It was too beautiful a morning not to go to the river.
But instead of my usual river route, I walked down to Brown's Island and then went west, passing the rafting company's busy table where people were strapping on life jackets and renting fun for the afternoon.
I decided to go home via the new Second Street connector, a particularly steep choice, but one I'd only driven, not walked.
Recalling that a stranger who worked at Tredegar had once told me how much she loved using that road to get to work because it afforded such a fantastic view of the river, I stopped mid-way up the hill, turned around and had to admit she was right.
There it was, all laid out below, blue and sparkling in the late morning light.
Walking along the tree-shaded sidewalk on Second Street near Ethyl Corporation, I found myself in a meditation about mindfulness after a guy biked by me, coffee cup in hand, ear buds in place.
Because clearly just biking down to the river on splendid morning isn't enough of a thing to do, he was multi-tasking as he pedaled.
I found that incredibly depressing. It's like when I see parents outside with young children and they're yapping on their phones or texting instead of actively engaging with these little humans they're supposed to be raising, inspiring, interacting with.
On Cary Street, I saw a woman walking her dog, so busy texting she didn't notice that the dog had stopped to do his business and she was now choking him as she continued to walk, oblivious to the very reason she was outside.
Remember when dog walking was enough? When you just sort of meandered wherever your canine pal wanted to go instead of being so busy on the phone that the dog was forgotten?
Yea, I'm afraid a lot of people don't know what I'm talking about, either.
Coming up the shady side of First Street, I crossed Main Street and heard an amplified voice. Looking over toward Library Park, I saw an assembled group listening to a speaker.
I bit. I was more than happy to stop my walk and do some listening for a while.Walking over to the park, I saw the park was unexpectedly gussied up with white tablecloths on the metal tables and people situated on every bench and chair.
On a small stage up against the library was a guy reading poetry from a book, so I stopped and propped up my arms on the metal fence to listen to his poem about being a kid having an adventure out in the snow and another about Monument Avenue.
The reader talked about his grandfather, Joseph Awad, who was Poet Laureate of Virginia and shared some memories of his grandfather.
Then he read his grandfather's poem, "Variation on a Theme," commenting afterwards about how immensely talented he'd been and how much he'd admired him.
Imagine happening on to an outdoor poetry reading coming back from a restorative saunter along the river. And to think I might have missed it if I'd been engrossed in a phone, which, conveniently, I don't have.
Living in the present is quickly becoming a thing of the past, if it's not already.
Seeing as how I've only got this one life, think I'll keep traveling to the beat of a different drum. The '70s got some things right. Be here now, be now here.
It's not as hard as you think and so much more pleasurable than you know.
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
The Poetry of the Plural Pronoun
I am a sucker for a man who writes poetry.
In a perfect world, he would write poetry to me, about me, inspired by me, but I can't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
So instead, I go off to hear poets read to me.
Tonight Poetic Principles was hosting Pulitzer prize-winning poet Charles Wright (!) along with Ellen Bryant Voigt, who has been nominated for the Pulitzer prize for poetry.
The room was uncharacteristically packed and I saw several poets I knew, although not a one who might be inclined to get poetic about me.
Ah, well.
Everything Voigt read was from her new book, much of which had to do with life in Vermont and contained an element of sly humor.
After reading a poem called "Moles," she cracked, "If you have any good solutions for getting rid of moles, let me know."
From "Bears" came a favorite line: "The plural pronoun is a dangerous proposition."
After her last poem, she said, "It's such a great pleasure to get to read with Charles Wright.
From his front-row seat, Wright piped up, "I've decided not to read." The room cracked up.
It was the ideal introduction for a man who balanced understated poems of yearning and acknowledgement with bursts of humor.
His "Appalachian Farewell" got him reminiscing about back in the '40s and '50s having to leave Tennessee to get beer because he lived in a dry county.
"Bedtime Story" included the evocative line, "The forest begins to gather its silences in."
