The very wolf of our own body, desperate to be alive, powerful and whole.

The story is framed by the rust red of spilled blood. The crack of bones and glass. Out-of-control creatures wreck havoc. “Rust and Bone” is brutal, visceral. At the core is a battle of flesh and spirit. It asks, How do you go on after loss? Can we overcome the physical?

Stephanie’s gradual acceptance and then triumph after injury is heartbreaking and stunning. I can’t imagine any other actress in this role. The scene set to “Fireworks” is one of the emotional highlights from any movie of 2012—and should have earned Cotillard an Oscar nomination. Her restrained yet poignant inhabitation of this character is the only way the odd storyline works. The entire success of the film rides on her ability to be Stephanie.

In “Rust and Bone,” though, Stephanie is not the only disfigured one. Hardly anything is whole. A truck, covered in graffiti, has a mirror attached with packing tape. Brother and sister meet after five years, yet cannot kiss or approach one another. Shattered glass is a recurring motif. Gauze wraps leg stumps and fractured hands. People survive on unstable jobs, in unsuitable living conditions.

Matthias Schoenaerts is primal, ferocious and as glorious as a Greek god. Although some reviewers credit Cotillard with all the fire and intensity of the movie’s emotional weight, Schoenaerts’ nonchalance, raw force and confidence make for an equally virtuosic performance. As with Cotillard, the film depends on Ali not being a caricature, with subtle emotions being conveyed by gestures.

Main Themes and Associations

Physicality is celebrated in “Rust and Bone,” but it is also denigrated. Ali’s casual sexual encounters with women are crude. Stephanie at one point is disturbed that Ali will see her dragging her disfigured body on the floor to go urinate. Bodily functions and smells are shameful, or disgusting.

Innocence and purity are so insubstantial, they weigh as much as a songbird or a handful of snow. As some have commented, the one innocent character, the child Sam, feels almost unnecessary. But he is an important part of the triangle. He’s not a beast, nor is he a tamer of beasts. He’s loves dogs (animals) and trucks (powerful vehicles). His dependence on a violent, detached father means nurturing is almost non-existent. He can’t stay away: tenderness for animals means he gets covered in shit. (Resulting in cleansing/punishment with cold water.)

Sam is the character with the least vital force. He bears the brunt of tragedy. Sadly, he’s the necessary scapegoat in the film. It must be so, because in life, children are the primary sufferers when adults are damaged and detached. Audiard does not flinch from showing us graphic images of amputation—he is brutally honest also with scenes of child neglect.

This movie is full of separations. The flatness of platform above water. Man and animal. Dry land and sea. Detachment and numbness and inhibition hold people apart, divide them from family and friends. Men in suits are divided from cashiers in aprons. In circles and boxing rings, combatants oppose each another. Audiard uses gates, enclosures, walls, closed doors to signal conflicting realities and divided emotional worlds.

These ambiguities and tensions get disrupted when Ali and Stephanie begin to bond. Their relationship is a bridge across the commonplace isolation/division of two worlds.

Animals play key roles in “Rust and Bone.” There is a beast of a man, Ali, who hauls children, carries adults, pulls sleds. He’s the embodiment of the physical, animal spirit. Taut as a stallion, this imposing bête is also repugnant. The princess of a woman who enters his fortress and begins to love him holds back her kisses. Even the child refuses a kiss. (Only humans kiss, not animals.)

Real beasts are also supporting players: orcas, goldfish trapped in aquariums, puppies that dirty their own habitations, birds that sing in key scenes (and sound like whale whistles). Stephanie makes a significant thematic observation when she says, “We cannot continue like animals,” hinting at the film’s exploration of the clash of physical and spiritual.

For most of the film, water is a place of peace and freedom, yet it also has a malevolent side. The opening shots foreshadow later scenes with ambiguous debris, carnage and blood, viewed from underwater. (We don’t know until the end it’s two separate crisis events muddied into the dreamy sequence—showing the metaphorical connection between these two key events.)

Film Techniques that Further the Themes

Use of muted, almost-underwater sound is an important technique Audiard uses to show separation (Ali jogging while the ambulances drive by, Stephanie in the van watching the fight). The state of being underwater signals a place of being distant, detached or shut out from something—and occurs at transitions into key plotlines. Water rejuvenates, but water also almost destroys each of them. That is, until it finally plays an essential part in restoring them to wholeness.

