Missouri Poets

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"Fair Easter, Queen of all the days, of seasons, best, divinest!"
~ John of Damascus, 8th C ~
Yet another uncanny literary coincidence played itself out last month when I was looking through my old notebooks to see what inspiration I might find there. I came across a letter I had saved from my undergrad (1975 - 1979) professor Jim Barnes (who is now Poet Laureate of Oklahoma). In this note from 2003, he mentions the retirement of Jim Thomas, another professor and poet from those years at Northeast Missouri State (now called Truman State) University. I had not remained in contact with Jim T. as I had with Jim B. However, seeing this reference to him prompted me to google his name for current information, something I could have done--but had not--anytime during the past decade. I entered "Jim Thomas American Poet Missouri," and surprisingly / coincidentally, the first entry to appear was "Native American Authors: Jim Barnes" -- the other Jim!

So I omitted "American" and tried again with "Jim Thomas Poet Missouri." This search yielded a recent article (January 2009) by Missouri Poet Laureate Walter Bargen, commenting on the work of writers from around the state and featuring a poem by Jim Thomas entitled "Three - Dollar Bill." It was a delight to read, but even as I was savoring the exuberance of Jim's poetry and the rush of re-connection with my days in his classroom, my eye caught the lone reader comment, informing of Jim's death in late February, just a month after the article had been written, just 6 days previous to my taking the time to look him up on the internet.

First, I felt dismay at the irony of rediscovering his work only to find him gone from this world. Then I realized, No, it's because he died that I thought of him; that's how this Universe works sometimes.

"Three - Dollar Bill" is vintage Jim Thomas, a portrait of the artist as a second - grader, in which he recalls one of those early moments when it was revealed to him that his way of being in the world might not be quite the same as his classmates. My favorite, however, has always been the "The Quilt": " . . . new with recent patches / and old with originals . . . it doesn't look like much till you / Stand off to one side and squint."

POEMS

THE QUILT
by Jim Thomas

I spread it out again, noticing
the dominant pattern of killing
black, the warm juicy reds,
and all those other shades that tend
to trail off into gray:
hawks view of fields.

The ladies stitch the blocks together,
quilting away, their murmuring
filling the back porch
or church basement, biting thread
and tying off tufts.

My quilt is new with recent patches
and old with originals; it keeps
me warm, except where the holes are;
it doesn't look like much till you
stand off to one side and squint."


CHOCTAW CEMETERY
by Jim Barnes

Stones,
hand-hewn symbols
touching four winds.

Familiar glyphs:
ushi holitopa.*
The dates:
short years.

Pollen settles
down on quickened stones,

and from the east
a distant roll of thunder.

*Beloved son

Beloved Sons ~ World War I War Memorial
Little Crosby Church, Merseyside, England

Missing, Presumed Dead

BABES IN THE WOODS
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS, SAD ~

Additional llustrations
by Randolph Caldecott (1846 – 1886)

Babes in the Woods
[Variations]

My dears, do you know
how a long time ago
Two poor little babes
whose names I don' know
Were stolen away
on a bright summer day
And left in the woods,
so I've heard people say.

And when it was night,
how sad was their plight,
The sun it went down
and the moon gave no light.
They sobbed and they sighed
and they bitterly cried,
And the poor little things,
they lay down and died.

And when they were dead,
the robins so red
Brought strawberry leaves
and over them spread,
And all the day long,
they sang them this song:

Poor babes in the woods,
poor babes in the woods!
And don't you remember the babes in the woods?

I used to wonder (as does author Marilynne Robinson in her novel Home): Why did my dear grandmother so often sing me this sad sad lullaby?

Could it be that the old folk song resonated because Babes in the Woods -- abandoned, recovered (or not), lost, left for dead -- was not such an uncommon tale in real life? Some hard truths may be lurking there just beneath the surface of the sentimental lyrics. Google the phrase, and you will soon learn that "Babes in the Woods" has become the name of numerous heartbreaking cold cases, such as the 1934 murders of the Noakes sisters, Norma, Cordelia, and Dewilla, in Pennsylvania. Or the 1947 murders of the D'Alton brothers, Derek & David.

My grandmother must have heard the stories of children disappearing, not only into the deep dark woods but also from the wide open plain, as recounted by contemporary poet Jim Barnes in this distressing tale of a curious, adventurous child, playing out - of - doors, all day long, innocently yet to his peril:

For Roland, Presumed Taken

By the time we missed you dusk was settling in.
The first reaction was to think
of drowning, the deep hole just north of the house
that the spring flows into
out from under the sycamore.
You had played there earlier in the day
and had wanted to wade the still water
after minnows schooling the shadows.

We tracked you back to the spring, and I died
with fear that you would be floating
among the lilies, white as the ghost of fish.
But your tracks veered left
toward the valley where the cattle grazed,
then vanished in the flowing grass.
I blew the horn that called the cattle in.
You knew the sound and loved the way
the cattle came loping up at feeding time.

Roland, still, today, you cannot hear the sound of the horn,
cannot holler back up the mountainside
to let us know in your wee voice you are safe and found.
Why you walked off into the green of that day
we can never know, except the valley
and the mountain beyond must have yielded a sudden
sound or flash of light that took your eyes away.
And you were gone.  It is as if

eagles swooped you up, leaving
not one trace to tell us the way you went away.
Nights I imagine the beat of drums,
the clanging of toy swords,
rocking horses neighing
on their tracks.
In another age
I would offer
up my glove
to God
to have you back.

