Category Archives: Poems & Stories

April 4, 2022: Spotlight on W.H. Auden’s Poem “In Praise of Limestone”; And Background for My Poem “Sifting Through the Basement”

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The Messy Genius of W. H. Auden – Brewminate: We're Never Far from Where We Were
AudenVanVechten1939.jpg

W. H. Auden is a favorite poet of mine. Some years ago, I learned that our former neighbor, Ian Barbour, had, as a boy, had Auden as a teacher. I most recently encountered Auden as a character in the novel about Thomas Mann, The Magician, through Auden’s marriage to Mann’s daughter, Erika. It wasn’t until I wrote today’s poem–about water and memory and ancient limestone walls in my own basement–that I discovered this poem of his. When I read it, I thought of the karst geology of my own home region and loved what he did with his local version of this subject. When I look at these two portraits of him, I see the ideas of memory and erosion splendidly illustrated and alive. I hope you this Whitmanesque poem of his, too.

In Praise Of Limestone

If it form the one landscape that we, the inconstant ones,
    Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly
Because it dissolves in water. Mark these rounded slopes
    With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath,
A secret system of caves and conduits; hear the springs
    That spurt out everywhere with a chuckle,
Each filling a private pool for its fish and carving
    Its own little ravine whose cliffs entertain
The butterfly and the lizard; examine this region
    Of short distances and definite places:
What could be more like Mother or a fitter background
    For her son, the flirtatious male who lounges
Against a rock in the sunlight, never doubting
    That for all his faults he is loved; whose works are but
Extensions of his power to charm? From weathered outcrop
    To hill-top temple, from appearing waters to
Conspicuous fountains, from a wild to a formal vineyard,
    Are ingenious but short steps that a child’s wish
To receive more attention than his brothers, whether
    By pleasing or teasing, can easily take.

Watch, then, the band of rivals as they climb up and down
    Their steep stone gennels in twos and threes, at times
Arm in arm, but never, thank God, in step; or engaged
    On the shady side of a square at midday in
Voluble discourse, knowing each other too well to think
    There are any important secrets, unable
To conceive a god whose temper-tantrums are moral
    And not to be pacified by a clever line
Or a good lay: for accustomed to a stone that responds,
    They have never had to veil their faces in awe
Of a crater whose blazing fury could not be fixed;
    Adjusted to the local needs of valleys
Where everything can be touched or reached by walking,
    Their eyes have never looked into infinite space
Through the lattice-work of a nomad’s comb; born lucky,
    Their legs have never encountered the fungi
And insects of the jungle, the monstrous forms and lives
    With which we have nothing, we like to hope, in common.
So, when one of them goes to the bad, the way his mind works
    Remains incomprehensible: to become a pimp
Or deal in fake jewellery or ruin a fine tenor voice
    For effects that bring down the house, could happen to all
But the best and the worst of us…
                                            That is why, I suppose,
    The best and worst never stayed here long but sought
Immoderate soils where the beauty was not so external,
    The light less public and the meaning of life
Something more than a mad camp. ‘Come!’ cried the granite wastes,
    “How evasive is your humour, how accidental
Your kindest kiss, how permanent is death.” (Saints-to-be
    Slipped away sighing.) “Come!” purred the clays and gravels,
“On our plains there is room for armies to drill; rivers
    Wait to be tamed and slaves to construct you a tomb
In the grand manner: soft as the earth is mankind and both
    Need to be altered.” (Intendant Caesars rose and
Left, slamming the door.) But the really reckless were fetched
    By an older colder voice, the oceanic whisper:
“I am the solitude that asks and promises nothing;
    That is how I shall set you free. There is no love;
There are only the various envies, all of them sad.”

    They were right, my dear, all those voices were right
And still are; this land is not the sweet home that it looks,
    Nor its peace the historical calm of a site
Where something was settled once and for all: A back ward
    And dilapidated province, connected
To the big busy world by a tunnel, with a certain
    Seedy appeal, is that all it is now? Not quite:
It has a worldy duty which in spite of itself
    It does not neglect, but calls into question
All the Great Powers assume; it disturbs our rights. The poet,
    Admired for his earnest habit of calling
The sun the sun, his mind Puzzle, is made uneasy
    By these marble statues which so obviously doubt
His antimythological myth; and these gamins,
    Pursuing the scientist down the tiled colonnade
With such lively offers, rebuke his concern for Nature’s
    Remotest aspects: I, too, am reproached, for what
And how much you know. Not to lose time, not to get caught,
    Not to be left behind, not, please! to resemble
The beasts who repeat themselves, or a thing like water
    Or stone whose conduct can be predicted, these
Are our common prayer, whose greatest comfort is music
    Which can be made anywhere, is invisible,
And does not smell. In so far as we have to look forward
    To death as a fact, no doubt we are right: But if
Sins can be forgiven, if bodies rise from the dead,
    These modifications of matter into
Innocent athletes and gesticulating fountains,
    Made solely for pleasure, make a further point:
The blessed will not care what angle they are regarded from,
    Having nothing to hide. Dear, I know nothing of
Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love
    Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.

