Tag Archives: poetry

a year to be thankful…

22 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by in poetry, Richard Blanco

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Poetry…Art…such small words holding such enormous and mysterious content. I grew up in awe of my grandmother’s poems and her brother’s art and have spent most of my life trying to make and understand both. Every birthday our cards would contain one of her works. They are saved in a box I can see from where I work right now. I would never throw them away because they were part of our shared story and my heritage. 

Her simple kind of poetry was all I understood for many years. Somewhere in High School when we studied Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare, poetry lost me. But I kept looking for it. I have collected a few favourite poems in the last couple of decades. Occasionally I’ve shared them here with you, but few whose work I consistently relate to. Mary Oliver is a favourite, also Kahil Gibran (Grandma also liked his work). Recently I have discovered a poet whose work has so moved me, I listened to the interview with him three times over and intend listening again…and possibly another time after that. I bought his most recent work ‘how to love a country’ because it spoke to me of both the country of my birth and the country of my self discovery. It is a very fun interview and if you are not too busy making pumpkin pie and basting turkey, I highly recommend it here.

Richard Blanco was conceived in Cuba, born in Spain and migrated with his family when he was 45 days old to Miami, Florida. Many times when asked about my unusual name, I have told people ‘my family heritage is Italian and German and I was born in America but have lived most of my life in Australia’. As far as I know my parents never asked the person whose name I have, where it came from. Maybe in the early 1950’s one didn’t ask such questions. All I have been able to find out is perhaps it is ancient Greek. If all of that doesn’t make me a citizen of the world, I don’t know what will. Richard tells people ‘I was made in Cuba, assembled in Spain, and imported to the United States’. I understood immediately.

I found, after all these years, that I could love narrative poetry–poetry that tells a story…in particular, his narrative poetry. This week of America’s Thanksgiving, in this year of two thousand and struggles, I thought would be a good time to share the work of Richard Blanco. At my first Thanksgiving in Australia there were only two native Australians out of twelve at our table. Having shared Thanksgiving dinners with Australians, visiting nationalities and Immigrants, I can relate to the many humorous questions and explanations of the traditions. If you want to hear his reading of their family experience, below, (which I highly recommend) go to the link above and download it or go to your favourite podcast provider and download On Being with Krista Tippett/Richard Blanco.

América

“A week before Thanksgiving
I explained to my abuelita (granny)
about the Indians and the Mayflower,
how Lincoln set the slaves free;
I explained to my parents about
the purple mountain’s majesty,
‘one if by land, two if by sea’
the cherry tree, the tea party,
the amber waves of grain,
the ‘masses yearning to be free’
liberty and justice for all, until
finally they agreed:
this Thanksgiving we would have turkey …
[laughter]
as well as pork.

[laughter]
Abuelita prepared the poor fowl
as if committing an act of treason,
faking her enthusiasm for my sake.
Mamà set a frozen pumpkin pie in the oven
and prepared candied yams following instructions
I had to translate from the marshmallow bag.
The table was arrayed with gladiolus,
the plattered turkey loomed at the center
on plastic silver from Woolworths.
Everyone sat in green velvet chairs
we had upholstered with clear vinyl,
except Tío Carlos and Toti, seated
in the folding chairs from the Salvation Army.
I uttered a bilingual blessing
and the turkey was passed around
like a game of Russian Roulette.
‘DRY’, Tío Berto complained, and proceeded
to drown the lean slices with pork fat drippings
and cranberry jelly–‘esa mierda roja,’ he called it.
Faces fell when Mamá presented her ochre pie—
pumpkin—calabasa—was a home remedy for ulcers, not a dessert.
[laughter]
Tía María made three rounds of Cuban coffee
then abuelo and Pepe cleared the living room furniture,
put on a Celia Cruz LP and the entire family
began to merengue over the linoleum of our apartment,
sweating rum and coffee
sweating rum and coffee until they remembered—
it was 1970 and 46 degrees—
in América.
After repositioning the furniture,
an appropriate darkness filled the room.
Tío Berto was the last to leave.”