Now, we have packed away your life
in boxes we store
in case the memory
we hold is swept away
by chance 
or the slow years.

~by Jim Barnes (b 1933)
~from The Sawdust War (see also)

Every time I read this poem, the bleakness of young Roland's unknown fate rends my heart. Barnes' poem came immediately to mind not long ago, when I was watching the crime drama Dublin Murders. The series, set in 2006, begins with a flashback to 1985: "As dusk approaches a townland near Dublin in the summer of 1985, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror."

As the series progresses, several crimes are revealed and solved, but never the whereabouts of the other two children. Sadly, their disappearance has become something that their parents -- and the audience -- have to accept, no matter how cruel. Their outcome remains unchanged, unknowable. The only conclusion: "presumed taken."

When I mentioned this connection to Jim, he explained further:

The allusions to "The Song of Roland" took a goodly day to place in the poem at just the right junctures. I rather think the poem would fall flat with sentimentality without them.

Kitti: Jim, I get it: the horn, and the jousting, the glove, the bargain. Not sentimental -- just the stark reality of loss with no explanation.

Jim: "Stark reality of loss" exactly abstracts it.

More poetry from Jim Barnes on this blog,
on my Quotidian blog, and on my Book blog.

Next Fortnightly Post ~ Missing Ancestors
Wednesday, August 14th
Between now and then, read

THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

With or Without an Epitaph

AN ANCIENT CITY
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Palaces of Nimroud Restored, 1851
by James Fergusson (1808 –1886)

From the 1853 collection of scholar and excavator
Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894)

Where to find Nimrud on the map:
20 miles south of Mosul / Nineveh

Not shown on map:
Jerwan is 25 miles north of Mosul / Nineveh
Why these three ancient cities: Jerwan, Nimroud, and Nineveh?

First of all, let me say that if you are sitting down to read the poems of contemporary American, Jim Barnes, you had better have a World Atlas handy, because you are going to need it! In a good way! The geological and emotional strata of these poems run deep and wide. Five college towns in Ohio -- can you trace the route across the State? Small hometowns in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, with names unknown to many (well known to me). Cafes, museums, ruins, villas -- all over Europe! You must envision where they are, where the poet has been and takes you now, where you may one day go on your own steam. E.g., The Fertile Crescent:

At Jerwan

Stretching south toward Nineveh
the fertile lands Sennacherib
surveyed have now neither grain nor gold
for the hand holding compass and fold.

Long before the droning night came
down for the spoils and the wind with blame
for the deadly absence and the fall,
frowning figures left their places

on the crumbling marble monuments
and sank into the dry river bed
where the hot hand that fell still means
to fall on the holy heads of gods.

No gardens hanging from the banks,
no stone aqueducts now standing
lone, level, or otherwise.

Far from
Ishtar and Nineveh only this:
dust, thirst, desert despair,
the dream of Sennacherib gone wrong.

by Jim Barnes (b 1933)
in Sundown Explains Nothing, 2019

Artist’s Depiction of the Jerwan Aqueduct
Sennacherib (750 - 681 BC) ruled Assyria from 705 BC to 681 BC, and beautified the capital city of Nineveh with aqueducts, canals, hanging gardens, temples, and a “palace without a rival.” Yet, as Barnes points out, all that magnificence has been replaced by "lone, level" sands, eerily distant. The reader is reminded of proud fictional (or maybe not) Ozymandias, king of kings:

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)

My son Ben, on vacation in London, also took a moment to remind me of Ozymandias, sending me this photograph of the tomb of eccentric 17th-century medical quack Lionel Lockyer. Ben added his own clever caption . . .

"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

. . . and the following commentary:

"On the other hand we've all heard of Ozymandias,
so maybe he was on to something?"

Or at least Shelley was!"

[True, it is not all that unusual to hear
the name of Ozymandias twice in one week
-- and at least twice before on this blog!]
Back in the day, Lockyer (c.1600 – 1672) successfully marketed a miracle pill that apparently cleansed the entire digestive system by causing simultaneous vomiting and diarrhea. Though it sounds exceedingly unpleasant, his product had a huge following during his lifetime; and upon the occasion of his death, he took the opportunity to write as his epitaph one final advertisement for his "Pilulae Radiis Solis Extractae" (extract of sunlight!), more commonly referred to as "Lockyer's Pill":

Here Lockyer: lies interr'd enough: his name
Speakes one hath few competitors in fame:
A name soe Great, soe Generall't may scorne
Inscriptions whch doe vulgar tombs adorne.
A diminution 'tis to write in verse
His eulogies which most men's mouths rehearse.
His virtues & his PILLS are soe well known...
That envy can't confine them under stone.
But they'll survive his dust and not expire
Till all things else at th'universall fire.
This verse is lost, his PILL Embalmes him safe
To future times without an Epitaph

Lockyer thought for sure his pills would outlast his faux sonnet. Ozymandias and Sennacherib envisioned generation after generation surveying their mighty works. Yet in each case, the future went its own way, choosing a different fate for the would - be heroes, leaving behind a "dream . . . gone wrong."

