THE POETRY PLACE

I collect library cards like some people collect key chains, shot glasses, or Hard Rock Café memorabilia. Really. I have a Reader’s Card for the Huntington Library in Pasadena, CA … the Library of Congress and the Folger in Washington, D.C. … and the British Library in London, England. Of course, I have library cards for every city I’ve ever lived in, from Vallejo, California to Alexandria, Virginia and for every university I’ve ever attended — and some I haven’t.

Library cards are like keys. They open doors to whole new worlds. But like keys, they must be placed in locks, and turned, or they’re practically useless.

The Wheaton Public Library in Wheaton, Illinois is presently issuing keys to interesting doors with their adult summer reading program: “Master the Art of Reading.” The librarians have invited everyone in town to read nine books between June 2nd and August 16th … and be entered in drawings for gift certificates to Borders Books and Music, Cantigny, or the Chicago Art Institute. Needless to say, I jumped on the bandwagon, and I’ve been reading like mad.

I started by borrowing books from my mother. Last Saturday, I went to the Benicia Library book sale here in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area … and bought twelve books. The other night I stayed up until three in the morning to finish a novel … I’ve been known to open a door, walk through it, and never look back. What can I say? Imaginary worlds fascinate me.

These are the worlds that have been fascinating me this summer:

Biography: David Loades, Elizabeth I

Poetry: Langston Hughes, The Dream-Keeper … Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese … Gerard Manly Hopkins, Selected Poems 

Next up (or should I say, next door?): John Reeves, A Book of Hours and Marianne Moore, The Complete Poems

Hopkins says, “It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither.”

Fiction: William P. Young, The Shack and John Grisham, The Testament

These two contrast with each other: the first allegorical, the second gritty and realistic. But both present the truth of the saving grace of Jesus. They both intrigued me … because both were about the healing and redemption of the human soul.

At one point when he is speaking to Mack in The Shack, Papa-God says: “A bird’s not defined by being grounded but by his ability to fly. Remember this, humans are not defined by their limitations, but by the intentions that I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image.”

Next door (I think): Louise Erdrich, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

Non-fiction: Michael Gurian, The Wonder of Boys

Gurian puts in layman’s terms what we knew, as of 1996, about the effects of male biology on the behavior and development of boys from infancy to early adulthood … and suggests how parents, mentors, and teachers can best help boys become strong, wise, powerful men.  I don’t agree with everything in this book, but I do find all of it interesting.  

Next door: Hypoglycemia for Dummies 

Yes, I should have read this one years ago … but I didn’t know the book existed.

Spiritual classics: Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God … and Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for my Journey Now

There is nothing like Maya Angelou or a French monk from the 17th century to remind us of things we’ve forgotten … or maybe never thought of before. Brother Lawrence worked in the kitchen of his monastery most of his life, and he prayed, “Lord of all pots and pans and things … make me a saint by getting meals and washing up plates!” This prayer is, of course, about being in two worlds at once by being in the presence of God. Brother Lawrence found his key, not in a book, but in the Door!

Sometimes the door before us is invisible, but it is still open.

Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night —

and I love the rain.

Langston Hughes
The Dream-Keeper and Other Poems (1932, rpt. 1994)

Sunday night, five of us were driving back from “Kung Fu Panda.”  Gemma was at the wheel, I was riding shot-gun, and TJ, Wendy, and Lana were piled in the back.  We talked about our favorite parts of the movie … mine was the Peach Tree of Wisdom.  This reminded Lana of a story!

The last time we all went to the movies, Gemma introduced us (via CD) to an inspirational, African-American preacher who told us about his peach tree of wisdom. Lana had been listening, and this is what she recalled.

Basically, when this preacher was young, he ate a peach one afternoon, and his father told him that if he planted the seed, it would grow into a tree.  So he planted it.  The next day, bursting with expectation, the young preacher-to-be ran out into the backyard to see the tree.  But there wasn’t one.  There was nothing. The ground, in which he had planted the seed, gave not even the slightest hint of the promised peach tree.

When he came to check the next day, matters were exactly the same.  So it was the next day and the next day and the next.  On the fifth day, the youngster’s father found him in the backyard crying.

“Why are you crying?”  his father asked him.

The young man explained himself. His father had promised that a peach tree would grow from the seed if he planted it.  He had planted it, but days later there was nothing!

The father might have been tempted to laugh, but he didn’t.  Instead, he got down on his knees and explained to his son that peach trees take four to five years to grow and produce fruit. 