At times the pacing is slow, but it moves steadily toward meaning. Casual moviegoers unaccustomed to subtle drama will likely struggle with both subtitles and the two-hour length. A few of the supporting actors could have been developed a bit more. The brutality was difficult (I closed my eyes during a few of the street fighting scenes). The graphic sexuality was, well, graphic, though handled with as much respect as possible. I was not prepared for how shocking Stephanie’s CGI-amputated legs were. I’m thankful Audiard treated this with dignity and honesty. Lastly, I felt that hearing more from Sam’s perspective and voice would have added depth to his character.

Despite its savagery and conversely an almost clinical neutrality at times, beauty permeates this film. The cinematography is lush and evocative. “Rust and Bone” is a glorious visual poem. From the impressionistic opening scenes, to the final ten minutes—every camera angle, every gesture, every recurring motif is intentional, like a fighter’s punches, like the pistons of a truck, like the turn of an orca’s fin steering tons of bulk.

A Movie That’s Closer to Poetry

In poetry, concrete objects must carry the imagery and symbolism. Water, debris, rivulets of blood, trucks, fists, boxes, ice, animals, shattered glass do this. Stephanie is the primary means by which we experience emotion and grace. Like the best poetry, she doesn’t tell us things. We experience her arc with her.

In poetry, the one who perceives becomes one with the perceived. So too, in watching “Rust and Bone,” we enter the shadows and light of the film. We sin, suffer and survive. As Stephanie emerges from the murky waters of injury and grief, we feel release. Thankfully, Audiard doesn’t use the typical film tropes (rousing music, quickly cut scenes of progress, setbacks and solutions) to toy with us. Stephanie begins renewal through her complicated love for Ali, and in managing his brutal talent—both messy and ambiguous means of character development.

Even as our hearts lift with Stephanie’s increasing confidence, we feel things are not complete. The triangle of these people (the beast, the beast-tamer and the naïf beast-lover) lacks consequences. Unrestrained exercise of the animal nature cannot continue in a moral world.

Ali has hurt, neglected and failed the ones he loves. Good fiction demands justice. Drama cannot bear the falsity of nihilism or pantheism (where nothing is bad…or everything is good). If Ali suffers, he deserves it. If a bit player pays the price, it’s not enough. The one who can redeem the wrong is the only innocent character. He is put to death for the flaws of the wrongdoer. Our slowly building outrage comes to a climax of horror.

Yet here the poetry (and adept vision of Audiard) returns to themes and symbols already foreshadowed. Redemption is already in place. Ice appeared in the opening scenes to dull pain. The barrier of the ice must be broken for the child to live. Sam is almost lost by Ali’s neglect. Yet Sam is saved by his father’s savage ferocity—when Ali is ready to give it up (break his own hands to save Sam).

This proves to be the catharsis in resolving every intense angle pressing on the audience’s heart. The culminating moments crack the wall of the glass tank separating the viewer and a fitting resolution. We’re swept with Ali into an ocean of forgiveness.

(Yes, as some reviewers have mentioned, the film veers slightly towards sentimentality and too-convenient solutions at this point. However, the rawness and unsentimentality of the earlier, most difficult scenes allows for a bit of softness in the conclusion without feeling false.)

The conclusion also feels authentic because poetically and spiritually, it works. The carnal, immoral nature (where everything is “normal”) results in nearly losing Sam and Stephanie. Ali fractures the strongest tools of his beast nature (his hands) to save Sam. The tragedy opens Ali to remorse. Without the beastly nature, Ali wouldn’t have been able to save Sam. The damage will heal, and make them better, stronger. What could have been tragedy became transformative.

The crisis breaks something inside Ali and allows him to let go of the icy wall of careless detachment he’s erected between himself and the world (and Sam and Stephanie). He is finally able tell Stephanie he loves her. More than that, he has finally begun to tame himself, which may be another way of saying, he is able to love. (Love requires sacrifice and self-control, which are the two things a purely physical, desire-driven person is unable to do.)

In a way, what happened between Ali and Sam in that lake scene is a reversal of the scene of Stephanie’s tragedy. Ali is a man underwater (numb) with broken limbs. He’s a spiritual amputee. Crisis throws him out of submersion. He’s transferred to a stable place. He is made more whole. Instead of a giant animal, it’s the life of a small and vulnerable child that draws him from disaster.

Final Thoughts

Oh, that last scene! A child who recovered from harm. Sam, no longer disposable, is clearly experiencing tenderness and care. (They are wearing decent clothes. They have luggage!) Ali is with his son, and keeps an eye on him. He walks with him, not ahead of him. And there’s Stephanie. Ali has taken his forcefulness and trained it, and won something of value. We close as the three characters are funneled through a revolving glass device and emerge on the outside, together. The physical, the spiritual—tenderness, vulnerability, force, vitality—are no longer separated or opposed.