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Monday, October 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Lausanne
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

No One With A Nose

CENTRAL PARK ~ WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

" . . . the deciduous idea!
trees die for half the year and talk all else in the universe . . . "
from the poem "Desire, A Sequence" by Lee Perron, 1977
(photo taken on Ben's 21st Birthday, 2 June 2011)

************************
Another character who lives and dies by the nose:
Cyrano de Bergerac
A couple of weeks ago, on my Quotidian page, I posted the following long poem, which my nearest and dearest (and perhaps a few of my former students) will recognize as a long - time favorite of mine.For those who have not read it before, here is one of the best parables I have ever encountered on the topic of sacrifice and the price of experience. This man does not cut off his nose to spite his face. No, he does it to gain both the world and his soul.

I think perhaps rather than sacrifice, this poem may really be more about an idea that came to attention ~ coincidentally! ~ as I was turning the calendars ahead to July: opportunity cost, i.e., "the cost of any activity measured in terms of the best alternative forgone . . . the sacrifice related to the second best choice available to someone who has picked among several mutually exclusive choices . . . the basic relationship between scarcity and choice. The notion of opportunity cost plays a crucial part in ensuring that scarce resources [ ~ such as true love ~ ] are used efficiently. Thus, opportunity costs are not restricted to monetary or financial costs: the real cost of output forgone, lost time, pleasure or any other benefit that provides utility should also be considered opportunity costs" (see Wikipedia for further explanation and footnotes).

An even better explanation is provided by the young entrepreneurs who designed the Indiana Council for Economic Education 2011 Economic Concept Calendar. The featured concept for July is "Opportunity Cost," illustrated by fifth grader, Abbie S.: "When you make a decision, the most valuable alternative you give up is your Opportunity Cost. (Opportunity Cost is NOT what you pay to buy something.) There is always an alternative to any decision, so every decision has an opportunity cost" (click ICEE, scroll down to page 7 for calendar contest winners; clicking on the winning entries link will give you a preview of next year's 2012 calendar).

Another way to think of it is the passage from George Bernard Shaw's play Major Barbara (but also ascribed to novelist H. G. Wells; a discrepancy that I have not yet resolved to my satisfaction):

"You have learned something.
That always feels at first
as if you have lost something."
If there is a decision, an alternative, something to learn . . . then there will be a cost, something forgone, something to lose.

Following Lee Perron's poem, you will find a couple of letters. All the connections are self - explanatory, I think. So, please, read on and enjoy:

from Desire, a Sequence (1977)
by Lee Perron, California Poet & Antiquarian Bookseller

there are so many innocent little things we want
with application and luck and a good nudge from the gods
we may have any of them

it's those gods -- they bestow all things upon you
and they do not ask for much in return
they will give you everything & they will ask back from you only
some small thing --
for instance, they might ask for your nose

come on, they say, why don't you just chuck it in
put it down the garbage disposal and as soon as it works its way
back into the earth we'll give you whatever you want
the deciduous idea! trees die for half the year & take all else in
the universe
-- i can hear what's going on in your mind: what, my nose? oh
no, not me, you must be thinking of some other guy
but you know, a man might do it
he might take a knife & cut a little deeper every day
and if by the second week he's still only through the skin and
hasn't really gotten to the bone yet
in that second week he decides to lob off the whole thing at once
and there he is with no nose
people laugh at him
but immediately the gods start bestowing their gifts
they give him patience & application
he learns how to do things right
slowly he grows in command of his will & intellect
and with these he acquires whatever he feels he needs:
a wife, lovers, respect in his community, a drum set
the capacity to drink limitless quantities of gin

but what is hard right from the start is that nose
he sighs often (through his mouth) and is heard to say
without my nose sometimes none of it seems to make sense
his friends show up and remind him of the cold hard facts of
his noseless life
they tell him to apply himself
and he's back at work again, gathering his desires

sometimes he wonders if he really had to go out & cut off his
nose just to learn how to get things
maybe he could have just gone out and gotten them
but no, he looks around & sees that no one with a nose has
anywhere near the things he does, not a tenth so much,
not a hundredth

whenever he takes a trip to one of those big medical cities --
boston, baltimore, houston, he'll go & talk to the medics
what can you do about this nose? he'll ask
what nose? they reply
he has learned to be earnest always: can you do anything about
getting me another one?
but when the doctors hear the circumstances
-- his confused early life,
his vow to the gods, the garbage disposal
-- they won't touch him with a ten foot pole

there are good years and bad
he goes through periods where he is a great complainer
what is the point of it, he says, if i have no nose?
his friends show up to console him
well at least you'll never have to rub your nose in your own
filth, they say
his friends become his tormentors
there is a long time he won't speak to anyone
night after night he dreams his nose has come back
each night it's the same shape, but a different size
somewhere along the line, tho, he stops fighting things so hard

there are always people to make jokes, even upon the wealthy & successful
he makes them himself in moments of despair
he will howl, every yes must have a no
but every ass must have a nose!
and on his tombstone the universal jester gets off a last good one:
an excellent man / got everything a man / could want; said yes
to all / but could have used more nose

so they laugh at him in the graveyard
but you listen, when that man died he had finally achieved every-
thing:

children, grandchildren, troops of friends
the warm feelings of all who knew him
earlier on concubines & no desire left unfulfilled
an animal park named in his honor
real progress in the field of cancer
a fully benevolent philosopher-king in charge of his country
universal justice prevailing throughout the land

at the end they hear him say
you know, if i had it to do all over again, i'd like to try it with
my nose the next time
and he dies
& it is nothing like the death of priam or macbeth
or any of those other simpletons
this man got everything