While this may not be the year where we get everything we want, it may be the year to be thankful for everything we have.

on poetry and ordinary things…

22 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by in Alice Springs, Animals, nature

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Still dark, I lay in bed, door open to the cool early dawn air. Musical tones, almost conversational, and a little eerie, drift in from not far away. The dingoes are back.

fullsizeoutput_3f03

pied butcher bird

Pied Butcher Bird practices her beautiful song for quite a long while. I stretch and bend my body toward functionality, which is my morning practice. The piercing song sinks deep into my psyche. I wonder what the unfortunately named bird was singing about? A nice insect it had just consumed? A good place to perch? Come here…this garden has no cats or dogs and they keep a nice bowl of water too.

Or maybe, “beware, the dingoes are near.”

I set off on my morning walk…listening to a favourite podcast. The episode was from Krista Tippett (On Being) interviewing beloved Irish poet, Michael Longley. More and more, I find myself being drawn to poets and their concise artistry.

The interview started with Michael Longley quoting his own favourite poet:

fullsizeoutput_3f16

morning light

“There’s a line by John Clare that I adore. I love John Clare. I revere him. “Poets love nature, and themselves are love.” And I believe that with all my heart. And part of writing is adoration. For me, celebrating the wildflowers or the birds is like a kind of worship.”

Those words pulled me in and for the remainder of the walk I was absorbed in a sort of reverie of someone else’s experiences, uniquely expressed, yet similar to my own. That is what art hopes to achieve, something previously unidentified, but immediately recognisable.

The Wedge Tail Kites (large birds of prey) circled above me, occasionally landing near enough to see how large they were. Some are big enough that my neighbour carries a golf club to chase them away, lest their carnivorous tendencies see her young puppy as breakfast!

IMG_1289

ordinary minutia

In my ears, unfolded ‘The Vitality of Ordinary Things’.* Even thinking about it now reminds me of my own strong connection with tiny and ordinary pieces of life. It has only been in the last decade or so that I have recognised my own fascination with this side of life. I think it has always been there. I just hadn’t realised it was a theme—perhaps not had the mental space to see it.

Once you see a thing, it cannot be unseen.

Home again. My daily habit is to water the rosemary plants, growing in pots along the patio. I lifted the metal watering bowl we keep in the outside sink. A sizeable, and  nearly expired, lizard had curled up underneath and was still–eyes closed, but not yet dead. Poor thing, what is there to do? I picked it up gently and placed it in the shade of the vines, surrounding the rosemary pots, hoping it wasn’t too late for it to revive. Its response was not encouraging. As you know, I’m sympathetic to the lizards around here and this was one I didn’t often see–about three times the length of a gecko and with lovely patterned skin. After laying his limp body in the shade, I dribbled a little water over him. Eyes still shut, he looked dehydrated, hovering near death. I suspect he had crawled into the sink for water and then couldn’t get out again. It happens sometimes, and with our hot weather, anything that small can dehydrate quickly.

I felt sad, and more than a little worried for him, having lost Bernie so recently.

Wanting to know…and yet fearing how the lizard fared, I waited a few hours to check on him. I carefully picked through the vines to peek and see if by some miracle he had revived. ‘My stars and garters!’, as my Aunt used to say! There he was blinking back at me. He looked almost normal and not in a huge rush to scurry away. And me with no camera.

But I have a pen.

And paper.

How much more of an ordinary thing can one do, but to interact with nature? Then again, how much more of an extra-ordinary thing can one do but to save a life?

Anything, however small, may make a poem; nothing, however great, is certain to. –Edward Thomas

fullsizeoutput_3f27

likeness of rescued lizard

 

*for the uninitiated, Michael Longley has the most gentle and calm Irish voice and explains so well the creative life of a poet as well as some of the complexities of life in Northern Ireland. He is an agnostic, so if this bothers you, try to put it to one side. You will see that he is deeply reverent and impishly delightful. The link I have given is so that you can listen to the interview on the computer or read the transcript, or see the title and find it in your podcast app. I have to say, though, it is his lovely, lilting voice that enhances his thoughts and humour, so if you can listen. It is worthwhile.

The world is too much with us

13 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by in Life

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Generally I am a grateful person. As well as the good things, I am grateful for all the sad and challenging things in my life, for they, too, make me who I am, and who I am has much to be grateful for.  But because I am human I have days I would rather not have.  Today, for a while, Life got on top of me.  In addition to some health issues I’ve been dealing with, the Universe took the opportunity to give me, yet another lesson in patience.