Years later, the disappointed boy who became a preacher had a point to make about that peach tree. His own father had promised that a peach tree would grow from the seed he planted, which was true, but not immediately obvious.

In a similar way, God the Father gives us promises.  They are true promises, and they will come to pass.  But we often expect them in five days instead of five years.  

When I got back home from the movies, meditating on what Lana had recalled, I decided to read a little bit about peach trees. It turns out that, yes, they flourish in Georgia, but otherwise, they can be notoriously difficult to cultivate.  They won’t tolerate excessive moisture; their roots need proper drainage.  They must have “chill hours,” that is, 200-450 hours of 32-45 degree cold weather that somehow helps produce fruit.  To get good fruit, the gardener has to protect the tree from bugs and worms and brown-rot.  To get full fruit, the gardener has to prune diligently, getting rid of tons of tiny peaches when they’re just dime-sized.  Some peach tree varieties produce peaches as early as May 1st while, on the other hand, the MidPeach doesn’t bear until around July 4th.  And like the preacher’s daddy told him, peach trees grown from the seed don’t usually produce at all until they’re about four or five years old. (Questions on Peaches)

All these facts put me in mind of the biblical parable of the fig tree.  According to this parable recorded in the gospel of Luke, a man plants a fig tree, but in the third year, it still hasn’t produced any figs.  He complains to the gardener and orders him to cut it down.  But the gardener asks for one more year to dig and dung: that is, to cultivate the unproductive tree. The gardener says that if, in the fourth year, there is no fruit, he will cut the tree down himself.  The man agrees.

With this parable in mind, I decided to look up some information about fig trees, too.  I concluded that the man who planted the fig had every right to be frustrated.  

Fig trees usually take one year to produce fruit, two at the most.  Certain varieties of fig produce twice a year, in June and September!  Figs need a lot of water in their first year, but the fig is a hardy tree that can survive drought conditions.  It’s roots are shallow, not deep. (Carpe ficus) In other words, the fig tree is nothing like the peach tree.

This prompted a thought in my mind.  When I examine the promises God has made me, I might well ask, “Is this a peachy promise or a figgy one?”

I think figgy promises are the kind that are made and then quickly fulfilled.  Within a year of hearing them, we are already eating the fruit of the figgy promise!  But peachy promises are different.  

Time and even effort may be required to see these latter kind of promises come to pass. Five years would not be a long time to wait for a peachy promise to be fulfilled. No, four or five years would actually be the necessary amount of time for a peach tree to produce fruit.  

I believe this is worth bearing mind.

From “The House Of Dust: Part 02: 07: Two Lovers: Overtones”

“‘I brought you this . . . ‘ the soft words float like stars

Down the smooth heaven of her memory.

She stands again by a garden wall.

The peach tree is in bloom, pink blossoms fall,

Water sings from an opened tap, the bees

Glisten and murmur among the trees.

Someone calls from the house.  She does not answer.

Backward she leans her head,

And dreamily smiles at the peach-tree leaves, wherethrough

She sees an infinite May sky spread

A vault profoundly blue.”

Conrad Aiken

1889-1973

I recently returned to Ghana, West Africa, for the third time.  One evening during this visit, I went to the home of my dear friend Samuel Tetteh.  His wife Eugenia had a towel in their kitchen that declared:  ”Every meal is a story.”  Yes! I thought.  This is very true everywhere, but perhaps especially in Ghana.

For two weeks, in Ghana, I ate stories.  

I ate boiled yams, fried plantains, yam balls, abula, a little kenké, spicy tomato stew with chicken or fish, bananas and mangos and the freshest pineapple … I drank pineapple-watermelon juice for days.  Of course, one of the meals most often enjoyed in Ghana is fufu, a dough made from yam, saturated with palm nut soup, and eaten by hand.

To prepare the dough, the yam must be pounded with a mortar and pestle.  The pestle is as tall as a person while the mortar is a tall, rounded wooden bowl with sides that curve upward so the mouth is smaller in diameter than the rest of the interior of the bowl.  (See Ghanaian Cusine for a picture!)  This particular method of preparation proved to have a storied significance, which I learned of when I visited Kakum National Forest.  

At a certain point while hiking through the trees, the Ewe tour guide asked her international visitors, “How many types of people are there in the world?”  Without saying anything, I thought to myself: one type (because we are all human).  Alternatively, of course, I thought: there are thousands of types of people!  So imagine my surprise when she said, “Two!”  Guess which two?

“Men and women,” she said. 

