ONE DAY
By Robert Creeley
One day after another—
Perfect.
They all fit.
Sunday, January 01, 2012
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
My favorite poets: Elizabeth Bishop
I love Elizabeth Bishop's poetry. Just looking at the cover of The Complete Poems makes me happy (transported back to college, sitting in a small poetry seminar class, with a prof who really knew how to dig down deep into a poem.)
Bishop has a great biography, in part because she was such a renaissance woman, and in part because she didn't seem to know exactly what she wanted to do in the beginning. She went Vassar, where she originally intended to major in music composition and piano. But, she said, "You had to perform in public once a month. Well, this terrified me. I really was sick. I played once and then gave up the piano because I couldn't bear it. The next year I switched to English." (source)
Following her graduation from Vassar, Elizabeth Bishop was briefly enrolled in Cornell Medical School. As she explained, "I had all the forms. But then I discovered that I would have to take German and more chemistry. I'd already published a few things and Marianne [Moore] discouraged me, and I didn't go. I just went off to Europe instead." (source) How awesome to have Moore as a friend and mentor.
After settling on poetry, she also continued to paint. "Throughout her life, she collected art and wrote about it in poems, letters, and stories. Many of her friends were artists. She owned a Calder mobile and bought a collage by Kurt Schwitters for Lota, her Brazilian partner. She made 'boxes' in homage to the sculptor Joseph Cornell, and the title of her painting E. Bishop’s Patented Slot Machine is a reference to his work. The original editions of The Complete Poems, The Collected Prose, and One Art (her collected letters) all have covers taken from her pictures. With characteristic self-effacement, Bishop scarcely acknowledged herself as an artist—and yet her work, mostly watercolor and gouache, reveals a keen and original sensibility." (source)
Elizabeth Bishop: Interior With Extension Cord. Watercolor, gouache, and ink, 6 x 6 inches.
Elizabeth Bishop: Olivia. Watercolor and gouache, 5 x 7 inches. A church of weathered wood on Olivia Street in Key West.Her personal life was unconventional as well. At Vassar she dated men. Then in 1951, she met a woman who became the love of her life: Lota de Macedo Soares, a self-trained Brazilian architect. They lived together in Brazil from 1951 to 1967, when Lota committed suicide. All the while, she continued an epistolary relationship with Robert Lowell (which lasted from 1947 until his death. "After a near disastrous visit in 1957 (their meetings, long planned and longed for, did not always go well), ...[he wrote] that asking her to marry him was the great might-have-been of his life." (source) She suffered from alcoholism, asthma, and chronic depression most of her life, and died in 1979.
She wrote: "All my life I have lived and behaved very much like the sandpiper - just running down the edges of different countries and continents, 'looking for something'."
One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Elizabeth Bishop: Table with Candelabra, undated. No one knows who she wrote the happy birthday for.
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
There will be time, there will be time
You were crying at dinner last night, because your tooth hurt. It was loose, and banging against your top teeth when you tried to chew. I gave you a chocolate milk box and sent you into the living room to watch tv. "It's a special night," I said. "You are going to lose your first tooth tonight."
I remember poring over the pregnancy books, more than six years ago now. Those weekly babycenter emails. Nine weeks: "Your new resident is nearly an inch long — about the size of a grape — and weighs just a fraction of an ounce. She's starting to look more and more human. Her essential body parts are accounted for, though they'll go through plenty of fine-tuning in the coming months. Other changes abound: Your baby's heart finishes dividing into four chambers, and the valves start to form — as do her tiny teeth."
Last night, after you rushed into the kitchen, with your tiny tooth in your hand and a giant smile on your face, I felt a little tightness in my chest. I cheered for you, hugged you, made sure you felt special. But I felt it ... the time passing.
You handed me the tooth, and all I could think was you grew this inside me, and now you don't need it anymore.
I remember when that little tooth caused you pain, pushing through your baby gums. I remember when you were nursing in the rocking chair, and you used that tooth to bite me. When I cried out, you smiled, a new game.
You have bigger, stronger teeth coming that will be with you for your entire life. Teeth that will chew your food, fill your smile, and open your stubborn packages for years and years. You will stand in front of the mirror everyday, brushing these new teeth, while you contemplate your adult face. The one I can only imagine now.
