She. A "She" in Kabbalah, thanks to Kay Ryan.

What began as a random read-and-run, a poem grabbed for a dip into the lovely before I started my day, transformed into a redefinition of my place in a history dominated by men (oh that sounds so cliched). (The domination of male scholars and male mystics remains but Madonna has indulged in, partaken of, some pop version of Kabbalah, so, sure there's that.)

Please note that in the eighties, before the questionable craze swept the pop-er-ati, I chose to explore Kabbalah. By which I mean I read Gersholm Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism and Sabbati Sevi: The Mystical Messiah. I took a class to get an overview--not a college course but through a community center, and learned of and read or tried to read Abraham Abulafia, Isaac Luria, parts of the Zohar, some books about the mystical geography of Safed, and more.

Except for the Scholem, that was tough reading. I sincerely doubt the neo-kabbalists of Hollywood have read these volumes of ancient and complicated mysticism, but what do I know.

I know this. I didn't read anything Kabbalah-related that was written by any woman. Which brings me to this poem and pleasant surprise.  Imagine me, all unawares but focused on the work at hand while I slurp coffee, seeing "She" two lines after reading "kabbalist." You have, I hope, imagined a pleasant sensation, golden warmth easing through my limbs. Good title, too, because it takes some work to render meaning from those old texts which extrapolate the Talmud and Torah, extrapolate, reduce to numbers, juggle in the night air among the stars. 

Impersonal

The working kabbalist
resists the lure of
the personal. She
suspends interest
in the biblical list
of interdicted shellfish,
say, in order to
read the text another way.
It might seem to some
superficial to convert
letters to numerals
or in general to refuse plot
in favor of dots or half circles,
it might easily seem
comical, how she
ignores an obviously
erotic tale except for
every third word,
rising for her like braille
for something vivid
as only the impersonal
can be--a crescent
bright as the moon,
a glimpse of a symmetry,
a message so vast
in its passage that
she must be utterly open
to an alien idea of person.
___
Kay Ryan, from Flamingo Watching, from the anthology The Best of It (Grove)

Kay Ryan was once "Green Behind the Ears"

On her blog Bareback Alchemy, poet and fictioneer Melissa Studdard has called for us to memorize a poem a week—for us to slide rhythms, stops, breaks, bounties, eruption of passion and word into our share of The Collected Unconscious so we can hang out with poets wherever we are, on line at the grocery store or at our desks, watching the clock.

Week One, she choose a poem by Li-Young Lee, prompting me to post one of his poems, "From Blossoms," and write about poet Marilyn Koren who had once insisted I read Lee. (This was in my blog posting on Lee, a few days ago.)  Melissa also knew Marilyn.

You can scroll through Bareback Alchemy for the poems to date and in the future, but I'll give up the line-up so far. Week Two was Emily Dickinson, Three was Rilke, Four was Mary Oliver.  For Week Five, she choose a poem by Adrienne Rich, in memory of the poet's recent passing onto the heavenly dancing glinting weeping joyous spheres. Now on Week Six she has chosen Rumi (speaking of heavenly dancing glinting weeping joyous).

Melissa's urged us to suggest poems, and some of that challenge is intellectual. When I read I now consider whether or not the poem wants in. So much of the decision is weighed against my wee American memory, as so many more poems are worthy.

Nonetheless, Kay Ryan's work does have a way of skipping off the page, of suggesting it needs to be memorized, if only because of a slight occasional aphoristic hint, and more often because the work has that Emily Dickinson succinct universality.  Here, by Kay Ryan, is one such poem.


Green Behind the Ears

I was still slightly
fuzzy in shady spots
and the tenderest lime.
It was lovely, as I
look back, but not
at the time. For it is
hard to be green and
take your turn as flesh.
So much freshness
to unlearn.
_________
Kay Ryan. From The Niagara River (Grove Press), collected in The Best of It (Grove Press).

Flamingo Watching [Kay Ryan]

Needless to say, I identify and overly identify with the flamingo, here, as I am meant to. She is the odd kid in high school, the arty one in a dull, stale office.  The unnatural elect scorned by the "natural elect" who are less interesting and yet oddly and perennially empowered by their mediocrity.

Ryan's rhymes and twists, slanting and sinuous as the flamingo herself, are a joy. This is a good poem to type out, a fingertip-happy ear-snappy poem. And by the way, since I had to look it up, I might as well share. Furbelow: A ruffle or flounce. [by folk etymology from French dialect farbella; see falbala]

Flamingo Watching

Wherever the flamingo goes,
she brings a city's worth of
furbelows.  She seems
unnatural by nature--
too vivid and peculiar
a structure to be pretty,
and flexible to the point
of oddity.  Perched on
those legs, anything she does
seems like an act.  Descending
on her egg or draping her head
along her back, she's
too exact and sinuous
to convince an audience
she's serious.  The natural elect,
they think, would be less pink,
less able to relax their necks,
less flamboyant in general.
They privately expect that it's some
poorly jointed bland grey animal
with mitts for hands
whom God protects.

______
Kay Ryan, from, Flamingo Watching, 1994, in The Best of It, New and Selected Poems, Grove Press, 2011.