Friday poem

Maxine Kumin is one of my favorite poets.

She works largely in free verse, is economical in her phrasing, and her best work provokes response through not through direct appeal but unfolds from within a particular, almost always realist, imagery. For example, in ‘The Henry Manley Blues,’ she listens and observes her elderly neighbor:

Trouble with this country is, there’s more
beavers than people in it. Henry gums
milk toast experimentally, still sore
from the painless dentist who emptied his mouth.

In this snippet from a longer poem you can hear Henry’s plaint against both the beavers and the world. The poignancy of this image, however, is in the contrast between Henry’s toothlessness and the potency of those toothsome, troublesome beavers.

How Kumin came to be my favorite poet is a lesson in arbitrariness: I was introduced to her work in a creative writing course at UW-Madison. As it happened, she visited the campus for a poetry recital, and the course instructor urged us all to attend.

I didn’t. And have kicked myself ever since. I think my dive into her work was partly a regret-response to my laziness: just what, exactly, did I miss? I haven’t wanted to miss anything, since.

In any case, I offer the following poem, not because it’s her best (it’s not: it’s clunky and stutters, rhythmically), but because a) it was one of the first poem I really analyzed (for a course paper); and b) because as much in thrall to self-destruction as I was at the time, it was jolt to read the response of a friend to another friend’s suicide. It was a perspective I, for a variety of reasons, I usually didn’t engage.

Oh, and the friend was Kumin’s best: Anne Sexton. And while I noted it is not her best poem, it is still a good poem.

How It Is

Shall I say how it is in your clothes?
A month after your death I wear your blue jacket.
The dog at the center of my life recognizes
you’ve come to visit, he’s ecstatic.
In the left pocket, a hole.
In the right, a parking ticket
delivered up last August on Bay State Road.
In my heart, a scatter like milkweed,
a flinging from the pods of the soul.
My skin presses your old outline.
It is hot and dry inside.

I think of the last day of your life,
old friend, how I would unwind it, paste
it together in a different collage,
back from the death car idling in the garage,
back up the stairs, your praying hands unlaced,
reassembling the bites of bread and tuna fish
into a ceremony of sandwich,
running the home movie backward to a space
we could be easy in, a kitchen place
with vodka and ice, our words like living meat.

Dear friend, you have excited crowds
with your example. They swell
like wine bags, straining at your seams.
I will be years gathering up our words,
fishing out letters, snapshots, stains,
leaning my ribs against this durable cloth
to put on the dumb blue blazer of your death.

Fly into the sun

Could you tell my post last night was dashed off?

I was thinking Oh, man, I gotta post something. What? What? Then I did the dishes, which apparently put me in mind of the apocalypse.

As I told C. in the comments (who corrected an author error in the post: Clarke, not Huxley, wrote Childhood’s End), I was so lazy I couldn’t be bothered to tab over and look up various movie titles on IMDB.

Pitiful.

Thus, an elaboration on yesterday’s post, as well as an important qualifier.

The elaboration

C. astutely noted that I included dystopias with my apocalypses. So true. I guess  I tend to think that any dystopia worth its salt was preceded by some kind of apocalypse, but they really ought to be separated.

Had I been engaging anything other than minimal brain power last night, I would have figured this out in my (minor) deliberations over whether to include Brave New World. I did not, because, as I noted in the comments, the shift into Fordism seemed a kind of progression, rather than break, with what came before.

My list was also quite sloppy: I Am Legend popped into my head, then popped right back out. (I saw the Charleton Heston version, and parts of the Will Smith. In either case, definitely apocalyptic.) And I couldn’t remember the name of that damned book with the conch and boys and Piggy, and so left it off. (Golding’s Lord of the Flies. I thought there was mention of an a-bomb at the end, but it’s at the beginning.)

There’s another book, too, listed at the back of the paperback edition of The Gone-Away World: Kevin Brockmeier’s The Brief History of the Dead. It veers between an occasional (and thoroughly enjoyable) nasty humor and genuine pathos. More light than heavy.

