Poem: From the Dome of the Willing Firmament

I was noodling around and discovered a broken link to a poem I'd forgotten I'd written (FRiGG, 2005, link below). It was an exciting discovery, like reconnecting with an old friend or finding a sweet, cold, ripe mango I hadn't remembered was in the refrigerator. This poem took forever to write and now I see it is still too wordy in places, but so rich. I might mine it for new work. The initial impulse stems from outrage at how faculty was treated at one of those private commercial colleges advertised on the subway, this during negotiations for better pay; memories of previous jobs; experience of divinity. [Stanza vi.'s layout is spacier in the original, available at the link provided following the poem.] Thanks for reading this.


From the Dome of the Willing Firmament

i.
I work for a college owned by a corp. repped
by NASDAQ. Look at me, Lord, I’m on
the Big Board. Compare with tedium editorial,
typographical, secretarial and it’s good.
Tried working phones ten bucks an hour,
the Woolworth Bldg., October 2001.
Pain chilled air invisible. Saw through folk
walking to skeletal fear. Grief-in-the-bone.
So now that familiar Miss, Miss? Prof?
(what’s her name?) Sarai? is snug, the work
of teaching, service—subject-verb agreement
a peace accord mellifluous as the melancholic
titterwoo of Shelley’s hailed blithe spirit.

ii.
O Visitation Friend, sweet whisperer who
blessed me, 4/99 (for example). Your presence
the anointed cubicle 5 Penn Plaza. I proofed
hard copy and CDs in Marketing, used 15 mins.
a morning to write You on post-its in a spiral book.
On stickies’ colored heat I copied meanings: “surrender”
“humility” while my life played the open-ended
help-prayer like a tape looped for companionship
on a long drive. Like a Carver character, I knew
things could get better: a premise to tickle, move.
You to descend a thousand glowing luminarias
from the dome of the willing firmament.

iii.
(This corp.’s stocks soar
on waxy wings.) Tuesday we faculty vote re:
going union. The admin.’s tried
persuasion, promises and $1 million
in spin and advisement. Ferrety guys (made
men) are on-site and menacing
faculty kneecaps.

iv.
I could enumerate other times,
like when I saw eternity in
the air space, but about that
later. About me now like wet
wool on a rank day are greed
stupidity and your sportive
free will and variance of critical
thinking capabilities. What,
My Furnacey Beloved, was
the plan? We went union
(by the way).

v.
(It is possible.) (Things can get better.)

vi.
As for eternity
which I saw
in the airspace
outside the window: green
very small complete
like an Indian
miniature
of two people
in complex embrace.




Sarah Sarai, FRiGG Magazine 2005
http://friggmagazine.com/issueten/poemsstories/poetry/sarasarai/fromthedome.htm

Creating a space for poetry (poetry, rich and independent as the Vatican)

Poet Marilyn Nelson recently announced she was about to clean up to create a space for writing.

(If I mention names it's simply to give credit and not to drop. I've met Marilyn once; she is a poet and human I admire vastly.)

Granted, a tidy bedroom or desk may not generate safety and fortress for every writer. In the movie Smart People, Thomas Hayden Church, playing Dennis Quaid's charming slacker half-brother, is told by his teenaged Republican niece to make his bed. “It sets the tone for the day.”

“How do you know what kind of tone I want to set?” he drawls, becoming a hero to Sarah Sarai (who is ever hopeful slackerdom will come through with a living for her one day).

Chuck (Church) is hapless and forgetful, but moral. He is, as we say these days, appropriate with his niece, and therefore a man who has created space in his life to be a true adult. By way of counterpoint to my beloved messy slackerdom I recall reading a profile of writer Ray Carver, who could find exactly whatever story he was looking for in his cleanly organized files, without missing a step. He probably didn't even devote an hour a week to searching for his eyeglasses.

I won't tell you how I create space to write, partly because my technique is haphazard and partly because it is a protected moat. I guard carefully my writing -- egress, inspiration and the activity of it.