***********************

you have seen it perhaps
there is always the time the car stops
in front of the big white house
or gray house, or blue
it will not go any further with you
the car is stopped
and one of you must get out
and the other drive off
it is all that simple
-- do you think i am talking of love?

or you will be driving down a country road
and there are two sparrows
or buntings or bluebirds
and you hit one of these and it lies by the roadside
and its mate circles about chittering
and then sits on a fencepost
and sings something
this mate, perhaps, is inconsolable
please --
i am not talking about love

your mate dies, or parents
or one of your other friends
there is nothing fearful in the death
the deadman is not the problem
his letters perhaps
some phrase he spoke that rings every after
the way he died, what the surgeons did to his brain, or kidneys,
or heart
what you & he would have been doing now
next week, all summer long as you always did
the deadman did not die
your plans died
and this is what is so upsetting
this makes us so sick we cannot even think

i have seen all the trees
and the great views from mountains
the stars
the tiniest flowers within inches of my eye
but i have seen nothing more beautiful than human desire
in the country, the lawns just going purple with violets
we would have these violets and one particular friend
we have shattered the glazed bowl and make another
rounder, or less symmetrical, or with a plainer glaze
who could blame us? at sunset, we ask for wine
in white dawn we take coffee
we make lovely worlds more & more lovely
and then we see they are better simple
and then we make them simple
this desire is very much like song
our melodies everywhere about us
like butterflies, our desires hover about our heads and our hands

in this beauty the car stops
the arm reaches for the doorhandle
and there is nothing left to it but the pulling up on the handle
there is a way the eyes have of gazing intently downward
the legs slide onto the pavement
and one of you looks back through the car window
you may touch one another's lips, or not
it hardly makes any difference, so beautiful is desire

********************************************

Letter from Ben McCartney to Lee Perron

28 March 2003

Dear Mr. Perron,

I am a 7th grade student, writing to you from St. Peter's School in Philadelphia. I want to tell you what a remarkable and memorable impression your poem "from Desire, a Sequence," has made on me.

Every month, every student at St. Peter's has to memorize a poem and recite it before his or her class. Then a few speakers from each class are chosen to recite their poems before the entire school. About a year ago, my mother showed me your poem, about the man who cuts off his nose in order to get whatever he wants from the gods. After reading your fascinating poem, I knew that I wanted to recite it at the next poetry declamation. I was successful in my class presentation and went on to win the award for the month and the all-school Declamation Award for 2002. I had several other successful poems throughout the year, but yours was the best of all.

In our family, we refer to your poem as "The Nose Poem," and we all love it. My mother (Kitti Carriker) learned of this poem years ago when she was a student of Professor Jim Barnes and Professor Andrew Grossbardt at Northeast Missouri State University, Kirksville. She discovered your poem in The Chariton Review, 1977. After college, she became an English teacher, and she told me that she taught this poem to her students every year. But I think what made her the happiest was being able to share it with me and my dad and my brother.

Since your poem appears in The Chariton Review titled "from Desire, a Sequence," we have always wondered if there is more to the sequence than appears here. We would all be greatly interested in learning more about this poem, as well as other poems that you have written. Please let us know where we could look for more of your work (so far we have not been successful in the library or on amazon.com).

Thanks again for your wonderful poem about the man who understood the price he had to pay in order to get everything!

Sincerely yours,

William Benedict McCartney

P.S. I hope you will enjoy the enclosed video tape from Friday, April 26, 2002. Despite my very best efforts to do your poem justice, I accidentally omitted a few lines right near the end. I was mortified, but luckily no one in the audience (except maybe my mom) seemed to notice.

************************************

Letter from Lee Perron to Ben

25 April 2005

Dear Ben,

Your letter was a most pleasant surprise. Thank you so much for it, and for the tape of your reading, and for the news that you and your mother have memorized my 25 year old poem. I'm quite honored by your appreciation of my unassuming anti-hero. In truth, I had long since forgotten the poem. I can hardly describe the eerie, wonderful feeling of learning that it lives in the memory of people two thousand miles away and is still mentioned on occasion in classrooms.

The situation reminds me of a matter in the life of the Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova, who wrote a poem of protest against the imprisonment of her son by the oppressive regime of Joseph Stalin. She was able to recite it in public one or two times before the authorities stepped in and destroyed all written copies of it and forbade her to recite it again. Twenty years later, under a somewhat more open government, she wanted to work on the poem once more, but didn't have a copy. However, there were people from her audiences years before who, having heard it just once or twice, had memorized it. They were able to bring the whole text -- many pages in length-- back for her.

To answer your questions: I'm not sure now whether or not I had other poems in a group to be called Desire, A Sequence. At any rate, no such book appeared. While writing has always been an important part of my life, I have tended not to publish work. Someone once invented the term "privishing" to designate printing & distributing written work to a few friends, as distinct from putting work out to the publish ("publishing"). I've been a privisher, customarily sending one poem a year -- a winter solstice greeting -- to family and friends. Something in this practice gives just the right amount of emphasis to the fact of my existence, and I take satisfaction in it and don't seem to want anything more of writing.

It happens my wife and I are moving . . . this spring. In order to avoid moving excess baggage from one attic to the next, I'm attempting to look over every piece of paper in 8 large and ponderous boxes of old poems and daily journals. Somewhere in the mass I'll find a copy of from Desire, a Sequence and will look at it for the first time in all these years and consider whether or not to hang on to it. To hear that both your mother and you have memorized is sure to land it in the keeper file.