I’d count Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, too, if only because of the threat. But I didn’t include Max Barry’s Jennifer Government because, if I remember correctly, that society arose more like Huxley’s Fordist scheme than through anything apocalyptic.

And I missed the whole field of Christian apocalypse, a.k.a. the Rapture. Now, there is a very good movie called The Rapture (David Duchovny, Mimi Rogers), but that’s a Hollywood film, as opposed to a Soon-To-Be-Coming-To-An-Earth-Near-You True Believer flick. I used to be a regular imbiber of TBN and CBN (wacky evangelistic fare), and they’d regularly show rapture films. Don’t know the name of a single one.

I do know, however, The Omega Code (produced by TBN and starring Kirk Cameron), which is  basic Bible-code Armageddon. And, of course, Jenkins & LaHaye’s Left Behind series. I tried to read it, but couldn’t get through even book one. I have a high tolerance for this stuff, so you know it’s bad. (But if they make a movie of it—have they made a movie of it?—I am so there.)

There are likely many, many more of this subgenre that I’m missing.

I also overlooked the Mad Max movies. I liked the second one, Road Warrior, best, but the first and third aren’t bad. And I have the sense that those crazy Danes probably have a bunch of apocalypses hidden in their Danish libraries. (Don’t know why I have this sense; just do.)

Well, I’m counting on C. to come up with a proper doom list.

Now, the qualifier.

None of these books or movies are based on historical events. Some of these may speculate on a future which could become history (got that?), but in no case are these movies or books based on anything which has actually happened.

No Holocaust. No Hiroshima or Nagasaki. No Native American genocide. No historical genocides, period. No plague, flu, smallpox, etc. No Mt. St. Helen’s or Vesuvius or Tambora or any actual natural disaster. No Chernobyl.

No event in which actual human beings experienced their own version of the apocalypse.

I don’t put these events off-limits, not by any means. A good book or movie is a good book or movie, and I think all of the stuff of our lives and deaths is there for the taking.

But I don’t include these in my apocalypse list.

There is a glee in thinking of how the world might end, how humans might respond—wondering how I would respond—to total disaster, precisely because it is so speculative. Look at all the possibilities of our end!

Possibilities. Not certainties.

In historical ends, there is a certainty, the most significant of which is the certainty of actual human suffering and death.

Again, a worthy topic of fiction. But not of glee.

 

Burn baby burn

I fucking LOVE apocalyptic movies!

Death! Disaster! Mayhem! Whoo hoo!

And if they’re religiously themed? Even better.

Now, I define apocalyptic broadly, to encompass existential ends, partial ends (of countries, cities) as well as the mere possibility of world’s end.

Oo, world’s end—let’s see, Childhood’s End, an Aldous Huxley (Arthur C. Clarke—h/t C.) novel about—yep—the end of the world. Read that one (the, uh, first time) in high school.

So let’s extend the love for all things apocalyptic to novels, as well.

It should go without saying that these movies/novels are often awful. Children of Men was a very good movie (and so-so novel), but that, I think, was an exception.

Terminator 2 was pretty good, but really, really, really long.

Terminator? Okay.

Terminator 3? Okay. (I missed Linda Hamilton.)

Terminator 4? Umm, is that on Hulu? Maybe if I ever sign up for Netflix. . . .

Goofy apocalyptic is good, like Independence Day. Or what was that movie with Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche about the volcano in Los Angeles? Goofy is what it was!

And certainly better than the Pierce Brosnan volcano flick—which, while it had Linda Hamilton, did not have Sarah Connor.

So, too, with Deep Impact Armageddon (Bruce Willis/Ben Affleck comet movie) and the Morgan Freeman/Tea Leoni comet movie (Deep Impact). You’d think the Freeman/Leoni duo would kick Willis & Affleck’s asses, but, no: Deep Impact Armageddon wins by goofiness.

Prophecy, with Virginia Madsen and Christopher Walken—really, you have to ask? Christopher Walken! And bonus with angels and Satan and stuff!

