We received this card today from our dear friends, Kuyk and Dianne Logan in The Woodlands, Texas — the old fashion way! Not only did it come through the postal service, but the card was printed on Kuyk’s 1902 Chandler & Price letterpress printer. Some people collect stamps, he collects printing supplies. Kuyk, retired Houston Post managing editor, loves spending time in his workshop, which he calls “Prints Charming Ink.”
Tucked in this year’s card was a bookmark, Letterpress Bookmark* — the asterisk notes: “Not compatible with e-reader formats.”
The Dickenson reference on the card is to the annual Emily Dickenson birthday celebration organized by the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council (MCLAC), which Joy and I have missed the last couple of years since we moved to Tucson. We hope to get together with Kuyk and Dianne the next time we are in the Houston area. We miss all out MCLAC friends.
A short time after posting “Standing at the Altar of Nature,” I received an email from Sabino Canyon Volunteer Naturalists (SCVN) member, Walt Tornow, saying that my poem “. . . captures my feelings about being in the mountains beautifully.” Walt and I understand how really rich we are, being able to embrace the great American treasure possessed by every citizen of our country. Walt represents people who love nature, want to experience as much of it as possible, and want to preserve and share it. His feelings are expressed in the following, which he shared in his email and gave permission to post.
GOD, GRACE, AND GRATITUDE
Finding God in the wilderness …
The majesty of our mountains, the magnificence of views/ vistas they afford, and the splendor and munificence of the many gifts that nature has to offer
The awe and humility that comes from being witness to the grandeur of it all, juxtaposed with realizing the relative smallness and fleetingness of our existence
Never feeling or being alone … lots of company by nature’s creatures, and taking in the beauty of nature’s show
Feeling vunerable, yet trusting, being in the wilderness — potential prey to wildlife, and exposed to the elements
Experiencing awe, joy and inspiration, by being here
Feeling connected … becoming one with myself, with nature, and the universe
Finding peace, serenity, and sense of holiness … my place of worship and meditation
Here for the grace of God am I …
Grateful to be, to, be here, and be given the opportunity and capacity to enjoy the many gifts/ blessings around me.
— Walt Tornow
It’s common to find many in southeast Arizona who love the beautiful Sonoran Desert. Americans, in general, love their National Parks. But, as Nicholas D. Kristof shared in Sunday’s (9/11/11) NY Times op-ed piece, “The National Park Service reports that the number of recreational visits to our national parks was lower in 2010 than a decade earlier — lower even than in 1987 and 1988. There were 35 percent more backcountry campers in the national parks in 1979 than in 2010.”
The Outdoor Foundation concluded in a “special report on youth” that “Fewer and fewer youth are heading outdoors each year.” It added that “each year outdoorshood has rapidly moved indoors, leading to epidemic levels of childhood obesity and inactivity.”
Richard Louv, author of the bestselling book,Last Child in the Woods, writes of the staggering divide between children and the outdoors, which he calls, “nature-deficit.”
“The future will belong to the nature-smart—those individuals, families, businesses, and political leaders who develop a deeper understanding of the transformative power of the natural world and who balance the virtual with the real. The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.”—Richard Louv
This trend is sad, but the SCVN organization is doing something to turn the trend around. In the words of William Wordsworth, “Let Nature be your teacher,” the SCVN promotes awareness and appreciation of nature “through activities and programs for children and adults.” Nature “reminds us that we are part of a larger universe, stewards rather than masters of our world.”
In today’s world, a common thread is “stress.” The best break from stress is Nature, and as David Biello reports in Scientific American, “A growing body of research suggests nature walks may be more restorative than traditional stimulants like caffeine.” For me, I’ll take both! What is your Nature attitude?