Are you a writer yourself? If in the future you should publish a poem I would be delighted it you'd make a photocopy and forward it here.

Many thanks again for keeping my poem alive and for you your letter.

Best regards,

Lee Perron

P.S. Enclosed a copy for you of a small "book" of mine that did manage to find publication -- something to be carried around in a shirt pocket.



**********************************

Letter from Jim Barnes to Kitti

6 May 2003

Dear Kitti:

Thank you for the nice letter -- and the copies of your son's and Lee's letters. Happenings like this make all my years of editing worth it. The reward is the work and the knowing that it has meant something to someone out there in the world.

Let me hear from you: what you are up to, where you are teaching, what you are writing. You have a near - teenage so! My goodness, where has the time gone? Rhetorical question, of course. The mirror tells me each day: I am not Dorian Gray.

Peace and love,

Jim Barnes

***********************************

Letter from Jim Barnes to Kitti

8 July 2011

Dear Kitti:

Did I tell you of my encounter with Lee--after having published several of his poems in Chariton? Spring of 1978: I was giving a reading of my work at U. Cal.-- Berkeley. I dropped a hint that I needed a ride, after the reading, back to my hotel at the San Mateo airport. Several offers were presented. One big fellow (6 feet, 6 inches, I'd say) stepped forward barefooted and stuck out his front paw. It was Lee, who'd seen the announcement of the reading in Poetry Pilot and had driven up from Walnut Creek. We had a great drive to my hotel and some really fine conversation. As it turned out, I discovered that Lee had a good friend in Lafayette, Indiana, at the university--Neil Myers, who ten years later, was to be one of the editors for my Purdue book La Plata Cantata. But now Lee and I somehow have lost contact . . .

Peace and love,

Jim

********************************************

See? In every encounter there's a coincidence!
Now, we just need to get this blog post to
Mr. Perron to complete the connection!

[Additional posts on Jim Barnes, Andrew Grossbardt, and The Chariton Review include: Missouri Poets, Quinton Duval, Tomatoes & Gravy, Parallax, and Penelope]

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, July 14, 2011

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Viva la Revolution

VINTAGE CROCHET
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Vest made back in the 70s by my Grandmother Adeline Carriker;
scarf by my mother Mary Carriker
Bonus: Red, White & Blue for the July Holidays!

Earlier this month, Gerry and I needed costumes for a 70th Birthday Party with a 1970s theme, to be held over the 4th of July. Luckily, I still have an assortment of these crocheted vests that were all the rage during my junior high through college years. Just in case anyone suspects that only nerds wore crochet back then, take a look at all these groovy options -- even for guys! Crazy times! My mom and grandma must have worked overtime, crocheting nonstop to keep us girls in style. I'm pretty sure that my sisters and girl cousins and I had some version of practically everything on this page! (Not my brothers, however! They weren't that hip! Haha!)

The nice thing about the all - American 4th of July color scheme is that it means you're all set for Bastille Day as well -- the crocheted vest, the red, white, and blue twinkle lights, the miniature Eiffel Tower. Apparently, even George Washington observed the occasion of French Independence as well as our own, being the proud possessor -- thanks to the Marquis de Lafayette -- of the confiscated Key to the Bastille! Who knew?!

The sad thing about July 14th this year, after seeing the White House stormed on January 6th, is that somehow Bastille Day just doesn't feel as fun as it used to. There has to be a better way than storming!

Still, it's only right, on this blog of literary connections, to observe the day with a poem in honor of Paris, by one of my favorite poets and lifelong friends, who has written so beautifully of Paris:

Proust's Way: July 1991

Across the street from our hotel
and down a block or two, a door
opens onto a courtyard where Marcel
may have stepped upon a rough flag-
stone that triggered a host of things
he never knew he would recall.

Walking by the door, we recall
Guermantes's way and the count's hotel,
Swann's folly and all sorts of things
still existing beyond the door.
On evenings as we pass, the flag
of France is taken down. Marcel

is resting in his room. Marcel
remembers us while we recall
exactly what he said the flag-
stone summoned forth. At our hotel
we don't exactly close the door
on the chance he may be right: things

past have a way of making
now seem a bit more real. Marcel
seldom ventured beyond his door
in later years. Total recall
was obsession and love. The hotel,
on the 14th, displays its flags

for the troops of Desert Storm, flags
that have seen stranger things
than Bush at Mitterand's hotel.
At night not far from here, Marcel
sat in Square Louis to recall
better days. The mind is a door

that opens to many bells, a door
that swings on memory. A flag-
stone once caused Marcel to recall
involuntarily the things
that were his world and ours. Marcel,
we owe you more than a hotel

door labeled where he wrote. The things
that flag our minds are mute. Marcel,
no total recall in our hotel.

by American Poet Jim Barnes (b 1933)
in Paris: Poems by Jim Barnes

******************

Click to read more Bastille Day poems

Additional Bastille & Independence Day Posts
from previous years:

Bastille Day: Is There A World You Long To See?
Two Poems for Bastille Day
Eagles is Freedom
Carriker Barrel
Viva la Revolution

No More Forever
Andrea Dworkin
Liberté, égalité, fraternité!
If I Had a Hammer
Happy Bat - stille Day!
At Pere Lachaise
[with Victoria Amador & Steven LaVigne]

Independence Day 2009
Resident Alien
Red, White & Blue Pie
Who Needs Fireworks?!
May God Bless and Keep the Upstart Americans
Loving America the Al Franken Way
American Tune
Practice Pysanky, Practice Resurrection, Practice Revolution
I Pledge Allegiance

We managed the 70s and the 4th all in one outfit!