Much better than End of Days, with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Too stodgy.

The Ninth Gate? Not really world-ending, but really fucking weird. And Satan and stuff.

Stigmata? Not really at all, but it had visions and angels and stuff. And Gabriel Byrne.

Waterworld? Nuh. Kevin Costner, not in his lovable-crank personna (Bull Durham, Tin Cup), but just annoying crank. But Dennis Hopper was fun.

Day After Tomorrow? Please. (And while I’m certainly willing to watch bad bad-end movies, I’m not willing to pay 12 bucks to do so: 2012 will have to wait.)

War of the Worlds? I have the Tom Cruise version stamped on my brain. Too muted. And Tom Cruise. . . .

Oh, and On the Beach. Odd, but great. The first half is a bit of a caper flick, with Fred Astair and Ava Gardner (man!) and stiff-and-honorable Gregory Peck, but still (SPOILER), no relief: everybody dies.

The Day After played on t.v. in the 1980s, to much hue and cry. I saw it again a year or two ago, and while it was mighty cheesy, still.

Testament was not cheesy. I still (mis?)remember the scene in which Jane Alexander is sitting in next to sun-filled window, sewing, her face determined. It’s only in the voiceover do we learn that this is a shroud for her daughter.

28 Days Later gave me nightmares for a week—then terrified me out of sleep six months later.

Didn’t see 28 Months Later, however—tho’ if it streams on Netflix (if I ever. . .) then, maybe.

I should catch up with all the old George Romero flixs. While I’m not a big horror fan, zombies work.

World War Z, by Max Brooks. Have you read it? A fine bit of reportage. Sparked an unfinished bit of writing from me, on the ethics of zombie-killing and -experimentation.

Margaret Atwood has written a number of apocalyptic novels, although these tend toward collapse-apocalypse as opposed to war/violence-apocalypse. Oryx & Crake was hilarious and cold—just right; her new book elaborates on the O&C theme and is, according to a number of critics, better than the original. Hmpf.

And then, of course, The Handmaid’s Tale—I’m currently using that in one of my pol sci classes. When I polled the class on when/whether they would try to escape the totalitarian Republic of Gilead, most of them were of the I’d-wait-it-out variety. Really? I all-but-yelped. Only one student was with me: as soon as we lost our jobs or our money, if not sooner, we’d be gone.

Turn me into an Unwoman—no suh!

Gone-Away World, by Nick Harkaway. What? You still haven’t read it? Honestly, what’s your excuse?

There’s more, of course. Fahrenheit 451. Don DeLillo. The Plot Against America. Walker Percy. Peter Hoeg. Jose Saramago. 1984. A couple of Marge Piercy’s. A couple of Mary Doria Russell’s. William Gibson.

Science fiction? Speculative fiction? Whatever. If the earth is in peril/ends, it’s in.

C. was going to start an apocalyptic book club at the bookstore, but a necessary manager bailed. Still, I’d expect that she’d have even more to offer.

And, again, quality is not really the point, here. Even the books or movies I slagged I’d still (re)read or watch (again).

The point is that they are 1) fiction; 2) fun! and/or terrifying!; and 3) the world ends!

Should I mention that a number of us have made plans to see The Road Christmas night?

The director had better not make it ‘inspiring’. . . .

Two poems

I used to read poetry, and write it, too.

When students ask how to learn how to write better, I tell them Read poetry. Write it, too. They look at me, faces pulled back and skeptical. Your poems may be no good, I say, you may not want to show them to anyone. At this, they nod.

But you will pay attention, I say. You will learn to pay attention to the words.

I keep forgetting this, the paying of attention. Words come so easily for me, I take them in chunks and waterfalls, gorge on and scatter them, thoughtlessly.

Pay attention. I used to whisper this to myself, as a reminder. Then I stopped paying attention.

Friday at TNC’s open thread seems unofficially designated as poetry day. People post their own or, more commonly, poems which move them.