Audiard transforms his brutal, raw film—already interspersed with a few moments of sunshine—and tamed it with a thematic and emotional satisfying conclusion. His characters have found peace. We find relief. Our fears, anxieties, anger are assuaged.

And then, the closing narration! In this poetic film, Audiard turns to poetry to close: “The human hand contains 27 bones. Some monkeys have more: gorillas have 32, five in each thumb. For humans, it’s 27. If you break an arm or a leg, after a while calcium gathers around the bone and joins it together. In the end, it’s stronger than before. But if you break a bone in your hand, you know it’ll never fully heal. You’ll think about it before every fight. You’ll pay attention… And even if you pay attention, the pain will come back… like needles, like broken glass.”

(I can’t comment on that. It’s perfect.)

When the end is exactly what I love and what I wanted, the film closes as the song “The Wolves” by Bon Iver plays while credits roll. The screen glows white. The chorus proclaims, over and over, “What might have been lost / What might have been lost / What might have been lost / What might have been lost.”

After sitting until the end, I left the theater shaking, then cried while driving. I finally went to a cafe and had some tea to calm my agitated self before going home.

“Rust and Bone” had a rare power to convey (carry, pull, move) the viewer, this beautiful beast of a movie, wildly forceful in both violence and grace. Ulna bone, muscle, skin—acting, images, story—perfectly coordinated, powerful as biceps—assaulting us, lifting us, pummeling us—a film that carries viewers through great suffering into something warm and swelling as a southern sea.

We’re all so close to losing something. We have brokenness and damage, and must tame our own beasts. We must constantly find renewal despite damage. We want beauty, poetry and passion to somehow heal and save us (one reason why we watch films). We know the color and taste of blood and the fragility of bone. We want our flaws to be redeemed.

So rare, a film that tells a story, embodies a story, allows us to live in the story. True, and transcendent.

Resources for this film

Note

I got to lead a lively discussion on “Rust and Bone” at the Grand Cinema in Tacoma the first Saturday of it’s local release. The reason this essay is so long and swerves into the pretentious even is that I took a lot of notes and thought a lot about what was going on. My normal movie-watching habits wouldn’t be quite this detailed!

This is lovely, gorgeous film cinematically. It’s also Rated R for violence and scenes of graphic nudity. (If you have a hard time with brutal scenes of blood and fighting, or you don’t care for raw scenes of sexual situations—this is not a film for you.)

Rust and Bone Screenplay

Available on the Sony Classics site here

Trailer

(don’t watch this until after you see it, there’s a mild spoiler)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg7skcyYolU

Song at End of Film

“Wolves (Act I & II)” by Bon Iver

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9lrVZdaluk

Song at the Beginning of the Film

“Wash” by Bon Iver

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMfL7rVAu0U

Alexandre Desplat’s Music for the Film

Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for Rust and Bone

End Voiceover

(Translated into English. Do not read if you haven’t seen it! SPOILERS!!)

“The human hand contains 27 bones. Some monkeys have more: gorillas have 32, five in each thumb. For humans, it’s 27. If you break an arm or a leg, after a while calcium gathers around the bone and joins it together. In the end, it’s stronger than before. But if you break a bone in your hand, you know it’ll never fully heal. You’ll think about it before every fight. You’ll pay attention… And even if you pay attention, the pain will come back… like needles, like broken glass.”

Serving as a 2012 News Tribune reader columnist was a great...

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 15:32:28 -0800

Serving as a 2012 News Tribune reader columnist was a great experience. I was asked for one more column, which is today’s paper. Welcome Home, Troops: We’re Here For You. (The military homecoming ceremony I attended in December is my topic.)

Here’s one of the very best videos of a surprise homecoming, filmed at a South Carolina football game. Is it possible to watch this without getting teary-eyed?

Mercy and Chaos

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:05:00 -0800

[Mercy is] the willingness to enter into the chaos of others.

—James F. Keenan, S.J.

I came across this quote last week, and can’t stop thinking about its many layers of significance. Words like “love” and “mercy” have almost become cliches. So I want to ask first: what is mercy?

Merriam-Webster says it is “a blessing that is an act of divine favor or compassion…[or] compassionate treatment of those in distress.”