Accessorizing

Arriving in Style!
By land or by sea!

Thanks to Magan's Crochet Corner for giving expert advice when I inquired about the possibility of somehow turning all my old vests into an afghan. Magan advised to leave them as they are: "Crochet is having a comeback!" She was right! Thank goodness I resisted the temptation to unravel what turned out to be the perfect partywear! If you save something long enough . . . it might become cool once again!

In addition to vests, my mom specialized in large crocheted afghans, several still in use today by various members of the family; and Grandma Carriker made the best crocheted wagon wheel pillows, sadly all worn out.

Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, July 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Parallax

A MUSEUM & LIBRARY WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

THE ROSENBACH:
"A WONDERLAND FOR LOVERS OF BOOKS AND ANTIQUES"
Two special days this week:

Tuesday, June 14th: Flag Day, since way back in 1777 (officially established in 1916).

Thursday, June 16th: Bloomsday, ever since 1922, (officially established in 1954).

My maternal grandmother, Rovilla Heidemann Lindsey, died forty - five years ago today, on Flag Day in 1966. That year, like this year, June 14 fell on a Tuesday; and Grandma Lindsey's funeral service was held on Thursday, June 16.


Her husband, my maternal grandfather, Paul Jones Lindsey, died seventeen years later, on Saturday, June 11, almost to the day of my grandmother's death, but not quite. His funeral, however, was also held on the Thursday, June 16. For all those intervening 17 years, Grandpa kept the 1966 calendar hanging on the kitchen wall, turned to June. Every January, he would place the new one on top, but you could always see the 1966 calendar just underneath.

By the time 1983 rolled around, I had read James Joyce's Ulysses several times, studied it thoroughly, and worked as an intern on the James Joyce Quarterly. I was well aware of Bloomsday that summer and the literary significance of my grandparents' two funerals being held not only on the same day of the week and month as each other's, but also on the anniversary of Leopold Bloom's legendary day in Dublin ~ Thursday, June 16, 1904 ~ when he too attended a funeral ceremony. The uncanny coincidence was not lost on me.

I sent a letter to my undergraduate Joyce professor, Jim Barnes, telling him of my grandfather's Bloomsday funeral service and sharing with him the remarkable symmetry of my grandmother's funeral taking place seventeen years earlier, also on Thursday, June 16, way before I knew anything about Bloomsday. I was honored when he wrote back to let me know that he read my note aloud to his Joyce students that summer, as an example of how life can echo art. [My previous posts on Professor & Poet Jim Barnes include: Missouri Poets, Quinton Duval, Tomatoes & Gravy]


I guess that's why I can never let Bloomsday slip by unnoticed, especially when it falls, as it does this year, on a Thursday, something which happens at repeating intervals of every 6 - 11 - 6 - 5 / 6 -11 - 6 - 5 years. If you get a kick (as I do!) out of the Perpetual Calendar, you can easily figure out that the next time June 16 will fall on a Thursday is 2016 (then add 6, 11, 6, 5, and so forth, in order to identify the years to come).

Googling "Bloomsday" has led me to another Quotidian blogger (no! I didn't steal my name from him). Interestingly, he maintains that June 16 can really only be considered Bloomsday when it falls on a Thursday, i.e., every 6, 11, 6, 5 years or so! Calendrically, this idea appeals to me, though it seems a shame to pass up a yearly opportunity to visit the nearest Irish pub -- or perhaps the Rosenbach Museum & Library, if you happen to be in Philadelphia -- in celebration of the life and times and peregrinations of Leopold Bloom.

Bloomsday at the Rosenbach,
#2008 & #2010 Delancey Street, Philadelphia
**************************************

Some Quotations for Bloomsday, by Joyce and others,
in honor of wandering the streets of Dublin, or wherever:
It is the epic of two races (Israel-Ireland) and at the same time the cycle of the human body as well as a little story of a day (life)... It is also a kind of encyclopaedia. My intention is not only to render the myth sub specie temporis nostri but also to allow each adventure (that is, every hour, every organ, every art being interconnected and interrelated in the somatic scheme of the whole) to condition and even to create its own technique.
James Joyce (Irish novelist, 1882-1941)
Letters, 21st September 1920

"Think you're escaping and run into yourself.
Longest way round is the shortest way home."
James Joyce, from Ulysses, Chapter 13

"Who is it that can tell me who I am?"
William Shakespeare, from King Lear

"And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive
where we started and know the place for the first time."
T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

"Happy Bloomsday, citizens, phenomenologists, throwaways, foreigners, gentlemen of the press, evermoving wanderers, weavers and unweavers, pedestrians in brown macintoshes, Wandering Soap, sailors crutching around corners, no-one, everyone! Hoping you're well and not in hell!"
Kathleen O'Gorman, my friend and fellow Modernist

P.S. Is reading Ulysses still on your "to do" list?
Well, for a few milliseconds of entertainment, you can
enjoy this minimalist version: it will quickly bring you
up to speed, or serve as a quick review if it's been awhile:
Ulysses for Dummies
Haha!

P.P.S. End of June 2012: my mother has written to let me know that her first cousin Mildred (my grandmother's niece) died earlier this month, on June 14th & the funeral was held on June 16th.