The SCVN organization is one of the best examples of Margaret Mead’s belief that “A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Again, I share the words of William Wordsworth on Nature:
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration: — feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened: — that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on, —
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
— William Wordsworth, from the poem, “Tintern Abby”
While David, Janie and the girls were here we attended the Tucson Festival of Books on the campus of the University of Arizona. This two-day event attracted over 100,000 people and over 450 authors and 240 exhibitors. The event includes a lot of hands-on activities , presentations and reading for all age groups illustrating how “words and imagination come to life.” A very impressive event, indeed.
Some people have the creative ability to look and an object in more than one way. Obviously, Brain Dettmer saw a book and turned it into a sculpture. Dettmer’s work has gained International acclaim through internet bloggers, and traditional media.
I guess we will have to wait to see what he does will do with old Kindles.
It has been over three years since Carmen Tafolla did a reading at the Lone Star College – Montgomery, Writers In Performance Series. To see Carmen do a reading is to witness more than a poetry reading; it is to witness a performance. Carman’s poems reflect her Chicano identity through her ancestors, and often in her readings she portrays the strong, self-empowered women who are a common theme in her works.
La Miss Low didn’t talk much tried to raise her chin like a noble figure, to let her Silence (Guardian of the Princess) speak for her, speak complex, sensitive things, to hold her face expressionless, revealing the nobility of her soul.
To model a high example for these uncultured children.
From the poem, La Miss Low
In Carmen Tafolla’ poetry, I listen and hear the voices of the common people, the wisdom of their experience revealed in their views.
“This hand?’ This hand? It was an accident. You do not understand –
Poquito aquí, poquito allá – that’s how Dios meant it, yes, to be. It doesn’t bother me too much. In fact, it gives me less to work about. Less people who will trust their broken chairs to me. Yet I can still these roses plant, Like that one, standing by your feet – ‘Las Siete Hermanas,’ for they always bloom together, like sweet sisters – seven in each bunch. And I can still make chocolate, stirring strong, The fingers do not slow me down – These two, cut off, nor this one, sews back on.
From the poem Poquito allá
Now that we live in Tucson, I am experiencing her poetry in let another perspective – so inspirational, so real!
Seated in the back, while others stand checking the view. Outside retractable walls, in choice of place, we gathered as, “Largest crowd in recent memory!” repeated through the Poetry Center. Staging a Zen evening, six persimmons a backdrop for laying down the words, Gary Snyder shared anecdotal memories of friendship. Fifty years since Robert Frost read at the Ruth Stephan Poetry Cottage dedication, fifty years out, Snyder reminisced about friend, writer, and philanthropist, Ruth Stephan.
“Poetry is the food of the spirit, and spirit is the instigator of all revolutions, whether political or personal, whether national, world-wide, within the life of a single quiet human being. “
As I often do at each Writers In Performance Series reading, I purchase one of the writer’s books of poetry. It was not different May 4, 1998 when Beth Ann Fennelly was our guest writer. It was an evening I remember well, not because she was a young attractive women, which could serve to bias one’s impression, but because I loved her poetry and her spoken-word skills.
After the reading, I ask her to sign her book of poetry, A Different Kind of Hunger, in which she was kind enough to write:
For Kenne,
Thanks for your presence here tonight.
The world needs more poetry-loving,
coffee brewing deans.
I hope you enjoy these
poems and share this hunger.
Indeed I have. My biggest regret is that I will not be there to brew the coffee when Beth Ann returns to the Writers In Performance Series this Thursday evening (7:00 p.m. September 16, 2010 at Lone Star College – Montgomery).
After her reading in 1998, Beth Ann went on to receive many awards for her writing and is now a professor at the University of Mississippi.
For this Capturing the Word posting, I have selected “Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding,” from A Different King of Hunger
Poem Not To Be Read at Your Wedding
You ask me for a poem about love
in lieu of a wedding present, trying to save me
money. For three nights I’ve lain under
glow-in-the-dark stars I’ve stuck to the ceiling
over my bed. I’ve listened to the songs
of the galaxy. Well Carmen, I would rather
give you your third set of steak knives
than tell you what I know. Let me find you
some other store-bought present. Don’t
make me warn you of stars, how they see us
from that distance as miniature and breakable
from the bride who tops the wedding cake
to the Mary on Pinto dashboards
holding her ripe red heart in her hands.