I’ve been rushing past. Words words words—what’s the point?

Slow down. Pay attention.

So, two poems, in honor of my long-ago friend C., and in memory of her younger brother, J.

Fourteen years ago this month—this Saturday—J. shot himself to death. He was thirteen.

What could we bring C.? I brought music; we brought ourselves. And I gave her two poems:

The body of my brother Osiris is in the mustard seed

Seed from an early Egyptian tomb,
after water damage to the case
in the Historisches Museum,
sprouted in 1955.

That was the year my brother’s foot
slipped on spray-wet log.
He was gone
into the whitewater out of sight.

Just downstream
the back of his head
came up
in a narrow chute.

Between terrible rocks
the back of my brother’s head
looked wet and small and dark.
I watched it through the roar.

Through tears, afraid
to pray, I told God
he was swimming. Wait.
He would lift his face.

—Brooks Haxton

Moira

A day comes when nothing matters
And nothing will suffice.
The heart says: I cannot,
The soul says: I am not.

The window whose frame
Once held dawn
Gleams all night in desolation,
And the one tree

Untouched by blight
Offers a fruit you do not refuse,
An anguish impossible to conceive

Until this lucky day.
Weigh it in your hands, so heavy,
So light: is there more to wish for?

—Phyllis Levin

What shall we use to fill the empty spaces?

Things will be different this winter.

Hard.

Not the weather—sleeping. Without Chelsea.

You see, Chelsea was incredibly fucking annoying to sleep with once the weather turned cold.

She’d jump up on the bed (not annoying), walk over my body or head (slightly annoying), then sit near my shoulder (not annoying).

Waiting.

Waiting for me to lift the covers that she perfectly well could have burrowed under herself—but no, Herself had wait for me to lift the covers.

If I didn’t immediately do so upon her arrival near my shoulder, she’d make a few pigeon noises (low coos), then again, at a slightly higher volume.

Still nothing? She’d paw at the blankets, lightly at first, then with some vigor.

Still nothing? The paw to the nose. And if still no reaction, she’d push out her claws ever so slightly and softly—no scratches, no marks—rake them across my cheek and nose.

At which point I’d lift my arm and create a proper entrance for La Chelsea.

This is not the really fucking annoying part.  No, what was r.f.a. was her pause.

Yes, after all that, she’d take a step, then pause for a few seconds, as if wondering Hm, do I really want to go under the covers after all? before deigning to duck down and under.

Jesus, she had me so well trained.

Then, of course, she’d turn around and around and around before settling into the same damned spot she always did, curled into my belly as I lay on my side, wrapping herself into a warm ball of purr.

That, I admit, was never annoying.

Pass in time

It’s been almost 4 months.

I teared up when I typed that.

You see, while I can talk about her life, I cannot talk about her death without tears.

I know she’s no longer here, but it is an outer knowledge, something I keep away from me.

I have to make room for her, all of her, in me. Life and death and everything.

If I want to be able to remember without tears, then I have to bring her back in, even with the tears.

‘Just a cat’, I know.

But oh, how I miss that cat!

Edward Moore Kennedy, lawmaker

1932-2009

Stephen Crowley/New York Times

For all his personal and professional flaws, all his terrible errors, he did what he could.

Rest in peace, Senator.

No more words

I think I shocked my bioethics students tonight: A number of them visibly started when I referred to the process of selective reduction as ‘killing’ fetuses.

No one said anything one way or the other, and the discussion (on multiple births) continued on its merry way.

Why would I do that, talk about killing, I mean? There’s a perfectly fine term for the procedure whereby the number of fetuses in a woman’s uterus is reduced to a more manageable (for her, and for the remaining fetuses) number, so no need to bring up the distasteful associations of ‘killing.’

Except, of course, that’s what happens during a selective reduction: After examination and evaluation of the fetuses, a needle is slid through the woman’s abdominal wall and into the heart of the fetus. A potassium chloride solution is then injected into its heart, and the fetus dies, after which it is reabsorbed into the surrounding tissue.