P.P.P.S. Bloomsday 2015: thanks to Michael Lipsey for this amazing photograph: "Happy Bloomsday! The inside cover of my dad’s copy of Ulysses, which he read and reread for over 70 years. The last two were from tapes, as his eyesight was failing. Between the third and fourth he notes that I read Ulysses in 1967 — quite a bit of it on a long camping trip in the Smokey Mountains."

see also his notes below in "Comments":

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Leap Day Wizard Dreams

THE ONCE AND FUTURE WIZARD STORE
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Chetopa, Kansas

Bissextile Day is here -- February 29th, the Leap Day of our Leap Year! A day for lords a leaping, and leaping lizards and leaping wizards, and leaping across the U.S.A.

Across Kansas

My family slept those level miles
but like a bell rung deep till dawn
I drove down an aisle of sound,
nothing real but in the bell,
past the town where I was born.

Once you cross a land like that
you own your face more: what the light
struck told a self; every rock
denied all the rest of the world.
We stopped at Sharon Springs and ate—

My state still dark, my dream too long to tell.

by Kansas - born poet William Stafford
I wonder if Stafford and his family ever drove through Chetopa and stopped by Wizzard of Odds? I like the way that he concludes his poem with a reference to his "state" (of mind? or State of Kansas?) and also with a recollection of a "dream too long to tell."

Another connection:

Driving Through Kansas
~for Garry Ritzky

One knoll:
a handful of mourners
crying somebody's dream.

Beyond:
a distance too blue to see.

The road slices wheat
stunned with crows
here for more than kill.

you know the crow
can caw his soul
into or out of any hell,

know too the tumbleweed
you bang into will roll
as long as mourners
bruise the hill.

The wind letters every mailbox,
and solid gray holds in trust
the farmer's good last name.

by Oklahoma - born poet Jim Barnes [more poems]

This poem takes place not in the dark of night but on a day of endless, distant blue. Like Stafford's "Kansas," it yields a dream. Driving past a roadside cemetery where a funeral is in progress, Barnes describes "mourners crying somebody's dream." Somebody else's, the deceased, the mourners, but not his own, or is it?

Like Stafford and Barnes, I too have driven and dreamed my way across Kansas.

Getting our Kicks on 166

My siblings and I remember this place, not from our childhood years, but from recent visits, although it seemed to be closed down the last time we passed through (May 2021). Not long after that, I had the strangest dream that I had to share with them. The store itself wasn't in the dream, but we kids were sitting all sitting around in a good mood (in some unspecified setting -- like maybe the outdoor lounge in my brother Dave's backyard. Our Grandpa Lindsey was there -- my mother's father -- and he was saying, "Aaron used to drive me over to Chetopa to the Wizard Store all the time to have my fortune told."

That was the whole dream, just the frame of us all sitting there and Grandpa making that one remark. A strange and interesting dream, but very un-Grandpa like! I had to ask my brother Aaron if it was true! Of course, I knew it wasn't because, in fact, the Wizzard of Odds didn't even exist (or contained some other business) until at least a decade after our grandfather had died.

I usually forget every single dream, but I think this one is going to stay with me! Oddly enough, this is not the first Wizard Store dream that I have had -- and been able to remember. Around the same time that we discoverd Wizzard of Odds in Kansas, my sister Peg and my nephew Dan used to take me to a gift store in Maryland that we called The Wizard Store, even though its proper name was Flights of Fancy. In the dream, I was distraught, trying to catch a bus on a dark rainy night and repeating over and over to anyone who would listen, "Im trying to get to the Wizard Store," where I knew that Peg and Dan were waiting for me. What is it about these Wizard Stores leading to such wacky dreams?

Talking about our many drives through Chetopa over the years led to a conversation about the various family station wagons. How accurately could we remember?

The Pink Dodge

The Green Pontiac

The Silver Buick

Another Connection:
Our Grandma Lindsey's Map of Kansas Handkerchief

Too bad Chetopa got left out,
but Coffeyville and Independence made the map!

The Big Floor Map
at the State Line Rest Stop

My brother and I have a joke about this one:
Kit: Look! I'm standing in three states at once!
Four actually, since I'm also in a state of crippling despair . . .
Bruce: No fair counting Kansas twice!

Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, March 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Faith Kept Me Back Awhile

The fresco, "Zachariah in the Temple" (1486 - 1490)
by Domenico Ghirlandaio (1486-1490)
Italian Renaissance painter
Detail: Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino,
Angelo Poliziano, Demetrios Chalkondyles
Location of fresco: The Tornabuoni Chapel
in Santa Maria Novella Church, Florence, Italy

Back when I was an undergrad in a class called Major Trends, I was given the assignment to pick a significant historical event before 1550 and provide examples of its effect on literature up to the present day. I seem to recall taking a stair-step approach, starting with

Italian Renaissance (1400 - 1550)
produced humanist philosopher Marsilio Ficino
(Italian, 1433 - 1499)
who wrote Theologia Platonica (1474)

Fun Fact: Ficino coined the phrase "Platonic Love" [to be misquoted several centuries later by one of my Freshman Comp students as "Plutonic Love"]

Ficino's Neoplatonism influenced Edmund Spenser
(English, 1552 - 1599)
who wrote The Faerie Queene (1590)

Fun Fact: Spenser is believed to have crafted the phrase "neither rhyme nor reason"

Spenser's allegorical poem influenced Nathaniel Hawthorne
(American, 1804 - 64)
who wrote Mosses From an Old Manse (1835)
and Twice-Told Tales (1837)

Fun Fact: Hawthorne named his first child Una, after a character from Spenser's "Faerie Queene"

In "Young Goodman Brown," one of Hawthorne's allegorical tales, Young Goodman Brown leaves his young wife Faith for a visit to the Dark Side. As he hurries away to keep his appointment with Fate, he sees Faith's sad face, framed on either side by the pink ribbons of her cap. He is torn between his faith and the insistent call of cynicism. Arriving late for his assignation, he explains his tardiness, "Faith kept me back awhile."