A poem about a '49 Ford, "Appalachian Dog" referred to the car as "a major ride" in 1952 and referenced "Les Paul and Mary Ford records broken in half."
Not long after, Wright peered up and observed, "I can't remember when I came up here. I may read forever."
I don't think anyone in the room would have minded if he had. Okay, maybe the library security people, but certainly no one in that room.
Next he said he'd read some six-line poems. "I fell into writing six-line poems on my way to writing three-line poems. If you can't write a poem in three lines, just get out."
Intentional pause.
"I can't do it."
What he could do was write six-line poems beautifully and we heard several, one with the memorable line, "Empathy is only a one-way street."
Concluding a poem using the words ultimate and penultimate, he said, "I swore on my ancestors' graves in graduate school that I'd never use that word - penultimate."
Throwing his arms out, he quipped, "So sue me."
In "Road Warrior," he wrote, "Roadside flowers drove us to distraction."
Getting near the end, he said, "I've got just two more. One is 40 pages." The man was hilarious.
He closed with the appropriately-titled "Lullaby," with the lovely line, "I've said what I had to say as melodiously as I could."
A poetry lover couldn't ask for any more.
Well except for a man to be melodious about her, but I'm not dead yet.
Leaving the reading, I stepped into the elevator finding a poet I knew, a poetry lover I knew and the woman who sponsors the poetry series.
I wasn't surprised to see any of them.
The poet cocked his head and asked, "Karen, were you at Frightened Rabbit in Charlottesville last night?"
Color me surprised. I hadn't seen anyone I knew.
"I saw you from across the room and then I lost sight of you, but I thought for sure it was you," he explained.
Once down in the garage, we spent five minutes geeking out about how much we'd enjoyed the show (he'd even seen them last month opening for the National in Asheville).
Leaving poetry behind, I went to the Grace Street theater for some direct cinema, a term with which I was not familiar.
Turns out it's the American equivalent of France's cinema verite.
The VCU Cinematheque series was showing the 1968 Maysles brothers pseudo-documentary, "Salesman."
It was the story of four actual door-to-door bible salesmen from Boston who sold high-end, illustrated bibles to poor Catholic families.
Because it was made in '68, the stereotyping was rampant (the Irish were "mickeys") as was the cigarette smoking.
The film starts in the suburbs of Boston before the four salesmen head to Miami to sell down there.
The Florida landscape manages to be cliched, depressing and vaguely art deco at the same time.
Waitresses wear white uniforms (with giant flowers), women at a sales conference in Chicago all have bouffants and sexism is rampant.
"My wife wants to buy a bigger house and have two more kids, so I gotta earn more money," one says.
The fact that the film is a documentary makes it fascinating for the random moments they capture.
One salesman is completely out of his element in Florida - getting lost in cul de sacs with names like Sesame Street and Ali Baba Avenue, not making sales- and he sings "If I Were a Rich Man" whenever he gets nervous in the car.
At one point, depressed and frustrated at his lack of success, he turns on the car's radio and "This Land is Your Land" is on. A scriptwriter couldn't have dreamed up a better song for the moment.
In another scene, he goes up to a house to knock on the door and there's a baby in a high chair on the front porch. Not another person in sight.
When he knocks, the mother answers the door, says she's not interested and closes the door on him.
Her baby is still on the front porch. WTF?
Again, a writer couldn't have conceived of such an unlikely occurrence and yet there it was.
There was a scene where the salesman is trying to sell a couple a bible and the man jumps up and says he got a new Beatles album, putting it on his giant console stereo.
A lush string arrangement of "Yesterday" blares into the room.
This isn't the actual Beatles, this is some schmaltzy orchestral cover and it continues to play, almost drowning out the salesman's spiel.
During the discussion afterwards, we learned that the Maysles brothers shot 200 hours of film and edited down to 90 minutes, a process which took two years.
We spent a lot of time discussing how all that editing effectively turned a work of non-fiction into a fictional piece with documentary elements.
Likewise, I'm sure there's a whole lot of editing that goes into creating a poem, whether six lines or 40 pages.
