Month: April 2004

IX from Twenty-One Love Poems

by Adrienne Rich

Your silence today is a pond where drowned things live
I want to see raised dripping and brought into the sun.
It’s not my own face I see there, but other faces,
even your face at another age.
Whatever’s lost there is needed by both of us —
a watch of old gold, a water-blurred fever chart,
a key…. Even the silt and pebbles of the bottom
deserve their glint of recognition. I fear this silence,
this inarticulate life. I’m waiting
for a wind that will gently open this sheeted water
for once, and show me what I can do
for you, who have often made the unnameable
nameable for others, even for me.

Another poem first read in college, although this one I picked up on my own. It’s strange to me how easily I picked out these two poems, as though they still sung to me from the shelf. When I opened up The Dream of a Common Language, the book fell open to just this poem, as cookbooks often do to the most used recipe. Once upon a time, this reflected what I would’ve like to have said to someone I loved very much; now, I wonder if I’m more like the object of the poem myself.

(inspired by eclecticism)

First Snow

by Mary Oliver

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles; nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain — not a single
answer has been found —
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees
and through the fields,
feels like one.

I read American Primitive, which holds this poem, in college, for a class — and instantly loved her work. I love every poem in that book, but this is probably my favorite. (Now, 10 years on, it reminds me more than anyone else of Shelley.)

this is the first time I’ve had a headache on a workday since March 24. (not the hat of pain day, but not too long after.) it’s not a bad one, but definitely there.

analysis: stressed about a few things, personal and otherwise. big meeting today. maybe not enough fluids? this is the first day this week that I didn’t do exercises/stretches in the morning. otoh, haven’t been on a walk all week. sore throat last night/this morning, and a bit stuffed up this morning, so maybe more sinus related?

by way of Keith R..

in emergency weblog:

in any case, I feel more awake, which is a good thing, because I stayed over at Kat’s house last night after the group.

ah, the defunct Q/TWGTDNSIN (or whatever the hell that abbreviation was); and that’s an oldie, from just about 3 years ago!

in snapping links (only the 4th sentence, but that’s the last one of the post):

(Like Kat, who for a long time knew who Utne Reader (or was it Working Assets?) had sold her name to because of the junk mail that came addressed to Catherine, we always know which ‘due to your industry involvement’ bits of mail came from which list by how his last name is spelled.)

weird…both mention Kat, although the 2nd one only parenthetically.

Gus is the only MT blogger I know not to have any syndication whatsoever. so annoying.

I’ve been using gmail for less than a day, and already I really like it infinitely more than mail.com. (fortunately, the massive accessibility problems don’t affect me directly.)

the slap and ping of water
sloshing in a cobalt-blue vase:
I fear it intrudes
same with the boisterous
flamboyant naughty perfume
rising in clouds from
extravagant masses of delicate color

nature is usually a vista
distant beyond the windows:
a mountain, the fog-shrouded
mystery of the river delta,
trees losing their leaves then
filling again with green
when winter passes

slogging slow through traffic,
sealed against the world
with lightly-tinted windows
if only the scent of lilac
would burst open the van
the water pour out
and keep pouring
tear open the concrete
link highway back to river,
swamp, forest
drive people from their cars
intoxicated with scent
distracted from that sad silent trek
by a frenzy of spring

the smooth glass is cool
under my steadying hand
gripping the vase’s neck lightly
morning streams through
casting blue shadows on this paper,
the pen, the hand that holds it
the scent of lilacs fills my head
until I can’t smell it anymore
except as an idea, the fragrance
of pale pink and pale purple

call it an experiment, including poetry (and maybe fiction, later) in this blog.

this morning when I logged into Blogger (which we still use at work) I had a lovely little box asking me if I wanted to be a Gmail beta user. why the hell not? it can’t be any worse than my experiences with mail.com. (oh, the pain; oh, the humanity.)

so, you can now also contact me at epersonae at gmail dot com.

once I’ve been using it for a bit, I imagine I’ll have something to say.

I swear they went much faster this spring. the lilac in the backyard is coming into bloom — basically, we saved that plant; 2 years ago, it was completely smothered in blackberry and morning glory — and the candytuft & veronica (?) continue to bloom, but everything else is still just getting ready to do something.

I planted the 2nd sowing of veggies over the weekend, which brought me close enough to the ground to realize that the sunflowers and carrots, too, had managed to sprout, which means that everything that was sown from seed has done just fine. this week I’m trying to harden off the 2nd batch of starts to plant next weekend, keeping my fingers crossed that they’ll get the right combo of weather to stay alive this time.

the last week or so I’ve felt as though there were thoughts in my head that I haven’t quite been able to work out. something about being tired; work has been more people-intensive than usual, which saps my energy. (I’d just like to say that I’m amazed by the whole process of teaching. how people get up and do that every damn day I just don’t know.)

I’ve done a little writing on paper — journaling, mostly, the beginning of last week, and one day last week I had a good burst of fiction (a tiny bit more on the way home this afternoon). lately my attitude towards story-writing has been fairly bleak; I’m dissatisfied and irritable with my (lack of) progress and engagement, and annoyed with my own pessimism. it’s a black hole of badness, which I wrote a very long paper journal entry about, but don’t feel quite right repeating here.

(ah, the question of audience, something I’m now constantly aware of as I pass my third blogging anniversary. oh, for the love of $deity, don’t look. I’m mortified, myself, as I always am when I break out the big boxes of old paper journals and reread what I wrote in 1987, 93, 97, etc. someday I’ll write my own blogging system that will make entries that aren’t just lists o’ links auto-vanish after 6 months. it’ll be the “ignore past self” option in the control panel. is that a bad sign, how uncomfortable I am with my brain’s past states? perhaps it’s related to how exhausting I find the company of other people: always inventing myself to be the right thing around others. when it’s just me and the word, all the unbidden ways of being unfold themselves, one after the other. only now, in this space, it’s not just me and the word: it’s me and the word and Kat and Kermit and Elizabeth and the other Elaine and Anita and Jacob and Ralph and Mike and Dorothea and Raul and whoever else I don’t know is looking. whew. maybe this is the problem I’m having with Aila et al, and with my scattered posting here: too nervous about the imagined reader over the shoulder. or something.)

okay, there was another thought there, but I don’t remember what it was.