We are having a town council bi-election in 10 days’ time, because a man who is a serial offender of making bad decisions quit the council after only a few months. He did this because of his original bad decision, to try to start an ‘escort agency’ in town (registered address just up the street from us).  It backfired.  He quit.  Maybe that was a bad decision and maybe it wasn’t, I mean who wants this clown on our town council?  But it costs the town about $90,000 to run a bi-election.  So, thanks, buddy. Voting here is mandatory.  Because of this guy, I was required to wait in a queue on voting day, or pre-poll vote, as well as see my tax dollars used for something I had already paid for just a few months ago. In an attempt to at least mitigate the queue standing, I pre-poll voted.

Dissolve scenes to the freezer section of the grocery.  The turkey I wanted to buy was just out of my reach.  Happens a lot, I’m a bit short on one end.  So I stopped a young worker and asked him if he would please reach it for me.  Nice man, he happily did so.  As I approached the queue for the checkout the man working the area announced “If you want service, step up to the self checkout there are empty stations there”.  Nice.  If you want service, give it to yourself.  He’s a nice bloke, has worked there for years and looks like he’s pretty tired, but so was I.  If you have a backache, pushing a shopping trolley will only make it worse.  They are designed with the centre of gravity for someone at least three inches taller than myself.

The trolley full of groceries, and I, arrived at my car in the parking lot to see that someone had pulled too closely to my car for me to easily get the groceries into the boot.  I mean they were over the line by at least a foot. As I heaved the groceries, with a sore back, and wedged between my car boot and the car behind, all I could think was… the world is too much, sometimes.

What was that poem from my school days… someone named Wordsworth? How did that go??? Ah, yes, ‘the world is too much with us’.  That was how he put it over two hundred years ago.  I always think it is amazing when someone who lived centuries before us had similar thoughts and feelings.  It connects us.

I came home and looked up the poem and thought I would share it with you (it’s short).  He is lamenting that society is so caught up in itself, it has lost its connection with nature.

“The world is too much with us”

By William Wordsworth, 1802-1804

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The Winds that will be howling at all hours

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed out worn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

WW was saying that nature was in abundance all around people, but they saw little of it, were out of tune, while slaving away on material lives. ‘We have given our hearts away’ he says. So sad.  And haven’t we come a long way since then?

Ummm, not so much.

Those of you leading a frenzied life with the onset of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah and whatever else, try and do a little less. Take the time to watch the raindrops trailing down the window pane, or give the family pet an extra scratch and pat, or close your eyes and take a deep breath and let it out slowly.

This is me saying, two hundred years from now, let it be written, ‘the world is at peace with us, and we with it.’IMG_7156

“If you cannot be the poet, be the poem” – David Carradine

07 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in Family, People

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

Today I received a copy of a poem written 70 years ago by my Grandmother.  She was a remarkable woman for her kindness and quiet strength, her piano teaching talent and her poetry that she often included in our birthday cards.  She led a very humble life.  She survived breast cancer, raised four children and had a husband who was at worst abusive and at best completely self-centred.  She took delight in her grandchildren and she made us all feel very special.

We would sit on her kitchen table watching her cook in the summer heat, with one arm twice the size of the other, swollen from the effects of breast cancer surgery, and never complain.  When she baked a cake she used to pull a straw from her broom, wash it carefully and dry it and use it to test the cake’s doneness.  Who needed toothpicks?  She had the most devilish twinkle in her eye when she would make us milky ‘coffee’ when we were only children… she called it ‘rat poison’.  We knew she was kidding.  She loved peanut butter, possibly more than any other food in the world, except maybe Reese’s Cups.

In my young naivety, I never thought to ask if her life was at all happy, despite her very difficult marriage.  I hope it was.  She certainly gave us many happy memories.  Reading her poem today reminded me how a person can create something beautiful from a situation that is anything but.  When she signed the papers for my Dad to enter the Army Reserve so that he could leave school and leave an unhappy home, I’m sure it was a very difficult time.

I stood beside my cottage gate,

That sunny day we said good-bye;

And watched my son, in uniform

His fearless eyes, his head held high.

 

And now, although the hour is late,

And I beside my fireside sit;

I see again that boyish form,

Between the stitches as I knit.

 

Somehow, I feel it in my heart,

Tho many miles apart are we;

My son, while answering duty’s call,

Most oft times thinks of home and me.

M.C.

Mary Elizabeth Carlisle Corsi with great grandson

It also reminds me that if we can’t always find the words to be a poet, we can look inside and find the strength to be the poem.  My Grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Carlisle Corsi was both.