One of my favorite Writers in Performance (WIP) appearances was that of the 1999 W. D. Snodgrass, Pulitzer Prize winner and a major influence on American poetry in the 20th century. In February of last year, after Snodgrass’s death, I wrote on the Writers in Performance blog:
Conversations from the past lost in the images of memories amassed only to return on the backs of death resurrected by poets serving only to introduce images of what was like water returning from a fountain’s reservoir only to be reborn again and again and again
This blog series, “Capturing the Word” is like the fountain’s reservoir, providing an opportunity to revisit again the WIP presenters.
Today being the 1st of September, nearing the autumn of the year, I share the following from the poem “Autumn Variation,” in Each In His Season.
iii
In spray-paint, psychedelic, gaudy,
Fall scrawls its name – a blunt and bawdy
Challenge to the complacent wood.
We say: there goes the neighborhood;
It is not and it cannot come to good.
Soon, flustered leaves will sag like torn
Wallpaper; solid dark walls, worn
Through here and there, exposed a bitter
Sky while, on the bare ground, litter
And stub ends pile up everywhere.
Not even one green plant would dare
Poke its nose out in the crude air
Of catch-as-catch-can thievery, lust,
Cut-throat protection and sick trust.
Where year by year we walked together
Determined paths, a wilder atmosphere
Wheels in, flaunting its chains, blades and black leather.
Wendy seems like a close friend. We have met only on special occasions. Birthday parties, Emily Dickinson birthday parties. So often over the years, Wendy is my picture of Emily. Why not? I have photos of Wendy on those special occasions when we shared our appreciation and love for Emily Dickinson’s poetry. As much as I may love poetry, it is the spoken word that really touches me. Only then can I see the poets mannerisms, hear the voice annunciation and feel the emotions of the moment. Wendy came to fill the void through which Emily and I have become friends. Wendy has added color to sepia, she is my muse.
So, it’s no wonder that when Wendy was schedule to read her own poetry at a Writers In Performance Series last December, I could help but feel that Emily Dickinson was coming to read Wendy Barker. Think about it. How wonderful! My muse meets the goddess.
At the December series, Wendy read from her recent novel in prose poems, Nothing Between Us. For this “Capturing the Word” posting, I have chosen to share Wendy’s prose poem, “Sunday Morning, Go for A Drive:”
Up the coast. Or down. Bring the binoculars. Get out of town. Breathe.
Always hungry before we got where we were going. Stinson Beach,
Bolinas, Point Reyes. Greg would want a big meal—two cheeseburgers,
double order of fries, a full pitcher of Bud. I’d want a tuna sandwich,
banana, orange juice. No matter how I’d try to focus the binos,
no matter what rock I scrambled up on, I could never spot the bird I
wanted to see up close. Feathers confused among breaches and twigs.
The wind off the water roughing my hair. And Greg’s voice, breath
smelling of tannic acid, saying hurry it up, time to go.
Bryce Milligan at Writers In Performance Series — Image by kenne
Desert mid-summer weather can provide many extremes
causing life to struggle to survive
in a relentless sun to strong winds,
heavy rains and dramatic lightning lined skies.
Since moving to the desert,
this blog has posted images of menacing skies,
with more to come, I’m sure.
Additionally, I have been writing notes
for future poems on the desert.
However, in lieu of my own poem
and as part of my “Capturing the Word” series,
I was recently reading Bryce Milligan’s book of poems, LOST and certain of it (a several times Writers in Performance presenter),
and read his desert poem, “Lightning.”