It is not, strictly speaking, an abortion, which involves the evacuation of the uterus.

And the situation is utterly unlike that of an abortion. When a woman gets an abortion, it’s because she does not want to be pregnant, does not want to be a mother. When a woman undergoes selective reduction, it is precisely because she wants to continue the pregnancy, because she wants to be a mother.

How awful, I said, to be in that situation: She has to kill her potential offspring in order to save her potential offspring.

I understand why people want to refer to this as selective reduction, especially those who perform and undergo the procedure. About the only thing worse than the situation itself is not having this as an option.

And the term itself is accurate enough: fetuses are selected and the number is reduced.

Still, I think it’s a form of moral cowardice for those of us who support the ability of women to decide on this option not to speak honestly about what’s involved, i.e., killing.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts on abortion the necessity of recognizing that abortion involves killing—not as a means of decrying the so-called tragedy of abortion—but as a recognition of the morality of the decision to abort, and, most importantly, of the moral capabilities of the woman who makes the decision.

We’re not a bunch of weak sisters who must be shielded from the consequences of our own actions. We may be sad or relieved or numb or any number of other emotions, and our feelings about it may change over time, but we can handle it. Really.

I’ve become even more adamant about avoiding euphemisms since Chelsea’s death. I killed my cat, I kept saying to myself, and told C. over beer and whiskey.

C., thankfully, did not correct me, but another friend admonished me when I told her I ‘mercy-killed’ Chelsea. Don’t say that, she said. You put her to sleep.

My friend was trying to be kind, but, no, I did not put her to sleep. I lay her on the table and put one hand on her chest and another on her ears and talked to her as the vet shaved her leg, soothed her as she cried a bit as he slid the needle in, felt one, maybe two breaths, then watched as her eyes dilated and she stilled.

I didn’t need the vet to tell me she was gone.

She wasn’t sleeping. No, Chelsea sleeping was curled up, tail nestled along her body or wrapped around her nose. Chelsea sleeping was her face tucked into her paws or her head twisted upside down, her body corkscrewed.

Chelsea sleeping was her soft purr into my ear as she propped herself on my shoulder or beside my pillow, her breath steady puffs in, out, in, out.

No, I know what I did to my beloved kitty, and it wasn’t putting her to sleep.

Rooting thru my rutabega

I am a lousy sick person.

I don’t ’soldier on’ or ‘buck up’ or ‘git er done’ or any of that when I’m sick. Nope, I drag my sorry carcass home, try to sleep, sleep some more, and then, mm, sleep.

A little bit of reading, online and off, but no writing, no blogging, no trying to get in front of my class prep, no errands, no exercise.

Sleep, cough, sleep.

Of course, Jasper-the-vampire’s nocturnal rampages do add a bit of a variety, but not of the helpful sort.

(Okay, so, yeah, I watched some ‘Buffy’ on Hulu. Sue me.)

(And when the hell are they going to get more seasons?!)

Anyway. There’s the weekend.

———————-

Reading a story in the NYTimes on Green-Wood cemetery and wondering, once again, about my [lack of] plans for the forever-future.

No, I wasn’t that sick.

Still, the thought recurs: Where to rest my bones? Along with, Who will do to the digging/burning/tossing into the sea?

For better and for worse, New York is now my city, but I don’t know that I want to be buried here.

Bills and money and work and dating and life and writing  and I’ll spend my time worrying over my funeral.

Sounds about right.

—————————

Is there anything I could have said about the Sotomayor hearings that hasn’t already been said?

Didn’t think so.

—————————-

The virus that ran rampant through my body got in the way of my responding to a post at The Pursuit of Harpyness on the response to the death of a 69 yo woman who had given birth to twins 3 years earlier.

. . . And I was going to discuss it in brief, here, but then it got all out of control and so I made it a different post. Which may or may not get posted.

That’s how it is.

——————————-

This American Life is airing a story about bedbugs, and just finished a piece on cockroaches crawling into peoples’ ears.

