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What I’m Reading

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I’ve had a mighty struggle this past few weeks to do even a minimum of writing (determined to catch up this week…we will see, and, after that, to begin blogging again). Reading obsessively about dementia, getting lost in political news…these things do not seem especially helpful to me.

On the other hand, reading poetry, and reading and listening to poets and creatives about their work is one of my go-to solaces. So here are three things. The first was shared by my good friend Francine, and I’m amazed at the prescience of this 2011 interview with Bill Moyers, who died last week at age 91. Though the news is dire, it’s good to know that such people have been walking this trail before us. It gives me hope.

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/6/27/rip_bill_moyers

I’m also reading When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön — given to me by my friend Therese — and I highly recommend it.

When things fall apart and we’re on the verge of we know not what, the test of each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize. The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that’s really swell. (p. 7)

By “concretize,” I think the author means, don’t grasp, don’t turn it into thoughts or anything you can hold on to. Let it be as amorphous as it is. Just be with all of it.

The third source is the incomparable PÁDRAIG Ó TUAMA from Poetry Unbound. Clicking on his name should take you straight to his most recent substack. Here are a few lines toward the end of Dunya Mikhail’s poem, which Padraig shares in full:

I don’t know why the birds
sing
during their crossings
over our ruins.
Their songs will not save us,
although, in the chilliest times,
they keep us warm…

I don’t know why either, but when I’m outside, walking, at 6 a.m., I listen for them just the same.

The Benefits of Paying Attention

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I decided to spend the month of August browsing through, reading, and writing about Emily Dickinson because I knew that doing so would have huge benefits. And it wasn’t simply the benefit of getting reacquainted with Emily that I was after, though it was a major consideration.

I knew that spending a few minutes a day in this way would be like hitting my own re-set button–a way of paying close attention to the things that Emily Dickinson herself paid close attention to–

Quirky word choices
Colors & Birds & Flowers
Abrupt and unusual sentencing patterns
A fresh look at the play of light and what it might do in poetry

And of course some things that I don’t know yet that I don’t know.

Watching the eclipse with two of my daughters and my husband yesterday, at our local grade school, I was struck with the knowledge that this, too, was a poetic endeavor. We were not a racially diverse group, though the grade school generally is, we were different in configuration and (I suspect) in our political views. But for an hour we all watched the sky. Another family had eclipse glasses (lame of me not to have them, I know) and happily shared them (what a difference!). All across America–given our coast to coast solar phenomenon–people were doing the same, staring at the sky.  Here in Snohomish County, Washington, we had an eclipse of only 92%, and it was surprising that so little sun could keep everything alight. But it did get a little like dusk. And the temperature dropped. Its main effect was on us, those of us watching–letting down our own guard, feeling wonderstruck and grateful to have witnessed it.

That’s what I do when I study Emily Dickinson’s poems and fragments. Not every line is a wonder (such is the effect of fame, Nietzsche’s note about his lost umbrella becomes as important as his books). But I keep looking. The attention, itself, begins to feed into the spectacle. I let down my own guard, and I let something, someone else all the way in.

I’m told that the next total solar eclipse to be visible in the continental United States will be in seven years, April 8, 2024. But poetry, that’s available every day.

My God – He sees thee – 
Shine thy best –
Fling up thy Balls of Gold
Till every Cubit play with thee
And every Crescent hold –
Elate the Acre at his feet –
Upon his Atom swim –
Oh Sun – but just a Second’s right
In thy long Race with him!

-Emily Dickinson (J1178)

Earth Day

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mv spokane

Yesterday I took the two-hour trip to see my mother. It was a sparkling blue day and the ferry crossing was blue, blue, and blue.

It was Earth Day, and we all might continue celebrating by reading something about Science and our besieged planet, or by checking to see if there’s a March for Science coming up in your hometown.

You might write a poem. Here’s an old one by Amy Clampitt:

GRADUAL CLEARING

Late in the day the fog
wrung itself out like a sponge
in glades of rain,
sieving the half-invisible
cove with speartips;
then, in a lifting
of wisps and scarves, of smoke-rings
from about the islands, disclosing
what had been wavering
fishnet plissé as a smoothness
of peau-de-soie or just-ironed
percale, with a tatting
of foam out where the rocks are,
the sheened no-color of it,
the bandings of platinum
and magnesium suffusing,
minute by minute, with clandestine
rose and violet, with opaline
nuance of milkweed, a texture
not to be spoken of above a whisper,
began, all along the horizon,
gradually to unseal,
like the lip of a cave
or of a cavernous,
single, pearl-
engendering seashell.

–Amy Clampitt  (1920-1994)

Postcard Poetry Month

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When I Met My Muse

I glanced at her and took my glasses
off — they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. “I am your own
way of looking at things,” she said. “When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation.” And I took her hand.

–William Stafford

August is Postcard Poetry month. I hadn’t taken part in the last few years (August is always so busy!), but this year I decided to rejoin, and I’m so glad I did. The idea is to write a new, original poem, on the back of a postcard, and send it to someone on the address list. Each day, someone sends a postcard poem to you. The postcard images are the inspiration…but the received poems and postcards start to mix in, too.

I prepared by collecting short poems that I loved, by other poets, and thinking about what it was that that made me love them. I decided that it has to do with the way a short poem quickly captures an image, and then makes something more of it, something symbolic and surprising. In this poem (above) by William Stafford, you don’t expect the glasses to sing or buzz, but while you’re distracted by that, here comes a new voice, “belled forth,” and the awakening is so keenly drawn that even the nails in the ceiling insist on a role in it.

This awakening, it strikes me, is what all poetry is really about. Be awake. See the world with new eyes. Be saved by what you see.

The poem itself is a pair of glasses. And then there’s the legerdemain — the magic — of the seeing with/without them at the same instant.

image from wikimedia.org