You grew this tiny tooth inside me, but you don't need it anymore. And the one that will take its place, you will need long after I am gone.
I will measure out my motherhood with baby teeth.
Toth Farry
BY SHARON OLDS
In the back of the charm-box, in a sack, the baby
canines and incisors are mostly chaff,
by now, split kernels and acicular down, no
whole utensils left: half
an adz; half a shovel, in its broken
handle a marrow well of the will
to dig and bite. And the enamel hems
are sharp as shell-tools, and the colors go from
salt, to bone, to pee on snow, to
sun on pond-ice embedded with twigs
and chipped-off skate-blade. One cuspid
is like the tail of an ivory chough
on my grandmother's what-not in a gravure on my mother's
bureau in my father's house in my head,
I think it's our daughter's, but the dime Hermes
mingled the deciduals of our girl and boy, safe-
keeping them together with the note that says
Dear Toth Farry, Plees Giv Me
A Bag of Moany. I pore over the shards,
a skeleton-lover—but who could throw out
these short pints of osseus breastmilk,
or the wisdom, with its charnel underside,
and its dome, smooth and experienced,
ground in anger, rinsed in silver
when the mouth waters. From above, its knurls
are a cusp-ring of mountain tops
around an amber crevasse, where in high
summer the summit wildflowers open
for a day—Crown Buttercup, Alpine Flames,
Shooting-Star, Rosy Fairy Lantern,
Cream Sacs, Sugar Scoop.
I remember poring over the pregnancy books, more than six years ago now. Those weekly babycenter emails. Nine weeks: "Your new resident is nearly an inch long — about the size of a grape — and weighs just a fraction of an ounce. She's starting to look more and more human. Her essential body parts are accounted for, though they'll go through plenty of fine-tuning in the coming months. Other changes abound: Your baby's heart finishes dividing into four chambers, and the valves start to form — as do her tiny teeth."
Last night, after you rushed into the kitchen, with your tiny tooth in your hand and a giant smile on your face, I felt a little tightness in my chest. I cheered for you, hugged you, made sure you felt special. But I felt it ... the time passing.
You handed me the tooth, and all I could think was you grew this inside me, and now you don't need it anymore.
I remember when that little tooth caused you pain, pushing through your baby gums. I remember when you were nursing in the rocking chair, and you used that tooth to bite me. When I cried out, you smiled, a new game.
You have bigger, stronger teeth coming that will be with you for your entire life. Teeth that will chew your food, fill your smile, and open your stubborn packages for years and years. You will stand in front of the mirror everyday, brushing these new teeth, while you contemplate your adult face. The one I can only imagine now.
You grew this tiny tooth inside me, but you don't need it anymore. And the one that will take its place, you will need long after I am gone.
I will measure out my motherhood with baby teeth.
Toth Farry
BY SHARON OLDS
In the back of the charm-box, in a sack, the baby
canines and incisors are mostly chaff,
by now, split kernels and acicular down, no
whole utensils left: half
an adz; half a shovel, in its broken
handle a marrow well of the will
to dig and bite. And the enamel hems
are sharp as shell-tools, and the colors go from
salt, to bone, to pee on snow, to
sun on pond-ice embedded with twigs
and chipped-off skate-blade. One cuspid
is like the tail of an ivory chough
on my grandmother's what-not in a gravure on my mother's
bureau in my father's house in my head,
I think it's our daughter's, but the dime Hermes
mingled the deciduals of our girl and boy, safe-
keeping them together with the note that says
Dear Toth Farry, Plees Giv Me
A Bag of Moany. I pore over the shards,
a skeleton-lover—but who could throw out
these short pints of osseus breastmilk,
or the wisdom, with its charnel underside,
and its dome, smooth and experienced,
ground in anger, rinsed in silver
when the mouth waters. From above, its knurls
are a cusp-ring of mountain tops
around an amber crevasse, where in high
summer the summit wildflowers open
for a day—Crown Buttercup, Alpine Flames,
Shooting-Star, Rosy Fairy Lantern,
Cream Sacs, Sugar Scoop.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
november
This has been a strange month.