Good lord.

Makes me want to puncture my eardrums.

———————–

This course I’m teaching is kicking my ass.

I’ve taught a version of it—bioethics—to undergraduates before, but it didn’t go well, so I completely revamped it. Out with a general discussion of genetics and stem cells and biotechnology, and in with concentration on human embryonic stem cells and assisted reproductive technologies.

(An aside: I’m using Liza Mundy’s Everything Conceivable to survey the ART field. Recommended.)

So far, so good, but man, shit has changed since I last taught it. This is the bummer about teaching about tech: Unlike, say, the ideas of Plato or Machiavelli, technologies do change, and are changed by the societies into which they’re introduced.

In other words, I can’t coast.

I hate that.

———————-

Re-entering the world of biotech and bioethics has caused me, once again, to question whether I should have stuck with it.

I know, I can only make decisions based on the information I have at the time, so retrospective decision-making is pointless, but.

But when one is dissatisfied with one’s current life, and one’s previous life had its pleasures, it’s tough not to wonder why I ditched that previous life.

Again, I know: how easy to forget the dissatisfactions of that previous life.

Still, I’ve spent my life jumping, and landing always with an eye toward the next jump. When I moved to New York, I said, That’s it. This is home.

Only I put a hidden asterisk by the declaration: (*If it works).

As if this place, and my life in this place, is supposed to work for me, as opposed to me working for my life.

I am not the first to note that a person carries her troubles with her, so it shouldn’t surprise me that my dissatisfactions have made their way to Brooklyn.

So now what? I bitch about the something more and the something else and then do nothing more or nothing else.

Can I blame that on the cold virus?

And I’ve fucked up so many times in my life

I’m slowly getting used to being a failure.

It was a little hard on the ego, at first, but after that first nip of recognition, things have been much easier.

I’m not being glum, or trying to elicit an ‘oh-you’re-not-a-failure’ response; I’m simply recognizing that by any of the standards I’ve set for myself, I haven’t done much.

I’m alive. That’s one point in my favor.

Didn’t use to be: To be alive was evidence of failure. I was supposed to be dead, and was not.

Now I’m all right with that. In fact, it’s downright fine that I’m not dead.

Okay, so now that I’m alive, I’m off charging up the professional ranks and blazing new theories and astonishing my colleagues with the discipline of my thought and the brilliance of my prose. Tenure? Hah! Why, I’ve already attained a full professorship! Students are scrambling to study with me; other universities are recruiting me. My articles are must-reads.

Oh, wait, no. That’s someone else entirely. I’m an adjunct professor at a CUNY college, with no job security beyond the semester.

What about the writing career? Two novels! Two more in the pipeline! Short stories! Plays! Pulitzers and Tonys and National Book. . . oh, sorry, that’s not me, either.

I live in a junior one-bedroom on the far side of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, with wine boxes serving as bookcases and drawers and end-tables, chairs covered with fabric remnants because I can’t afford to get them reupholstered, socks kept in milk crates, and Trader Joe’s beer in the fridge.

I’m forty-mumble-mumble years old and I live like a grad student. Only I have fewer prospects than a grad student, what with consciously turning away from any attempt at a tenure-track position and not caring quite enough about money to live otherwise and all.

And I’m all right with that. When I was in SmallTown I ran into a cousin I hadn’t seen in, oh, a decade, and each of us mentioned that our lives may not look like other people’s, but they work for us. We nodded at each other. I’m not rich, I mused, but I am free.

And I am. Not free of anxiety (especially not anxiety over—natch—money) or dissatisfaction or anger or any of the other nonsense that comes with a messy (i.e., human) life, but free of the sense that my life belongs to anyone other than me.

So by most American standards, I’m a failure; by my own standards, I’m a failure. But I’m also free to laugh about it, and let it go, and maybe, someday, not to think about success or failure.

It’s not so bad, this failure thing. Feels kind of like freedom, actually. Not bad at all.