Public writing is the horse of a different color. I am not a workshop person (it would take years, years and years, to unpack that simple sentence). But I showed up for two stand-alone workshops over the past year. One of the workshops revealed I am part of something, poetry, rich and independent as the Vatican. It has many novices and novitiates.

What I'm working toward is that no one workshop exercise or series of workshop exercises will make anyone a better poet. What does the trick is creation by the workshop leader of a space for the writing of poetry. Enthusiasm and joy help with that. An ability to reside serenely in his or her body while in front of a class, to push out from the core, exude energy and light—marks of a writing facilitator who creates a beautiful space.

When leading a group of poetry lovers, abandon self-consciousness. When pointing the way to The Way Of Poesy, be yourself and know you are rapid sunlight, joy, a reflection of greatness (no need to be great when we can reflect if).

There are as many writing exercises as there are names of the God. All refer to one and the same thing, a source of holiness. Belief in deities unnecessary; belief in poetry is, however, vital. Not a belief in grants or awards. Not a belief in status, ranking, publications, copies sold. A belief in the lifesaving poem.

And voila! (as Julia Child might say), you have a lovely chicken or a lovely poem. Hard to argue with either...

(Thanks to poet Lee Ann Roripaugh, whose stray comment got me thinking.) Also. Note to self: Time to start sending out resumes to teach? Sarah, you want to try creating a space in which others can writer, don't you.

Ray Carver: short stories follow the heart

I loved Ray Carver's work but I had to be won over.

In L.A., in the eighties, I heard an editor from Black Sparrow Books praise his spare, lean prose and remember—quite distinctly—thinking: Yeah, right—spare, lean—load-a-crap. Not long after, I bought Where I'm Calling From—the cover art was so cool—at Chatterton's on Los Feliz, was home by 11 p.m. and didn't go to bed until I finished reading, which, given its slim volume-ness didn't take all that long, I suppose.

But still. I sat in bed turning page after page, marveling at the stories as works of art. I had begun writing short stories and aimed for each to be the equivalent of an Indian miniature or emerald or string quartet. Given that it is now 2009 and I've not had a collection published (though about a dozen have been in review), I don't know if anyone cares about my efforts. If they don't they don't. I have some faith in the market (no faith in the crooks who manipulate it).

A fairly recent New Yorker article set right or claimed to set right Gordon Lish's intrusive editing of Carver, thus making Lish the kingpin of the spare, lean rep. Maybe, maybe not. But Lish wasn't the kingpin of Carver's uncanny ability to tap into the zeitgeist and he was not the one to make palpable American hope and American despair.

Carver did that. His characters are not memorable as individuals. They are a series of husbands and wives who drink and smoke and cheat. Sometimes they encounter the miraculous as in "Cathedral" where a blind man reveals his understanding of gestures of visual art. Or opposite of the miraculous, the chilling, as in“So Much Water So Close to Home,” in which the the body of a young woman is left like a case of beer in a cold river while a group of men have their weekend in the wilderness.

Between the two stories, God is present or God is present in Her absence.

A slew and then another slew of Carver fans have published affective appreciations. So why me, now? Because of Beethoven's late quartets. I heard mention of his late sonatas and remembered something I read in an interview with Carver. He said the late quartets were for the young and the early quartets to be savored in old (relative, of course) age.

And I recalled I was a little embarrassed when I mentioned my trendy affection for Carver to a brilliant journal editor I happened to meet when I was at a summer seminar for secondary educators. This editors discovered new voices and he made great choices. He seemed surprised I was of the masses, with Carver and also with my then affection for The Color Purple, which he perceived not as bad but as mass market and not sophisticated.

Sad truth: Back then more than now but I still struggle to like who and what I like and not think of anyone else, not try to please.

I will have more to say about Raymond Carver. After all, I ruined a great pair of truly sophisticated dark glasses because of him. But that will come on another day. Today I am remembering what is is like to be a fan. I am in the stands and cheering out my heart.

My heart is strong and my cheers are loud.