                                            May 1948

Background for My Poem for April 4, 2022: “Sifting Through the Basement”:

A flip-book tour of the work-in-progress that is the basement (including the eerie sub-basement that did not make it into the poem.)

Happy Reading! Happy Writing! LESLIE

April 3, 2022: Spotlight on Poem “Bored” by Margaret Atwood and Background on My Poem “Celestial Navigation”

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Boat, Wooden Boat, Water, Landscape, Flow, Lake
Photo: Thomas Sondermann/Pixabay (Used by permission)

Perhaps best known as a novelist of dystopian fiction, Margaret Atwood is a Canadian-born giant in the world of literature. Her work is translated into thirty languages, and she seems to have an unlimited imagination and prodigious work ethic along with her fierce intelligence.

I first read her novel, Surfacing, in a women’s studies class during my sophomore year of college. I was mesmerized, and it has held up over many re-readings. Perhaps my favorite of her novels is the work of historical fiction, Alias Grace. (Yes, not only the exquisite sentences, the historically nuanced questions of identity, and the mystery, but the structure that uses names of quilt patterns–shall I just say, she had me at “Jagged Edge”? In all, Atwood has published work in virtually every genre, so perhaps it comes as no surprise that she is an exceptional poet.

Here is a link to my favorite poem by Atwood, about herself and her father, simply titled “Bored.” It was published in The Atlantic in 1994. I first encountered it two decades ago and I have never forgotten it. I reread it often, and I find that every time I get to the last line I am surprised by the lump in my throat. (When you read the poem, you will understand why I selected the haunting image above.)

For more poems by Atwood, take at look at the Poetry Foundation website.

Here is a link to this phenomenal author’s own website. The always surprising Atwood has a new surprise for us–she–the doyenne of dystopian fiction–is convening a master class this year in “Practical Utopias: An Exploration of the Possible.” If you scroll down to the two-minute video and listen to Atwood describe the eight-week online seminar, you’ll find a moment at the end that made me laugh out loud. The first time Atwood has startled me into laughter, I think! The line-up of experts across many fields is impressive and intriguing, and makes me wonder how her own discoveries will affect her future fiction and poetry. There is also much more about her biography, bibliography, and even samples of her hand-drawn cartoons (yes, she does that, too!)

If you have a favorite poem by Atwood, please let me know!

Margaret Atwood (image by Larry D. Moore from Wikimedia Commons)

Background on Today’s Poem, “Celestial Navigation”:

Dawn from Our Front Porch

Not so much to say about this poem, except that I find it helpful to step out each morning for just a few breaths of fresh air, and also that every a friend (thanks, Ann!) enrolled me in the Cloud-a-Day organization I find that I photograph the sky nearly every day, often many times each day.

Happy reading! Happy writing! LESLIE

April 2, 2022: Spotlight on Pablo Neruda’s Poem “Ode to My Socks” and Background for My Poem “Mulberries”

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My latest sock in process

As many of you know, for some years I have been knitting socks. I had wanted to learn how ever since I read this translation by Robert Bly of Pablo Neruda’s paean to homemade socks. I had learned how to knit in the round on slim bamboo needles from Vanessa Bodrie, who taught a knitting class for homeschooled students and their moms, but I was defeated from rendering a sock until another Northfielder, Kate Stuart, kindly (and very patiently) walked me through turning the heel and shaping the gusset.

(I would like to add that one-on-one instruction in knitting is the only way for me to progress, and that Northfield Yarn excels in this kind of tutoring for knitters at all levels–thanks to Cynthia Gilbertson’s Sweater Academy, I have actually knitted my first sweater and it fits! Still, socks are currently my comfort zone. I knit the same sock over and over with slight variations. And the best place I have found to discover new color and blends of sock yarns is Northfield Yarn.)

Handmade socks–for yourself or for another–are always a gift of love. And I think that beautiful things gain in beauty when they are used for their intended purposes, for then an ordinary day becomes enchanted. No one has captured the sheer magic of this better than Neruda, that controversial and passionate poet-statesman who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. I can’t read the work in its original Spanish, and I don’t know enough about the art of translation to weigh in on the controversy of Bly’s work as a translator, but, for me as a reader, this one works. It sings, and it has moved me to action over and over.

