Leafy Sanctuary

The orange-gold of a Baltimore oriole lured our eyes to the very top of this incredible tree. From a distance, the branches formed a solid green dome. Like a leafy Cousin It, the tree kept its secrets to itself. Of course the imagined sanctuary created inside was irresistible. I had to find out what it was like to enter the heart of the tree. Parting those thick tresses, I stepped into a hushed sanctum. The light was gorgeous, brighter than expected, dappled and soothing. Bird whispers resumed. When my friend couldn’t find me, she knew exactly where to look. She found her own door into the sheltering umbrella of spangled green. We just stood there, awed, looking up and listening.

Norwegian poet Olav H. Hauge wrote a poem called “Leaf Huts and Snow Houses” that contains these parallel thoughts:

These poems don’t amount
to much, just
some words thrown together
at random.
and still
to me
there’s something good
in making them, it’s
as if I have in them for a little
while a house.
I think of playhouses
made of branches we built
when we were children:
to crawl into them, sit
listening to the rain,
in a wild place alone,
feel the drops of rain on your nose
and in your hair –

Olav H. Hauge, translated by Robert Bly

Hauge was born in 1908 in a small Norwegian settlement. In Bly’s words, he “lived all his life on what he could produce from three acres of ground.” “The richness in his small house lay in the handmade spoons and bowls, the wooden reading chair, and the bookcases to which the best poetry from many continents had found its way.” Eighty years later, Hauge died “in the old way,” with no signs of disease. I was enchanted by Bly’s description of the respectful service, followed by this heart-rippling scene:

A horse-drawn wagon carried his body back up the mountain after the service. Everyone noticed a small colt that ran happily alongside its mother and the coffin all the way back up.

The excerpt from “Leaf Huts and Snow Houses” was found on page 264 of The Winged Energy of Delight: Poems from Europe, Asia, and the Americas, Selected Translations by Robert Bly, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2004. The photographs were taken at White Flower Farm, Litchfield, Connecticut, on 6/7/09.

Alignment

I love the way these two leaves found each other and aligned themselves when they fell from different trees. As I walked past, their perfect shapes and contrasting colors caught my eye. I literally stopped, walked backward a few steps, and reached down to claim them. I had almost kept going, but couldn’t resist gathering them for closer admiration. I relish the way they pop against the gray patterns in the wood.

Rainer Maria Rilke had this to say about falling leaves in the beginning of his poem entitled “Autumn,” from Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated from the German by Robert Bly:

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning “no.”

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all the other stars in the loneliness.

We’re all falling. This hand here is falling. …

There’s something shivery about picturing that, about Rilke’s flesh and blood hand moving through the air, about all of us falling together through time.

Some days everything you read and write falls together, converges on one theme or idea. In a strange volume of photographs and essays by Jonathan Williams called A Palpable Elysium: Portraits of Genius and Solitude, there are a couple pages on Frederick Sommer. The essay ends with a quote from Sommer that cinches the falling and alignment thoughts:

I have five pebbles, not too different in size and weight, yet a randomness about them. If I drop them on the carpet they will scatter. Now we could run an experiment and we would find that we cannot put these pebbles in shapes that would be as elegant and as nicely related and with as great a variety as every time they fall. It is better than anything we could do. I have great respect for the way I find things. Every time something falls I look. I cannot believe the relationships. The intricacy. You hear a noise and you say “What is that?” Respect for the affirmation of the unexpected.

*

Off on another shivery tangent, here’s a photo I’ve been specifically saving for you, for Halloween. It’s the scary, mask-like face of a statue discovered on a street corner in Rhinebeck, New York.

The little candy bars are in the house.

Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke was published by Harper & Row in 1981. The full text of "Autumn" can be found on page 89. A Palpable Elysium: Portraits of Genius and Solitude was published by David R. Godine in 2002. The essay about Sommer, as well as his portrait, can be found on pages 88-89.

The leaves were found on my road and photographed on 10/26/08. The statue was photographed in Rhinebeck on 10/07/08. Click on images to enlarge.

The Book That Leaped to My Hand

On a visit to the library, while I scanned the poetry titles, an old blue paperback (1975) leaped to my hand. Sometimes a book is insistent that way. It cries out for your immediate attention, for a human fingertip against its spine. We needed each other. The last time this book left the shelf was 2003.

Friends, You Drank Some Darkness is a collection of the poetry of three Swedish poets: Harry Martinson, Gunnar Ekelof, and Tomas Transtromer, chosen and translated by Robert Bly. Although I was unfamiliar with poetry by the first two, Transtromer is one of my favorite writers. The book was in bad repair, binding taped and pages stained, but the words were fresh, vivid and deep. I kept returning to Transtromer's poems most frequently, but the others were fascinating, too. I have renewed the book twice, flagging the best poems and lines with Post-Its. I managed to find a used copy online, which I ordered yesterday.