She then went on to explain how the mortar and pestle used to make fufu symbolize the relationship between men and women.  For two of the exactly three people on this hike who had actually seen fufu made (the two being myself and a Ghanaian friend named Festus), this was inevitably funny, but the third, a Ghanaian professor, gave no sign that he noticed the implications.   

Ah, food and stories … 

Stories often come after a meal, too (as well as in the middle of long walks in new places), and one evening when I was staying at the home of my dear friend Kate Tetteh in Lartebiokorshie just outside of the city of Accra, my five-year-old goddaughter and I had a story-telling contest.  She would recite a poem, then I would sing a song, and back and forth we went for more than an hour, I all the while amazed at everything Padiki had memorized.

Among other things, Padiki recited the Ghanaian Pledge and then sang the national anthem.  The words seemed so innocent but so powerful in the mouth of a child.

The National Pledge

“I promise on my honour to be faithful and loyal to Ghana my motherland.  I pledge myself to the service of Ghana with all my strength and with all my heart. I promise to hold in high esteem our heritage, won for us through the blood and toil of our fathers; and I pledge myself in all things to uphold and defend the good name of Ghana. So help me God.”

The Ghanaian National Anthem

God Bless our homeland Ghana,
And make our nation great and strong,
Bold to defend for ever the cause of Freedom and of Right.
Fill our hearts with true humility
Make us cherish fearless honesty,
And help us to resist oppressor’s rule
With all our will and might for evermore.

Hail to they name, O Ghana.
To thee we make our solemn vow;
Steadfast to build together
A nation stong in Unity;
With our gifts of mind and strength of arm,
Whether night or day, in mist or storm,
In every need whate’er the call may be,
To serve thee, Ghana, now and evermore.

Raise high the flag of Ghana, 
And one with Africa advance;
Black Star of hope and honour,
To all who thirst for liberty;
Where the banner of Ghana freely flies,
May the way to freedom truly lie
Arise, arise, O sons of Ghanaland.
And under God march on for evermore. 

(For a picture of Ghana’s flag and coat of arms, see the Ghanaian Flag, Pledge, Anthem, and Coat of Arms.)

The words of the pledge and the song pierced my heart.  I thought of how noble and how right they were.  I thought of the history hidden within them, and the love of home, and the spiritual strength of endurance.

I wondered what America would be like if our national anthem explicitly remembered the shed-blood of our ancestors and the necessity for deep personal humility.

I wondered what Ghana, a developing nation, would be like in twenty years when Padiki’s generation comes of age in an amazing world.

I had a dream early, early this morning that was like this poem:

“Noon Rest (after Millet: 1890)”

To rest before the sheaves are bound,
toss the scythes aside, bare the feet and sink
into the nearest haystack, release
the undone task and consent to sleep
while the brightest hour burns an arc
across its stretch of sky:
this is the body’s prayer, mid-day angelus
whispered in mingled breath while the limbs
stretch in thanksgiving and the body turns
toward the beloved.

This is the prayer of trust:
what’s left undone will wait. The unattended
child, the uncut acre, cracked wheel, broken
fence that are occupations of the waking mind
soften into shadow in the semi-darkness
of dream. All shall be well. Little depends on us.
The turning world is held and borne in love.
We give good measure in our toil and, meet and right,
obey the body when it calls us to rest.

Marilyn Chandler McEntyre
from “The Color of Light: Poems on Van Gogh’s Late Paintings” (2007)

Commentary: Chandler McEntyre wrote an entire book of ekphrastic poems meditating on the late paintings Van Gogh. Eerdmans was kind enough to print poems and paintings together, on facing pages - a poet’s dream. The book is lovely. This poem is lovely, a reading of Van Gogh’s variously titled “La Meridienne” or “La Sieste” or “Noon Rest.” The painting can be seen, along with others in the same genre, at www.hayinart.com.

I find it so interesting that the poet alludes to the Revelation of Love by Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth-century English anchorite, who wrote all shall be well in the middle of her memories of a vision of Jesus.

Surely all sleep, and some wake, and some, even while sleeping, have awakened hearts.

Near my house, there is a magnolia tree with dozens of huge, pink and white blossoms proudly open on the tree branches. The wind has been blowing on these blossoms so that petals have fallen and now lie strewn on the grass all around the tree. The petals look like a veil.

From those lemon flowers
set free
by the light of the moon,
from that
odor of a love
frustrated,
sunken in fragrance,
there came
from the Lemon tree its yellow,
from its planetary system
the lemons came down to the earth.