Not an issue. Should I ever find a poet, he can take as much time as he needs to say what he has to say about me as melodiously as he can.
I shall gather my silences in and work on not driving him to distraction.
In a perfect world, he would write poetry to me, about me, inspired by me, but I can't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
So instead, I go off to hear poets read to me.
Tonight Poetic Principles was hosting Pulitzer prize-winning poet Charles Wright (!) along with Ellen Bryant Voigt, who has been nominated for the Pulitzer prize for poetry.
The room was uncharacteristically packed and I saw several poets I knew, although not a one who might be inclined to get poetic about me.
Ah, well.
Everything Voigt read was from her new book, much of which had to do with life in Vermont and contained an element of sly humor.
After reading a poem called "Moles," she cracked, "If you have any good solutions for getting rid of moles, let me know."
From "Bears" came a favorite line: "The plural pronoun is a dangerous proposition."
After her last poem, she said, "It's such a great pleasure to get to read with Charles Wright.
From his front-row seat, Wright piped up, "I've decided not to read." The room cracked up.
It was the ideal introduction for a man who balanced understated poems of yearning and acknowledgement with bursts of humor.
His "Appalachian Farewell" got him reminiscing about back in the '40s and '50s having to leave Tennessee to get beer because he lived in a dry county.
"Bedtime Story" included the evocative line, "The forest begins to gather its silences in."
A poem about a '49 Ford, "Appalachian Dog" referred to the car as "a major ride" in 1952 and referenced "Les Paul and Mary Ford records broken in half."
Not long after, Wright peered up and observed, "I can't remember when I came up here. I may read forever."
I don't think anyone in the room would have minded if he had. Okay, maybe the library security people, but certainly no one in that room.
Next he said he'd read some six-line poems. "I fell into writing six-line poems on my way to writing three-line poems. If you can't write a poem in three lines, just get out."
Intentional pause.
"I can't do it."
What he could do was write six-line poems beautifully and we heard several, one with the memorable line, "Empathy is only a one-way street."
Concluding a poem using the words ultimate and penultimate, he said, "I swore on my ancestors' graves in graduate school that I'd never use that word - penultimate."
Throwing his arms out, he quipped, "So sue me."
In "Road Warrior," he wrote, "Roadside flowers drove us to distraction."
Getting near the end, he said, "I've got just two more. One is 40 pages." The man was hilarious.
He closed with the appropriately-titled "Lullaby," with the lovely line, "I've said what I had to say as melodiously as I could."
A poetry lover couldn't ask for any more.
Well except for a man to be melodious about her, but I'm not dead yet.
Leaving the reading, I stepped into the elevator finding a poet I knew, a poetry lover I knew and the woman who sponsors the poetry series.
I wasn't surprised to see any of them.
The poet cocked his head and asked, "Karen, were you at Frightened Rabbit in Charlottesville last night?"
Color me surprised. I hadn't seen anyone I knew.
"I saw you from across the room and then I lost sight of you, but I thought for sure it was you," he explained.
Once down in the garage, we spent five minutes geeking out about how much we'd enjoyed the show (he'd even seen them last month opening for the National in Asheville).
Leaving poetry behind, I went to the Grace Street theater for some direct cinema, a term with which I was not familiar.
Turns out it's the American equivalent of France's cinema verite.
The VCU Cinematheque series was showing the 1968 Maysles brothers pseudo-documentary, "Salesman."
It was the story of four actual door-to-door bible salesmen from Boston who sold high-end, illustrated bibles to poor Catholic families.
Because it was made in '68, the stereotyping was rampant (the Irish were "mickeys") as was the cigarette smoking.
The film starts in the suburbs of Boston before the four salesmen head to Miami to sell down there.
The Florida landscape manages to be cliched, depressing and vaguely art deco at the same time.
Waitresses wear white uniforms (with giant flowers), women at a sales conference in Chicago all have bouffants and sexism is rampant.
