I'm Still Just Waking Up to Art

Until I began writing poetry I didn't attend many readings. I was as oblivious to the aural beauty as any other citizen. I read it. I can't say I was a great explorer, but I always had a copy of Rilke, Stevens, Dickenson on hand. However, between the time I was an undergraduate, finishing up my education at Cal-State L.A., and the time I lived in Seattle and had begun writing, I didn't go to readings.

You have to understand. I'm still just waking up. I write this as I think about seeing poets Czeslaw Milosz, Adrienne Rich and many others read at Kane Hall at the University of Washington in Seattle. I wasn't a student. I was a poet.


The first college I attended never had such events. St. John's College in Santa Fe. Euripides and Dante were no shows. At Cal-State I heard (and still remember) Creeley.  Larry Leavis. Not sure if there were any women poets I saw but I was reading Diane Wakowski, whose work I adored, and others.


I was and continue to be a half-asleep consumer. There worlds around me, especially here in New York, I am unaware of, until I become aware of them. And sometimes I become aware of worlds and poets who'll have no part of me, who'll welcome me to their readings but never show up for mine. That's more often the case than not and, yes, I'm bitter.  


But also I'm curious about the next awakening, the next dawn, the next step towards a godhead. Because for me, if a poet doesn't move me in that direction (and I'm guilty of creating detours, too), I lose interest.


All over the place?  It's a good one, this place. As they say, I'm on it.

Milosz, carried by the waters of the river

Today is his birthday. I celebrate with a pleasing poem, pleasing, a pleaser, and true, true like colors, true like vision.

FAITH

Faith is in you whenever you look
At a dewdrop or a floating leaf
And know that they are because they have to be.
Even if you close your eyes and dream up things
The world will remain as it has always been
And the leaf will be carried by the waters of the river.

You have faith also when you hurt your foot
Against a sharp rock and you know
That rocks are here to hurt our feet.
See the long shadow that is cast by the tree?
We and the flowers throw shadows on the earth.
What has no shadow has no strength to live.

Czeslaw Milosz, 1911–2004 (b. Poland; d. U.S.)

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Is Good News for Poets

American poets may be luckier than I thought. Bearing in mind a Czeslaw Milosz quote that's been nagging at me for a few weeks, "the privilege of coming from strange lands, where it is difficult to escape history," a version of the Chinese, May you live in difficult times, I previously worried I was, as an American, too privileged to write poetry that mattered. Me, or any of us.

But the Nobel Peace Prize committee has made me aware of just how challenging my times, here in America, have been. The prize wasn't awarded to Obama for specific actions. After all, the Oslo decision was made, as I understand it, shortly after Obama's inauguration, when he was still forming his cabinet and choosing drapes.

I woke up around 3 a.m. last night with the realization that America has been far worse off than I ever understood. America, with our dishonestly (first term) elected President Bush, with our dishonest war, our uncared-for children, our illiteracy, our obesity, our quest for continued global domination without any thought for the actual globe we are trying to dominate - and - very importantly - and - our influence - the fact we are a superpower - the dominant economy, even now - has been on its deathbed, writhing, for years.

And ready and able to take down many countries along with us.

So although Obama clearly didn't have much chance to prove himself in his second week in office, or even in his first nine months in office, the Nobel committee felt the stir of something new. Spring. Hope. Change. Buzzwords that weren't lies, even if: Obama didn't help the people of Gaza. Even if: the war in Afghanistan shows no sign of ending. Even if: even if: even it.

The Nobel people and much of the world saw just how sick America has become but unlike terror cells, haters, they have been cheering for us to get well.

WE DO LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES, Americans. I want my poetry to mean something to my readers (and I know I don't have many, but I have a few). The more it's wrought of sweat (craft: drafts: reading of other poets) and the experience of living in a world that makes little sense (hey, I've done copyediting and proofreading for financial institutions where 10Ks (government filings) 'explain' why fabulously wealthy people should remain fabulously wealthy; I've worked for educational publishing concerns that grew in the wake of the No Child Left Behind act - a lot of teaching for the test - little read education - a lot of teaching-for-the-test books SOLD; hey, I've worked in advertising (enough said?); and on; and on).

It took the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 to assure me I and we and you have a chance at writing poetry that can effect its own style of hope and change. The global community needs that from all poets. America is an innotive and generous country; Oslo knows that. I feel the love.