Tender merchandise!
Our shores filled up with it,
the markets
of light, of gold
from a tree,
and we open up
the two halves
of a miracle,
congealed acid
which ran
from the hemispheres
of a star
and the most profound liquor
in nature,
unchanging, alive,
indestructible,
born from the freshness
of the lemon,
from its fragrant house,
from its acid, secret symmetry.

Inside the lemon the knives
cut
a small
cathedral,
the window hidden behind the altars
opened to the light its glassy acids,
and in drops
like topazes they were dripped
onto the altars
by the architecture of freshness.

So when your hand
squeezes the hemisphere
of the cut
lemon onto your plate,
a universe of gold,
you have poured out
one
yellow cup
full of miracles
one of the sweet-smelling nipples
of the breast of the earth,
a ray of light that became a fruit,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

Pablo Neruda
Translated by Jodey Bateman

Commentary: The next time I cut open a lemon, I’m going to look for the cathedral.

“Encounter”

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

Czeslaw Milosz

Commentary: I was thinking about this poet, Czeslaw Milosz, because my colleague, Roger Lundin, mentioned him in a meeting the other day … and then, I read a reflection by Elle Morgan called “Worship without Words,” in which I found the following quotation from Milosz: “If one day our words / Come so close to the bark of trees in the forest / And to orange blossoms, that they become one with them / It will mean that we have always defended a great hope.” I appreciated this idea and went to find more poetry by Milosz where I could … namey at www.poetseers.org. This poem, “Encounter,” is a good one and reminds me poems by Imagists. But there is more than image in this poem, of course.

Sometimes poets need to rant. When they do rant, I suppose we could say they’re on the rantpage (a neologism). Take myself, for instance. I am a poet, and I need to rant. Here’s what I want to rant about:

1. www.poetseers.org - Outstanding site. Definitely better than mine. (rant, rant) Go visit it, and get lots out of it. That’s the only way to redeem the situation.

2. Pablo Neruda is a better poet than Czezlaw Milosz. (rant) It’s true. We can argue if you want, but that won’t change the obvious. I realize that comparing these two poets is like … comparing apples and oranges … or a bird of paradise and a rugged pine … and maybe there’s no point in comparing a Latin American poet to a Polish one, but seriously, no one with sense can deny it: Pablo Neruda is the man.

3. Why is that only TWO women poets have rec’d the Nobel Prize??? (rant, rant, RANT!!!) I’m happy for Gabriela Mistral and what’s-her-name, but what about the rest of the women poets in the world? Sappho is weeping somewhere.

This concludes my first rant.

(I’ll try not to let this mode dominate my poetry place discourse.)

Poetry

Blush of morning on your skin,
bathwater now forgotten—
you stand like a wish,
willing but unkissed—
then, flight of the Czech falcon!

Music

First, to God, marimba hymn,
next, drums deep and Indian—
then, canta desnuda,
sing songs of Lorca—
last, the marimba again!

Art

Renoir’s bright orange paints cast
French light on us from the past—
we stand together,
mother and daughter—
and breathe in and out at last.

Laughter

She won’t speak; he won’t listen;
this, her Lenten discipline—
oragami now
takes flight from her brow—
invisible, wings glisten.

Liturgy

Celebrate resurrection,
and make humble confession—
give the kiss of peace
to greatest and least—
and sense our soul’s redemption.

Singing

Seventy men stand and sing
the Passion of Christ-the-King—
their tenor-bass choir
lifts us both higher—
’til love fulfills our being.

Flight

How can today be the end?
I want to begin again—
poet, percussion,
art, laughter, lesson—
my mother, my bright falcon!

Jane Beal
March 2008

Commentary: When I went to Chris Wiman’s poetry reading on campus, I asked him a question that has been on my mind: is the rhymning quatrain a clichéd, worn-out form? He said, essentially, that the tired forms are waiting for a poet to redeem and renew them.

So … I wanted to write a poem to remember my mother’s visit to Chicago, to commemorate each of our evening adventures, so I chose to write this one–each stanza gives an impression from an adventure we shared. The first stanza alludes to a poem by Chris Wiman, the second to the marimba recital program, the third to Renoir’s “Les deux soeurs sur la terrace,” the fourth to one of the scenes played between Stephen and Alyssa (and Marty, who was the oragami in flight!) at the improv show, the fifth to the service at Church of the Savior, the sixth to the theme of the songs sung by the Men’s Glee Club, and the seventh to the morning of my mother’s departure from Chicago to California.

Did you notice that each stanza is a limerick? I was trying to redeem the form.