I didn't anticipate, back on the first day of November, that I was going to post the things I have posted. That I was going to pry open the door to my childhood and take an adult look back. And it isn't as though I have never talked about these things - with Brian, with my brothers and sister-in-law, with my therapists, even with my parents sometimes.
But this year it is different.
I think part of it has to do with the fact that my my kids are getting older. Miles is in first grade, and I remember first grade. I remember my older brother getting whipped with a belt when I was in first grade (something like this, it's true).
I look at Miles sometimes and feel pride that he has never seen violence in his home. That for him, the biggest crisis is probably losing screen time for a day. That he has a language for his feelings, and he uses it.
Which isn't to say he hasn't seen Brian and I fighting (and this year we had a couple of low moments). But I have to think that the sheer number of happy times will fade those arguments away, like the sun on a photograph. And when he looks back at his childhood, he will just see the bright silhouettes of our laughter, of reading Harry Potter at bedtime, of building legos together (I search for the pieces we need, he assembles). If there is fear in his memories, it will be from the time he climbed to the very top of the playground, or dared to go really, really fast on his scooter.
The one thing I want to clarify for the record: if it looks like my older brother was nuts at times, it is because he was the primary battleground of my parents' fucked up marriage. If there was a monster in him, they created it. He was a child like the rest of us, without choices. My mother and father had all the power.
We were just kids.
I didn't anticipate, back on the first day of November, that I was going to post the things I have posted. That I was going to pry open the door to my childhood and take an adult look back. And it isn't as though I have never talked about these things - with Brian, with my brothers and sister-in-law, with my therapists, even with my parents sometimes.
But this year it is different.
I think part of it has to do with the fact that my my kids are getting older. Miles is in first grade, and I remember first grade. I remember my older brother getting whipped with a belt when I was in first grade (something like this, it's true).
I look at Miles sometimes and feel pride that he has never seen violence in his home. That for him, the biggest crisis is probably losing screen time for a day. That he has a language for his feelings, and he uses it.
Which isn't to say he hasn't seen Brian and I fighting (and this year we had a couple of low moments). But I have to think that the sheer number of happy times will fade those arguments away, like the sun on a photograph. And when he looks back at his childhood, he will just see the bright silhouettes of our laughter, of reading Harry Potter at bedtime, of building legos together (I search for the pieces we need, he assembles). If there is fear in his memories, it will be from the time he climbed to the very top of the playground, or dared to go really, really fast on his scooter.
The one thing I want to clarify for the record: if it looks like my older brother was nuts at times, it is because he was the primary battleground of my parents' fucked up marriage. If there was a monster in him, they created it. He was a child like the rest of us, without choices. My mother and father had all the power.
We were just kids.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
shame: a portrait
I have written before about how Brene Brown's work really speaks to me. Last year she did an e-course called Ordinary Courage, and of course I signed up, because I love e-courses (there are some good ones on her blog now as well; I also highly recommend a Mondo Beyondo e-course, although I have yet to finish mine that I took a year and a half ago - something about the challenge where you ask the universe for things just shut me down...)
Anyway, one of the first exercises in Brene's course was to draw a picture of shame. And I knew immediately what it looks like to me. I got the kids' colored pencils and drew my picture. And when I sat back and looked at it, I almost gasped...it looks just like my father.
I mean, not literally. But it is the closest to an emotional portrait of him that I could ever draw. The man in that audio recording? He looks like this. The man who wanted to know what I had done right? He looks like this. And the man who once told me that when I was born a girl he figured he could just take a pass, because father's don't have anything to do with the raising of girls? He looks like this too.
Anyway, one of the first exercises in Brene's course was to draw a picture of shame. And I knew immediately what it looks like to me. I got the kids' colored pencils and drew my picture. And when I sat back and looked at it, I almost gasped...it looks just like my father.
I mean, not literally. But it is the closest to an emotional portrait of him that I could ever draw. The man in that audio recording? He looks like this. The man who wanted to know what I had done right? He looks like this. And the man who once told me that when I was born a girl he figured he could just take a pass, because father's don't have anything to do with the raising of girls? He looks like this too.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Sunday, November 27, 2011
college years
Last excerpts from my mother's draft letter, this section called "College":
"After we came home [from brunch, my older son] picked a fight with [my younger son] by slamming a book into his face. What transpired was a terrifying episode.