"My wife wants to buy a bigger house and have two more kids, so I gotta earn more money," one says.
The fact that the film is a documentary makes it fascinating for the random moments they capture.
One salesman is completely out of his element in Florida - getting lost in cul de sacs with names like Sesame Street and Ali Baba Avenue, not making sales- and he sings "If I Were a Rich Man" whenever he gets nervous in the car.
At one point, depressed and frustrated at his lack of success, he turns on the car's radio and "This Land is Your Land" is on. A scriptwriter couldn't have dreamed up a better song for the moment.
In another scene, he goes up to a house to knock on the door and there's a baby in a high chair on the front porch. Not another person in sight.
When he knocks, the mother answers the door, says she's not interested and closes the door on him.
Her baby is still on the front porch. WTF?
Again, a writer couldn't have conceived of such an unlikely occurrence and yet there it was.
There was a scene where the salesman is trying to sell a couple a bible and the man jumps up and says he got a new Beatles album, putting it on his giant console stereo.
A lush string arrangement of "Yesterday" blares into the room.
This isn't the actual Beatles, this is some schmaltzy orchestral cover and it continues to play, almost drowning out the salesman's spiel.
During the discussion afterwards, we learned that the Maysles brothers shot 200 hours of film and edited down to 90 minutes, a process which took two years.
We spent a lot of time discussing how all that editing effectively turned a work of non-fiction into a fictional piece with documentary elements.
Likewise, I'm sure there's a whole lot of editing that goes into creating a poem, whether six lines or 40 pages.
Not an issue. Should I ever find a poet, he can take as much time as he needs to say what he has to say about me as melodiously as he can.
I shall gather my silences in and work on not driving him to distraction.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Conspicuous in My Absence
So far today, I've had four e-mails checking to see if I'm alive.
I am. Apparently it upset the natural order of things when I did not post last night, a fact of which I was unaware. People were worried that I was roadkill somewhere because I didn't blog.
I don't want to disappoint anyone, but I didn't go out last night. It was a beautiful evening and I had a new book of poetry given to me for my birthday so I took it to my back porch to read.
Honestly, the only thing that could have made it better would have been if the beagle had been at my feet.
The book "Hello Sunshine" is by singer/songwriter Ryan Adams, a man whose music I greatly enjoy.
I hadn't read his first book of poems "Infinity Blues" but I knew they were written when he was still very much a miserable person using drugs and completely cynical about life.
"Hello Sunshine" was written after he fell in love (and married) and got clean; it's like reading the journal of a man discovering love and life for the first time.
To a hopeless romantic like me, it was best kind of porch read; once the sun began setting, I turned on the light so I could stay outside and finish the book. The scent of the gardenia bush wafting up from under my balcony only added to the mood.
we pass through these days like sunlight
through gauzy wet sheets
damp
and yellow in the backyard
riddled with hopeful light
and
my world is nothing but day
and
it was the silence stirring in the room
that sent
my dream
back
to me
and
back to you
or
back to us
always
back to us
I'll do my best not to mess with the natural order again. But sometimes all I need is poetry read from a rocking chair in the waning light and, really, how interesting a post does that make?
I rest my case.
I am. Apparently it upset the natural order of things when I did not post last night, a fact of which I was unaware. People were worried that I was roadkill somewhere because I didn't blog.
I don't want to disappoint anyone, but I didn't go out last night. It was a beautiful evening and I had a new book of poetry given to me for my birthday so I took it to my back porch to read.
Honestly, the only thing that could have made it better would have been if the beagle had been at my feet.
The book "Hello Sunshine" is by singer/songwriter Ryan Adams, a man whose music I greatly enjoy.
I hadn't read his first book of poems "Infinity Blues" but I knew they were written when he was still very much a miserable person using drugs and completely cynical about life.
"Hello Sunshine" was written after he fell in love (and married) and got clean; it's like reading the journal of a man discovering love and life for the first time.
