The same spirit

Originally posted 12/09:

I'm thinking back on the year, which is not something I'm prone to do--the end of December seems a relatively arbitrary to for self-assessment. I guess I prefer to keep a running tab on my successes and failures. But after talking with Todd Demong this week, I looked back and discovered that it was sort of a crappy year professionally. Todd assured me that this was fine, and that one only really grows and learns when one fails--that successes teach you almost nothing. Viewed in that way, this year must have taught me a ton.

The same day I talked to Todd I was reading some poems by Walt Whitman (yeah, I read poetry, wanna make something of it?) and I came across these lines:

Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
I also say it is good to fall—battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

And Whitman knew a thing or two about losing the day, you know?

I'm attempting a few things in the new year. I suppose I'll have more opportunities to succeed or fail.

I know which I'm hoping for.

UPDATE: It seems like things are holding steady since I first posted this, nearly a year ago. Successes and failures and things I'm doing to improve myself and make the successes happen more frequently. I'll write more about all of this soon, I'm sure.

An Archival Print

I recently had a conversation with a friend (Hi, Beth!) and we talked about our children and watching them grow into little individuals. That got me thinking, as so many things do, about a poem. It's by one of my favorites, William Stafford:

An Archival Print

God snaps your picture--don't look away--
this room right now, your face tilted
exactly as it is before you can think
or control it. Go ahead, let it betray
all the secret emergencies and still hold
that partial disguise you call your character.

Even your lip, they say, the way it curves
or doesn't, or can't decide, will deliver
bales of evidence. The camera, wide open,
stands ready; The exposure is thirty-five years
or so--after that you have become
whatever the veneer is, all the way through.

Now you want to explain. Your mother
was a certain--how to express it?--influence.
Yes. And your father, whatever he was,
you couldn't change that. No. And your town
of course had its limits. Go on, keep talking--
Hold it. Don't move. That's you forever.

And again I am struck with love for the Republic

It's November 4. After nearly two years of campaigning, it's almost done. All over but the shouting, as they used to say. Here's a poem from the indispensable Jame Kenyon to mark the day. This comes from the poem, "American Triptych", which can be found in the book Collected Poems:

3 Potluck at the Wilmot Flat Baptist Church

We drive to the Flat on a clear November night. Stars and planets appear in the eastern sky, not yet in the west.

Voices rise from the social hall downstairs, the clink of silverware and plates, the smell of coffee.

As we walk into the room faces turn to us, friendly and curious. We are seated at the speakers' table, next to the town historian, a retired schoolteacher who is lively and precise.

The table is decorated with red, white, and blue streamers, and framed Time and Newsweek covers of the president, just elected. Someone has tied peanuts to small branches with red, white, and blue yarn, and set the branches upright in lumps of clay at the center of each table.

After the meal everyone clears food from the tables, and tables from the hall. Then we go to the sanctuary, where my husband reads poems from the pulpit.

One woman looks out the window continually. I notice the altar cloth, tasseled and embroidered in gold thread: Til I Come. There is applause after each poem.

On the way home we pass the white clapboard faces of the library and town hall, luminous in the moonlight, and I remember the first time I ever voted--in a township hall in Michigan.

That same wonderful smell of coffee was in the air, and I found myself among people trying to live ordered lives.... And again I am struck with love for the Republic.

I am still waiting...

Oregon went to the polls today. Let's celebrate with a poem!

I Am Waiting
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
Of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder


I am waiting for the second coming
And I am waiting
For a religious revival
To sweep thru the state of Arizona
And I am waiting
For the grapes of wrath to stored
And I am waiting
For them to prove
That God is really American
And I am waiting
To see God on television
Piped into church altars
If they can find
The right channel
To tune it in on
And I am waiting
for the last supper to be served again
and a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder


I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder


I am waiting for the great divide to be crossed
and I anxiously waiting
For the secret of eternal life to be discovered
By an obscure practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and TV rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder


I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am waiting for retribution
for what America did to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for the American Boy
to take off Beauty's clothes
and get on top of her
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder


I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeting lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

Poetry reading

I am making my slow way through Jane Kenyon's Collected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2005), bought with the gains from selling a box-load of books to Powell's a couple of weeks ago. And I say slow way because I only seem to be able to read a handful of poems at a time before I reach some emotional crisis point and I have to put down the book. This happens every time I read a good poetry collection. Or, if not good, one with which I really connect. When I was a kid, I could read poetry all day and never have it affect me at all. Either I'm getting softer in my dotage, or I didn't comprehend what I read when I was younger. Maybe it's a combination of the two.

Anyway, for your evening's reading pleasure, here is a poem by Ms. Kenyon:

Cleaning the Closet
This must be the suit you wore
to your father's funeral:
the jacket
dusty, after nine years,
and hanger marks on the shoulders,
sloping like the lines
on a woman's stomach, after
having a baby, or like the down-
turned corners
of your mouth, as you watch me
fumble to put the suit
back where it was.