Lightning
The days that lack that flash:
heat on the horizon,
thunderheads painted bright
with the promise of rain
to wash the desert dust
from needle and flower,
yielding up red and yellow
explosions on each cactus’ tower.
The days that lack that flash
bring me careening back
to your eyes that I cannot
tell from lightning.
Visitors to this blog know I share images in the series, “Capturing the Moment.” With this posting, I’m beginning a similar series sharing poetry, specifically from my own writings and from the poets that have appeared in the “Writers in Performance” (WIP) Series conducted by the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council since 1993. It wasn’t till our recent move to Tucson that I realize the number of poetry books I have, a collection for which I’m very proud. So, with this posting I will use my blog to occasionally share the WIP writers’ poetry. Not to show any preference, I just reached to the shelves and pulled down a book. The book selected was Different Hours by Stephen Dunn. Stephen presented at WIP November 1, 2000. Here’s the poem I selected from this book of poetry:
Before The Sky Darkens
Sunsets, incipient storms, the tableaus
of melancholy — maybe these are
the Saturday night-events
to take your best girl to. At least then
there might be moments of vanishing beauty
before the sky darkens,
and the expectation of happiness
would hardly exist
and therefore might be possible.
More and more you learn to live
with the unacceptable.
You sense the ever-hidden God
retreating even farther,
terrified or embarrassed.
You might as well be a clown,
big silly cloths, not evidence of desire.
That’s how you feel, say, on a Tuesday.
Then out of the daily wreckage
comes an invitation
with your name on it. Or more likely,
that best girl of yours offers you,
once again, a small local kindness.
You open your windows to good air
blowing in from who knows where,
which you gulp and deeply inhale
as if you have a death sentence. You have.
All your life, it seems, you’ve been appealing it.
Night sweats and useless stratagem. Reprieves.
Cave Meeting, October 9, 2005 at Bernhardt Winery – Image by kenne
When I think back over the 27 years I have lived in The Woodlands, high among my memories will be the heated discussions that took place at the Society of the 5th Cave book club meeting. Today we had, what will probably be my last meeting, at least till a meeting is scheduled for Tucson. Even though we are moving in a couple of weeks to Tucson, once a Cave brother, always a Cave brother unless you choose not to belong — my choice is for life.
Last December I made a video of one of our meetings, which now turns out to be timely since I forgot to take my cameras today. As a result, I share again the video of the December 22, 2009 meeting.
Too all my Cave brothers, I salute you — till we meet again.
Like good wine, good poets get better with age — therefore, so too does the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council (MALAC) annual birthday celebration of America’s greatest poet, Walt Whitman. However, our event in Conroe, Texas, is but a baby when compared to the annual birthday celebration the people of Bolton, Lancashire, England have conducted since the 1870’s. Dare I say, Whitman may also be England’s greatest poet. If not, the people of Bolton are the true disciples of Walt.
As already noted in a previous posting, titled Worshipping Walt Whitman, our guest lecturer for the afternoon session on the campus of Lone Star College – Montgomery, was previous guest, Michael Robertson, author of the recent publication, Worshipping Walt – The Whitman Disciples. As part of his presentation, Michael set the stage for the Conroe event to give homage to our friends and comrades in Bolton. “The Lancashire Whitman celebration is unique, a product of the English fondness for the outdoors, intense interest in local traditions, the continuity of a democratic socialist tradition, and an openness to Whitman’s prophetic dimensions,” writes Robertson.
Worshipping Whitman brings to mind Emile Durkheim’s dichotomy between the sacred and the profane, which captures the universality of Whitman’s very being. No wonder he is revered by so many. But as Robertson writes, “More than any other poet, I think, Whitman evokes not just admiration but love. The disciples felt that love in the Leaves, they sought it from the man, and although things did not always turn out as they expected, none of them was entirely disappointed.”
Maybe bookstores need to become Internet Cafe‘s. Or, Starbuck’s should have a book corner rather than the other way around.
kenne
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