To a hopeless romantic like me, it was best kind of porch read; once the sun began setting, I turned on the light so I could stay outside and finish the book. The scent of the gardenia bush wafting up from under my balcony only added to the mood.
we pass through these days like sunlight
through gauzy wet sheets
damp
and yellow in the backyard
riddled with hopeful light
and
my world is nothing but day
and
it was the silence stirring in the room
that sent
my dream
back
to me
and
back to you
or
back to us
always
back to us
I'll do my best not to mess with the natural order again. But sometimes all I need is poetry read from a rocking chair in the waning light and, really, how interesting a post does that make?
I rest my case.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
More Poetic Than We Know
My plans for the evening got postponed due to my friend's root canal recovery, so for a change I stayed in and listened to music and read, two of my absolute favorite past times. I purposely pulled out some CDs that I hadn't listened to in a while, years in some cases.
What struck me as I was listening was how the lyrics to some songs immediately came back to me, even ones I hadn't heard in forever; word for word, I remembered them as if I'd heard them yesterday.
And it occurred to me that we learn song lyrics now like people once learned poetry: as something to be committed to memory and recited back for our own or others' pleasure. I don't know many people who could recite a poem at the drop of a hat, but what are song lyrics if not poetry set to music? This line of thinking somehow made me feel better about the poetic literacy of our culture, not to mention my mental faculties.
I see a dog upon the road
Running hard to catch a cat
My car is pulling to a halt
The truck behind me doesn't know
Everything is in the balance
Of a moment I can't control
Your sympathetic strings
Are like stirrings in my soul
I could go anytime
There's nothing safe about this life
I could go anytime
Find the meaning of the act
Remember how it goes
Every time you take the water
You swim against the flow
The world is all around us
The days are flying past
And fear is so contagious
But I'm not afraid to laugh
I could go anytime
There's nothing safe about this life
I could go anytime
Anytime
Come without warning
Anytime
It could be so easy
A walk in the park
Or maybe when I'm sleeping
Anytime
See the clouds come over
I feel like I'm in love
With a stranger I'll never know
Although you're still a mystery
I'm so glad I'm not alone
I could go anytime
There's nothing safe about this life
Make it so easy to fly in the night
I could go anytime
Poetry, right? I don't think I even realized I knew those words until I heard the song and they came out of my head. And that was just one of several such instances tonight. Such fatalistic lyrics make for great poetry, whether you can sing or not (I can't). It's satisfying enough just to read or recite them.
What struck me as I was listening was how the lyrics to some songs immediately came back to me, even ones I hadn't heard in forever; word for word, I remembered them as if I'd heard them yesterday.
And it occurred to me that we learn song lyrics now like people once learned poetry: as something to be committed to memory and recited back for our own or others' pleasure. I don't know many people who could recite a poem at the drop of a hat, but what are song lyrics if not poetry set to music? This line of thinking somehow made me feel better about the poetic literacy of our culture, not to mention my mental faculties.
I see a dog upon the road
Running hard to catch a cat
My car is pulling to a halt
The truck behind me doesn't know
Everything is in the balance
Of a moment I can't control
Your sympathetic strings
Are like stirrings in my soul
I could go anytime
There's nothing safe about this life
I could go anytime
Find the meaning of the act
Remember how it goes
Every time you take the water
You swim against the flow
The world is all around us
The days are flying past
And fear is so contagious
But I'm not afraid to laugh
I could go anytime
There's nothing safe about this life
I could go anytime
Anytime
Come without warning
Anytime
It could be so easy
A walk in the park
Or maybe when I'm sleeping
Anytime
See the clouds come over
I feel like I'm in love
With a stranger I'll never know
Although you're still a mystery
I'm so glad I'm not alone
I could go anytime
There's nothing safe about this life
Make it so easy to fly in the night
I could go anytime
Poetry, right? I don't think I even realized I knew those words until I heard the song and they came out of my head. And that was just one of several such instances tonight. Such fatalistic lyrics make for great poetry, whether you can sing or not (I can't). It's satisfying enough just to read or recite them.
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