The fight that ensued was deadly and vicious, with [my older son] trying to really injure [my younger son]. Initially, [my younger son] had asked [my older son] to put down his book because he was eating a sandwich and drinking a glass of milk. [My older son] refused. [My younger son] then asked my husband to please ask [my older son] to put the book down until he had finished eating. My husband also refused, and told [my younger son] to come to me. [My younger son] got up, came down to the bedroom where I was resting, and asked me to ask [my older son] to put the book down. I went back to the family room with [my younger son] and asked [my older son] to please put the down the book, at which point he hit [my younger son] in the face with the book. My husband and I tried to do everything we could to pull [my older son] off [my younger son]. I got hurt when [my older son] kicked me in the ribs.
When these types of fights break out, pictures are broken, furniture and lamps are knocked over, louvered doors are pulled off their hinges, crockery is broken, besides the physical injury to each other To witness two grown men fighting, out of control, is very frightening, and leaves everyone shaken for some time afterwards. I called the police. By this time [my younger son] had locked himself in my bedroom to get away from [my older son]. [My older son] was so out of control he was prepared to break the door down. My husband pleaded for him to stop at which point he came looking for me. He had a small shovel in his hand, and was going from room to room shouting "where is the bitch?" I was in Heather's bedroom with a piece of furniture behind the door and on the phone to the police. They asked me to stay on the line and could hear [my older son] yelling in the background. They arrived very quickly and spent an hour at the house. They advised my husband to get [my older son] out of the house until he returned to [college]. My husband refused. The police then advised me that in their opinion it was not safe for [my younger son], or me, to remain in the house. [My younger son] refused to leave, seeing it as running away, and neither the two police officers not I could convince him otherwise. If [my younger son] wouldn't go, then I wasn't going. [My older son] eventually went into his room and fell asleep.
We were all in a sever state of shock. Trembling and distraught, I was having trouble breathing and walking. The only comment my husband would make was poor [older son], look he's exhausted, he's fallen asleep. Later in the day [my younger son] was expected at a graduation swim party at one of his friend's houses. His face and chest, back and front, had long scratch marks. I asked him if there was anything I could do. His reply was that his friends already know what goes on in our house. It wouldn't be any surprise. And so he went.
When I told my husband later in the day that this episode could never be repeated, he simply replied, 'There is nothing to be done. We will simply pretend nothing happened. It was [younger son] that started it and it was your fault for getting hurt because you got involved.'
I took myself to the doctor for help with the pain in my side and chest from [my older son's] kick. He felt it was a broken rib, at least one, but the xray came up negative. I have never had a blood pressure problem, but it was quite elevated. It slowly went back down again over the next several weeks. I couldn't get in my car, lie down or get up without extreme pain and difficulty which persisted for many months. I am truly afraid of getting hurt like that again."
"You may have noticed that I have mentioned Heather's name infrequently in this letter. She was 'the good child'; there is often one in families and they tend to become neglected if parents are not very aware, because it is often the squeaky wheel that gets the oil, so they get overlooked. She has been hurt a lot, and told us she at one time thought of committing suicide, and had made a half-hearted attempt ... I was unaware of all this and shocked to my foundation when she told us. I'm sure there is much I have missed and/or neglected as a result of trying to survive in this climate of conflict. I'm sure it has affected each of us in way we may not even be aware of."
"When [my younger son] started school at [college], my husband was to drive him down and get him settled in. I couldn't go. They stopped at Heather's place in Santa Barbara, at which point my husband wished [my younger son] good luck and got ready to leave. When [my younger son] asked why my husband wasn't driving on to college with him, my husband said that no one had helped him when he went off to college so he didn't see why he should help [my younger son]. My husband left. [My younger son] was in tears. He had never been on the campus before. He wouldn't arrive until 2 or 3 in the morning, and had no idea of where to go. Before he left, my husband made Heather promise she would not drive down with [my younger son]. Fortunately, she decided to anyway, and she helped him move in, but it meant she was on the road returning to Santa Barbara at 4 a.m."
