Discovery of the Month

Ron Rash - 'Nothing Gold Can Stay'

catch his interview on NPR - i'm planning to get hold of this book - and will post later on my most perfect delight with it

hold on to love

written at a time when i frankly wanted to run the other way - but didn't - haven't - yet

not finished (the poem) and here february is done and i have not written much, so a poor ending to a month i won't mind seeing in my rear-view mirror.

hold on to love
even when it hurts,
when it's messy

hold onto love
when it doesnt work
when it's not enough

even when it's
 not
enough

hold on

it's

what we live
for

what happened to...

February?  what happened to a post a day?  a poem every now and then?  an observation?  what the hell?

A man's about as happy....

'I hope you are happy,' he wrote, and I had to think about that.  Mostly, I am.  Happy.  But then, I'm a happy person, overall.  So how do I reply, or measure such a thing?  Such a thing that just 'is.'  Mostly, I am happy.  The pursuit of which is an inalienable right, after all.  Maybe it's the pursuit that engages us: the hunt for happy.  I don't think about it much.  It was a decision I made a while back.  Deciding to be happy has resulted in unorthodox faith, irreverance, misplaced modfiers and a deep appreciation of cheap wine.

If you have seen fireflies dance in a July cornfield, you are happy.

So yeah, damn straight I'm happy.  And I hope you are, too, my friend.

               

                                ...as he makes up his mind to be. - Abraham Lincoln

I Prefer Crows

Knowing there is no way to compete with Wallace Stevens, I nonetheless embarked on my own study on crows, as I prefer them to blackbirds.

I

four and twenty blackbirds
baked in a pie; no one
wants to eat crow

II

it's about four miles
they say, as the crow flies.
but they don't know crows

III

crows are numbered three
and sometimes five
they are at sixes and sevens
along the ditchline

IV

a murder of crows
sampling a roadside buffet
dusk on Loran Road

V

Wallace Stevens viewed
blackbirds in thirteen verses.
I prefer the crow.

VI

big-shouldered, swaggering crows
come in for a landing
on icy rooftops

VII
crows have blunt, square tails
ravens' are elegantly curved
or it's vice versa

VIII...

Wallace Stevens

I discovered Wallace Stevens' poetry while I was in graduate school - how he escaped my attention before then remains a wonder to me.  I'm a huge fan:  he was an insurance man, worked every day in an insurance office for forty years or something - made up poetry in his head while he walked to work, then had his secretary transcribe it.  A wonder.  No grim Robert Frost, he; no brooding over roads that diverged in the woods.

My daughter, Hannah, knew I was writing bird haikus and sent me this:

Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.