Here are some lines from Transtromer's "A Few Moments": "The dwarf pine on marsh ground holds its head up: a dark rag. / But what you see is nothing compared to the roots, / the widely groping, deathless or half- / deathless root system. // I you she he also put roots out. / Outside our common will. / Outside the city." Then, the powerful and mysterious ending: "It is as if my five senses were hooked up to some other creature / that moves with the same stubborn flow / as the runners in white circling the track as the night comes misting in." And how can you not savor the quivering jolt of the final stanza from "After a Death": "It is still beautiful to feel the heart beat / but often the shadow seems more real than the body. / The samurai looks insignificant / beside his armor of black dragon scales."

Each poet's work is introduced by Robert Bly, whose words are insightful and poetic themselves. I love the way he describes the magic of Transtromer's writing: "His poems are a sort of railway station where trains that have come enormous distances stand briefly in the same building. One train may have some Russian snow still lying on the undercarriage, and another may have Mediterranean flowers still fresh in the compartments, and Ruhr soot on the roofs."

Photo of root and moss: my front yard, 4/3/08.

Snappy the Miracle Dog

Yes, he's mine. A bit ill-tempered, a bit freckled with rust, a bit asymmetrical, but he's a genuine Miracle Dog. Snappy is an antique tin lithographed toy made by Louis Marx & Co. Apparently there used to be a mechanism that would propel him at astonishing speed from the depths of his doghouse. Alas, it's missing.

By the way, I selected "April and Silence" by Tomas Transtromer (translated by Robert Bly) as my poem for Poem in Your Pocket Day yesterday. I couldn't resist the vivid simile in the third stanza: "I am carried inside / my own shadow like a violin / in its black case."

The Heady Hive of the 2008 AWP Conference

Here are a few definitions of heady from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition:

1.a. Intoxicating or stupefying
1.b. Tending to upset the mind or the balance of senses
1.c. Serving to exhilarate

And beyond the obvious definition of hive, here's another:

1.b. A place swarming with activity

I think all of the above accurately describe my overall impression of the 2008 AWP Conference just held in NYC. It was an excellent experience for me, sometimes overwhelming, sometimes dizzying, but fascinating in so many ways. I found many intriguing readings and panels to attend, including the majority of those on my wish list in the preceding post. I was delighted to see so many offerings on the topic of hybrid writing, a love of mine: prose poetry, flash fiction, creative non-fiction, lyric essay, and the crossbred offspring of hybrids. (I'm not big on pigeonholing writing, but I'm happy to see acceptance of good work regardless of genre. ) One of the most memorable events was A Tribute to Russell Edson with Russell Edson himself modestly listening and reading some of his riveting works, and Robert Bly, Charles Simic, and James Tate honoring him. I loved that. I now am the proud owner of signed copies of The Rooster's Wife by Russell Edson and The Monster Loves His Labyrinth: Notebooks by Charles Simic. What great titles!

The three level book fair was totally packed and buzzing like the above-mentioned giant hive. (Last I heard, there were 7,500 people at the conference. ) One had to summon courage, slip into boy-in-the-bubble protective gear, pause to find an opening, then enter the flow of literary humanity. But it was wonderful to meet other writers and editors, to match faces and names, to briefly chat with people who have supported and published my work. I found it so interesting to see the three-dimensional versions of invisible e-mail acquaintances. Being surrounded by so many people who are excited about poetry, fiction, publishing, reading, and writing generated an uplifting form of energy.

The two editors of Bound Off were terrific and fun to get to know. Thanks, Ann and Kelly, for hosting my Stirring the Mirror signing Saturday morning! Nick Antosca, author of Fires, signed his books at the same time. We traded books, so I'm really looking forward to reading his.

Staying right at the Hilton was convenient and gave me a quick and easy place to hide and refuel when necessary. I felt that the social bits blended well with the scheduled events, and that I was able to balance the hive-like craziness with some laughter with writer friends or restorative solitude. The days were filled with positive chance encounters and good conversation. There are politics and big egos at work at these massive gatherings, for sure, but I generally operate outside the machine, outside academia. I felt a welcome sense of community at the conference. (Perhaps the glow is due to this being my initial conference experience?)

When I left on Saturday night, I had way too much to carry to the train. And I was exhausted! But on the ride home a single adjective kept popping into my mind: transformative. The experience felt transformative. I'm still processing it all. I'm curious to see what will blossom from this literary frenzy.