The etymology of “mercy” coalesced most recently in the Old French. Mercit, merci (9th century) referred to a “reward, gift; kindness, grace, pity.” This arose from the earlier Latin mercedem “reward, wages, pay hire” which in turn came from merx “wares, merchandise”—the source of our word “market.” In the sixth century, “mercy” shifted from a sense of the mercantile, and became applied to the “the quality of showing kindness to the helpless.”

Merchandise is not mercy. Commerce is an even exchange, or an exchange of some item of value (time, money, stocks, assets, goods) for another item of similar worth. Depending on culture and social values, it’s not always exactly equal—but there is reciprocation.

Mercy is an unequal exchange. It’s wasteful. Mercy presents kindness to someone who cannot return the favor. Mercy can only be given to a person in need, want or distress. You can’t give mercy to someone who has not sinned, is not vulnerable or is not suffering.

It’s generally easy to give cash, type out a Facebook message, or hug someone when we see them suffering or in need. We even have a cliche, “You’re in our thoughts,” to express this abstract sense that their problems cross our consciousness from time to time. Mercy leaves our place of comfort and goes to a person who appears flawed, cursed, damaged, messy.

While in a place of destruction, mercy requires that we stop talking. Often the right thing to do is just weep with those who weep. Refrain from those easy solutions and blame. Certain phrases intended to comfort aren’t merciful, even if the motive is right.

“God wanted another angel.”

(So He allowed a child to be murdered?)

“Your grandmother is watching from Heaven.”

(Everything? That’s kind of creepy.)

(If you want ideas on what to say to someone who is hurting, and don’t want to say the wrong thing—this NPR article gives some good insight.)

Mercy is an essential attribute of God. In Micah 6:8, it says, “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Jesus, in Matthew 9:13, speaks of mercy when he refers to Hosea 6:6, “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

I’m not suggesting mercy is easy, or that I’m qualified to give advice about it. In fact, one of my worst qualities is a rush to judgment. I’m notorious for saying rude comments or giving unwanted advice that stinks of manipulation. One of my greatest regrets is feeling impatient with someone who is weak or fatuous, and either using rudeness or mockery to shut them down. Maybe that’s why Father Keenan’s words struck a chord with me.

God, have mercy on me, who lacks mercy at times. I need You to come still my own chaos.

In my essay on our family’s experience with thyroid cancer, I addressed this need to just have someone sit with you while you mourn. I didn’t really talk about it in my article, but later, I thought, seeing the cancer treatment as a horror movie, my one plea was: please just stay with us. Help us fight the serial killer. Grab a club, a bucket of water, a baseball bat. Don’t be like those early actors who get into the car and screech off, tires smoking. Have mercy on us. Stay in the chaos.

Mercy requires courage. In fact, maybe a good synonym for mercy is “courageous love”—the kind of daring action that runs towards a burning building rather than away.

“Mercy triumphs over judgment!” —James 2:13

———

I first read the quote about mercy and chaos in Maureen Dowd’s column, “Why, God?” (in December 25, 2012’s New York Times). It’s a beautiful meditation about celebrating Christmas amid the horrific circumstances of the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

Photo credit: Kevin Dooly, used with permission under Creative Commons

I love this photo of red algae, which won 2nd place in Olympus...

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 17:02:12 -0800

I love this photo of red algae, which won 2nd place in Olympus BioScapes, an annual photo contest that “honors the world’s most extraordinary microscope images of life science subjects.”

Photographer: Dr. Arlene Wechezak
Anacortes, Washington, USA
Specimen: Red algae Scagelia, showing reproductive tetraspores and golden diatoms.
Technique: Darkfield

I could spend hours scrolling through the fantastical, colorful, odd shapes and forms that are invisible to the eye, but function in obscure, miniature glory.

See all the 2012 winners and honorable mentions here.

I’m obsessed with this band’s music. This particular...

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 15:01:33 -0800

I’m obsessed with this band’s music.

This particular song uses one of my favorite words, tessellate. It’s a word I had to research, and ponder a great deal, while writing the introduction to my friend Von Glitschka’s book about tessellations and patterns, Drip, Drop, Swirl.

Tessellate, with its sybillic S’s and Italianate melodics, comes from the Latin for “tile.” Alt-J uses tessellate as a metaphor for a love triangle, physical intimacy or something more risque. In any case, the image of complex shapes fitting together perfectly is a powerful and lovely aesthetic choice.

There’s a music video, but I actually like this stripped-down performance a lot better than the album version.

"…[C]ongratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the..."

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 09:15:41 -0800

“…[C]ongratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay on Heroism