A Short Garden Report
Days lengthen now, are softening.
Myriad nascent greens screen sun
through a sieve of rustling.
Willows and pussy willows wave—
long lime-hued pennants down-spilling,
kitten-halos at attention—
and even low-growing mosses,
emerging between these pink bricks,
send up thin flowers like flairs.
Leslie Schultz
Until Tomorrow!
Leslie
On Revising an Opaque Poem
for Emily Dickinson, Helen Vendler, and Ellen Keller
A Poem is a form—of Life—
A virus in the brain—
That can infect this Living World
With music—just and sane.
A Poet performs surgery
This little Life—upon—
Augments caverns of clarity
When Poet’s Life—is gone.
Leslie Schultz
A touchstone friend gave me a copy of the March 10, 2016 issue of The New York Review of Books this week, with a very stimulating article by critic Helen Vendler titled, “The Poet Remakes the Poem.” Emily Dickinson’s inspired revisions occupy the first half of the article, and really got me thinking.
This month’s exercise of NaPoWriMo–which requires an entirely new poem each day–precludes extension revision just now. It requires working with out a net, if you will–rather scary and/or foolish, but also rather heady.
As other poets do, annoyingly for readers (if one has readers,) I revise poems when I see a way to clarify them, bring them into a clearer focus. It doesn’t matter if the poem has already been published. (Though I am, myself, sometimes bewildered and annoyed when I encounter variant versions of a poem by Dickinson or Yeats or another that I want to memorize–Which is the right version?)
And Vendler is correct in citing Berryman and Yeats. Both connect a revision of the poem with revising of the self. When we see better, sometimes we can do better.
This small poem from this morning? I can see many ways in which it is confusing and could be better–can one operate on a virus? Likely not. I was juggling ideas about catchy tunes (those “brain worms” (or “maggots”) from the late 18th century at least, and so beloved by advertisers and pop musicians today) with the idea (brought to my attention by Vendler’s article) of revision constituting “self-surgery.” Then, to make it more interesting, the first two lines occurred when I took a break from reading to pour a cup of tea. Since they echoed Dickinson’s hymnal meter, that gave me the tiny cauldron of form in which to try to distill the idea. So I also tried to think as she might have done in terms of slant rhyme, inverted syntax, and idiosyncratic punctuation and capitalization.
In sum, this was a far as I could get this morning! I wonder…perhaps I shall have a flurry of revision on this thirty+ poems of April? The stakes are high. The poem’s shape and perhaps its longevity, too, depend on getting it ‘right’ or as right as the shaper is able to see and to execute. Once this month is over, I plan to print out all the new April poems, sit down with them, and see them individually and as a group. (I am imagining them arrayed like a class photo, peering at them, thinking of some “Yes! I remember you!” and wondering of others “Wait a minute…who are you again?”)
For now, I am enjoying the uncertainty of not knowing what each day’s poem will be until it knocks and I open the door to it. For now, I echo Paul Valery’s assertion that poems are never truly finished, only abandoned.
Until tomorrow!
Leslie
Roma: Foro Romano
Someone else bought this,
maybe from a little shop,
with jingling lire,
and brought it home,
to the Midwest,
long ago.
You can’t find these postcards
anymore: photographs printed
after hand-painting, mass-produced,
yet so delicately pre-digital.
A jumbled scene, this.
Splintered bones of ancient buildings,
draped by vines, ringed
by younger marble, stucco, brick—
honey-combed with sunlight,
standing only a thousand years so far—
where the business of life
flows on.
Clouds float.
Campaniles point heavenward.
A silent bell is set against the blue sky.
In the undone heart
of this storied city,
cypress and drifts
of red bougainvillea.
Long, silvered rectangles
of silvered water, reflecting.
And a circle
of tiny men in black trousers,
hands in their pockets, agreeing,
deciding something
there, where broken
statues gleam white
as dangerous water
or all those broken promises
littering the river of time.
Leslie Schultz
Some years ago, when Julia and I began studying history and geography in earnest, our dear friends and neighbors gave us a cache of old postcards. They were well-traveled, and so were their own parents, and so Julia and I spent hours sorting, dreaming, discussing, and wondering sparked by these tiny windows on the wider world.
Today, when elections and taxes and the warring needs between gardens and buildings are much on my mind, I was drawn to an image of a city I have never visited, Rome, that was printed before I was born. After years of studying history and literature in the United States with Julia (and she just reminded me last night of how we read Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar, here on our living room couch) I am keenly aware of how the ideals and flaws of a Republic were first grappled with in Rome, and how they inspired the thoughts–progressive and sometimes repressive–of Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and so many others. The bones of all that talk and theory affect how I live my life today, and that amazes me. I will never understand it fully, but I want to know more.
To that end, as my resident classics scholar moves on to other areas of inquiry, Tim and I are investing in — yes! — new DVDs from the Teaching Company. We’ll be able to supplement our desultory and highly satisfying ongoing study of Latin and Greek through books with hearing these ancient tongues read aloud. They should arrive today. College tuition is superseding our (already meager) travel budget for the foreseeable future, but we’re embarking on what I am sure is a lifelong learning adventure. “Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant…”!
Until tomorrow!
Leslie
Wisteria and Lattice Motif
Here is what I remember:
hanging scallops of bloom,
articulated purple bells,
shook warnings we did not hear;
floral rattlesnakes,
shaking so slightly
when we trod the board floors
of the rotting shotgun house.
So frail and decorative
they appeared, blanched
in moonlight, even as they
knocked ghostly knuckles,
even as they crushed
with their lush growth
the lattice supporting them.
I can hear them now,
sliding insistently
between frame and windowpane,
prising up nails, delicate
vegetal marauders.
Leslie Schultz
This morning, I spent more time with the Handbook from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I was quite struck by this image of a Noh robe from their textile collection:
As I gazed on the attractive and orderly depiction of this plant, I suddenly and vividly recalled a wisteria vine I contended with long ago in Lake Charles. I delighted in its beauty, but only gradually realized its destructive power.
Then I looked up “destructive wisteria” . Hmmmm…rather well documented, as a matter of fact, and compared to unbalanced power in human relationships. Is the Noh robe, worn by a man in the Edo period (1750-1850) when depicting a female role, commenting on gender politics?
Here is another wisteria image from contemporary Japan, an example of strict civic pruning.
Until tomorrow!
Leslie
For My Sister, On Her Birthday
Though I’ve known you my whole life long,
my life cannot be not long enough
to know you well enough. This song,
though rhyme and measures are quite rough—
a little choppy, off-the-cuff—
could not be off-key, cannot be wrong.
I can’t count how many times you
have helped me, all unasked, true heart.
A thousand miles away, still you knew
if I were sad, mad, enthralled by art—
or pierced by remorse or conscience’s dart—
you’re always there to talk me through.
Your peerless art inspires me,
shows how to frame a quiet scene,
from orange dawn to turquoise sea
to forest’s heart of tender green.
Karla, you pour luck into “13”
like most pour a cup of tea—
routinely and effortlessly—
This morning, I want to say
I hope that everything you see,
everything chance brings your way,
gives sparkle and shine to your birthday,
as knowing you does, every day, to me.
Love, Leslie
Until Tomorrow!
Leslie