"After we came home [from brunch, my older son] picked a fight with [my younger son] by slamming a book into his face. What transpired was a terrifying episode.
The fight that ensued was deadly and vicious, with [my older son] trying to really injure [my younger son]. Initially, [my younger son] had asked [my older son] to put down his book because he was eating a sandwich and drinking a glass of milk. [My older son] refused. [My younger son] then asked my husband to please ask [my older son] to put the book down until he had finished eating. My husband also refused, and told [my younger son] to come to me. [My younger son] got up, came down to the bedroom where I was resting, and asked me to ask [my older son] to put the book down. I went back to the family room with [my younger son] and asked [my older son] to please put the down the book, at which point he hit [my younger son] in the face with the book. My husband and I tried to do everything we could to pull [my older son] off [my younger son]. I got hurt when [my older son] kicked me in the ribs.
When these types of fights break out, pictures are broken, furniture and lamps are knocked over, louvered doors are pulled off their hinges, crockery is broken, besides the physical injury to each other To witness two grown men fighting, out of control, is very frightening, and leaves everyone shaken for some time afterwards. I called the police. By this time [my younger son] had locked himself in my bedroom to get away from [my older son]. [My older son] was so out of control he was prepared to break the door down. My husband pleaded for him to stop at which point he came looking for me. He had a small shovel in his hand, and was going from room to room shouting "where is the bitch?" I was in Heather's bedroom with a piece of furniture behind the door and on the phone to the police. They asked me to stay on the line and could hear [my older son] yelling in the background. They arrived very quickly and spent an hour at the house. They advised my husband to get [my older son] out of the house until he returned to [college]. My husband refused. The police then advised me that in their opinion it was not safe for [my younger son], or me, to remain in the house. [My younger son] refused to leave, seeing it as running away, and neither the two police officers not I could convince him otherwise. If [my younger son] wouldn't go, then I wasn't going. [My older son] eventually went into his room and fell asleep.
We were all in a sever state of shock. Trembling and distraught, I was having trouble breathing and walking. The only comment my husband would make was poor [older son], look he's exhausted, he's fallen asleep. Later in the day [my younger son] was expected at a graduation swim party at one of his friend's houses. His face and chest, back and front, had long scratch marks. I asked him if there was anything I could do. His reply was that his friends already know what goes on in our house. It wouldn't be any surprise. And so he went.
When I told my husband later in the day that this episode could never be repeated, he simply replied, 'There is nothing to be done. We will simply pretend nothing happened. It was [younger son] that started it and it was your fault for getting hurt because you got involved.'
I took myself to the doctor for help with the pain in my side and chest from [my older son's] kick. He felt it was a broken rib, at least one, but the xray came up negative. I have never had a blood pressure problem, but it was quite elevated. It slowly went back down again over the next several weeks. I couldn't get in my car, lie down or get up without extreme pain and difficulty which persisted for many months. I am truly afraid of getting hurt like that again."
"You may have noticed that I have mentioned Heather's name infrequently in this letter. She was 'the good child'; there is often one in families and they tend to become neglected if parents are not very aware, because it is often the squeaky wheel that gets the oil, so they get overlooked. She has been hurt a lot, and told us she at one time thought of committing suicide, and had made a half-hearted attempt ... I was unaware of all this and shocked to my foundation when she told us. I'm sure there is much I have missed and/or neglected as a result of trying to survive in this climate of conflict. I'm sure it has affected each of us in way we may not even be aware of."
"When [my younger son] started school at [college], my husband was to drive him down and get him settled in. I couldn't go. They stopped at Heather's place in Santa Barbara, at which point my husband wished [my younger son] good luck and got ready to leave. When [my younger son] asked why my husband wasn't driving on to college with him, my husband said that no one had helped him when he went off to college so he didn't see why he should help [my younger son]. My husband left. [My younger son] was in tears. He had never been on the campus before. He wouldn't arrive until 2 or 3 in the morning, and had no idea of where to go. Before he left, my husband made Heather promise she would not drive down with [my younger son]. Fortunately, she decided to anyway, and she helped him move in, but it meant she was on the road returning to Santa Barbara at 4 a.m."
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