Ode to My Socks

Pablo Neruda – 1904-1973

Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder’s hands,
two socks as soft
as rabbits.
I slipped my feet
into them
as though into
two
cases
knitted
with threads of
twilight
and goatskin.
Violent socks,
my feet were
two fish made
of wool,
two long sharks
sea-blue, shot
through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons:
my feet
were honored
in this way
by
these
heavenly
socks.
They were
so handsome
for the first time
my feet seemed to me
unacceptable
like two decrepit
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that woven
fire,
of those glowing
socks.

Nevertheless
I resisted
the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere
as schoolboys
keep
fireflies,
as learned men
collect
sacred texts,
I resisted
the mad impulse
to put them
into a golden
cage
and each day give them
birdseed
and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers
in the jungle who hand
over the very rare
green deer
to the spit
and eat it
with remorse,
I stretched out
my feet
and pulled on
the magnificent
socks
and then my shoes.

The moral
of my ode is this:
beauty is twice
beauty
and what is good is doubly
good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool
in winter.

“Ode to My Socks” from Neruda & Vallejo: Selected Poems, by Pablo Neruda and translated by Robert Bly (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993).

For more on Pablo Neruda and Minnesota’s own Robert Bly, checks Poets.org or see the links here.

Regarding my poem for today, “Mulberries”: This poem (shared via email to those interested) is, in some ways, the inverse of the Neruda ode above. In that case, the poem triggered action in “the real world.” “Mulberries” describes a childhood encounter of the natural world that led to a kind of plein-air art-making and gave rise to a fascination with the history of this useful and astonishing plant, Morus alba, used for shade and fruit, to feed silk worms, and to make ethereal writing and gift-wrapping papers.

Mulberry, Color, Wild, Food, Fruit, Tree, Health, Sweet
(Photo: by Pixabay–used with permission)

Happy Reading! Happy Writing! LESLIE

No Joke! It is April 1, 2022–Welcome to Poetry Month! Spotlight on “Among School Children” by William Butler Yeats; Context for My Poem “Awash”; and Links to Liz Boquet’s April Poems and Robert Pinsky’s Poem “ABC”

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The poem below is one I first encountered in my early twenties. It is one that I return to again and again, always seeing something new, hearing something new. Rereading is, for me, a kind of passive revising, I suppose. Frequent rereading of certain texts overlays insight upon insight. This, for me, provides a deep kind of pleasure that is a counterpoint to the pleasure of encountering the startling new.

As I reread Yeats’s poem afresh this morning, I am thinking about how we tend to regard time as unspooling in a linear, storytelling way– but that it is more holographic and holistic than that, and how we cannot help sometimes noticing that we are all ages at once. Every blank hour or blank page is a new school room. While there are never any guarantees there is always the possibility of transport through embodied effort–and by releasing of effort, shifting from doing to simply being.

Probably you know this poem and see something entirely different in it? I would love to know where it takes your thoughts.

Among School Children

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATSI

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and history,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way—the children’s eyes
In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

II

I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire, a tale that she
Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
That changed some childish day to tragedy—
Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to alter Plato’s parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

III

And thinking of that fit of grief or rage
I look upon one child or t’other there
And wonder if she stood so at that age—
For even daughters of the swan can share
Something of every paddler’s heritage—
And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She stands before me as a living child.

IV

Her present image floats into the mind—
Did Quattrocento finger fashion it
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
And took a mess of shadows for its meat?
And I though never of Ledaean kind
Had pretty plumage once—enough of that,
Better to smile on all that smile, and show
There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.

V

What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
Honey of generation had betrayed,
And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
As recollection or the drug decide,
Would think her son, did she but see that shape
With sixty or more winters on its head,
A compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?

VI

Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
Solider Aristotle played the taws
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.

VII

Both nuns and mothers worship images,
But those the candles light are not as those
That animate a mother’s reveries,
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
And yet they too break hearts—O Presences
That passion, piety or affection knows,
And that all heavenly glory symbolise—
O self-born mockers of man’s enterprise;

VIII

Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?


W. B. Yeats, “Among School Children” from The Poems of W. B. Yeats: A New Edition, edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright 1933 by Macmillan Publishing Company, renewed © 1961 by Georgie Yeats. Reprinted with the permission of A. P. Watt, Ltd. on behalf of Michael Yeats.Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)

My own poem for today, “Awash” was sparked by an early venturing out into the dark garden. How interestingly reliable and magical the world always is a few feet from our lamplit living room!

As I set out on this April poem journey, I am heartened by knowing that thousands of other people all over the world are engaged in similar quests. My friend, Liz Boquet, is also undertaking the daily challenge to write and share a poem each day this month. Her work is always thoughtful and delightful. Here is a link to her website.

Finally, in a salute to the alphabet, here is a link to Robert Pinsky’s masterful and playful short poem “ABC” from 1999 and another to a summary of his storied career as a public poet (including a term as Poet Laureate of the U.S. beginning in 1997.)

Happy Reading and Writing!