Throughout the story, Young Goodman Brown's spiritual faith, his faith in goodness and humankind, and the person of his wife Faith become one. Should he leave his "dear Faith" to pursue the Knowledge of Good and Evil? He longs to sleep "in the arms of Faith!" Yet he feels compelled to enter the dark wood where he is startled to hear Faith's voice echoing through the trees. When he finds one of her pink ribbons caught on a branch, he seizes it, crying, "My Faith is gone!"

"But where is Faith?" he asks. It appears that Faith has become as jaded as he, and by the end of the evening their mutual disillusion is complete: " . . . ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived."

When I first read this story in 1977, in a unit of literature concerning the theme of Initiation, I attempted to write a poem on the same topic (as a student of Andrew Grossbardt, Jim Thomas, and Jim Barnes):

INITIATION
So,
I have finally told you about the dot and the line.

The dot, a hard knot, a hurt fist between my breasts.
The crying fingers clinch in painful safety
all that I have loved and lived with and believed in for so long.

The line, a right margin the length of my body.
A fence allowing no escape for the dot,
guarding, keeping it right beside my heart.

In time,
when with a wiser hand I force the tear-stained fingers open
I will find, preserved in brine, Faith's pink ribbon.

I hadn't thought about this poem for ages, until driving in the car the other day, I caught the words from Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams." The lyrics brought to mind the imagery of my old poem -- the dot and the line, the knotted heart and the fist. I couldn't help wondering if the shallow beating heart, the divided mind, and the border line in their song are similar to those I was writing about so long ago:

"On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams . . .

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating . . .

I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone . . . ."

Chariton Connections

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

A View of the River, for which the Review was Named
Photo by Jay Beets

My personal 40 - year old copy of first issue!
Cover photo by Bob Zeni

Forty years ago,in the Fall of 1975, one of my first assignments as a college freshman was to read the first issue of The Chariton Review from cover to cover -- so many unforgettable stories and poems -- by Quinton Duval, John Haines, Jim Thomas, Glen Tracy, Winston Weathers.

And this one by James Tate:

Discovery & Recovery
we jump over their graves
frightening a red bird
we jump over their graves
hovering to applaud
we jump over their graves
who's afraid to love
we jump over their graves
spitting over our shoulders
we jump over their graves
taking flight like pheasants
beside a highway
we jump over their graves
whistling in the ozone
we jump over their graves
whistling in the ozone
we jump over their graves
the thousand million acres
we jump over their graves
like balloons skidding in the wind
we jump over their graves
leapfrog into the empty ones
the graves jump over the graves

I am hung by the toe from a star
with a blacksnake of dentalfloss
with a machete of dentalfloss
the hibiscus of dentalfloss
the cable - car of dentalfloss
the bikini of dentalfloss
the national anthem of dentalfloss
some $5's worth of used dentalfloss
12 miles of used dentalfloss
3 tons of used dentalfloss
the dentalfloss that rebelled in the night
and strangled the crest
the dentalfloss on which you strangled
your first tooth
the dentalfloss with which I bet
my tongue for nosing - in
the dentalfloss with which we lassooed
our first housefly
(a potential power source?)
the common housefly is an open book
(a potential power source?)
the hornet is a power source
for screams
which make the world go around
solving all my problems in the end
hung as I am by a toe from the star.

Another favorite for students of poetry in the midwest, in the 70s was Tate's cliche - defying "It's Not the Heat So Much as the Humidity". Suddenly the dog days of summer were filled with hometown nostalgia, witty connections and provocative contradictions:

It’s Not the Heat So Much as the Humidity
Only a dish of blueberries could pull me
out of this lingering funk.
I’m tired of taking the kids down
to the riot, no longer impressed
with the fancy electrical nets, sick
of supersonic nightsticks.

Buy myself a hot dog and a glass of beer—
That helps. It’s hard to say
who’s winning. Nobody is winning.

Boy, Kansas City! Big Zoo! Oriental art!
Starlight Theater: Annie Get Your Gun
going into its seventeenth year.
Once I met Tab Hunter there, four o’clock
in the morning, standing in line

at the Coke machine, so tall and blond,
though not much of a conversationalist.

It’s good to be home, trying to soften
the blow for young girls who are inclined
to fall off their porches.

Some of my best friends are . . .
Curse on those who do and do not take dope.

When Autumn comes, O when Fall arrives,
in her chemise of zillion colors,
I will sigh noisily, as if an old and
disgusting leg had finally dropped off.

No more drinking beer, no more
The perpetual search for an air-
conditioned friend, no more friends.

I’ll take piano lessons, French lessons,
speed-reading lessons, and if there is
still time to kill, gawk at a bluejay
tumbling out of the maple tree.

Cars slide by with their windows up,
whispering of a Mexican Restaurant
“with really good Chili Verde.”

The gutters billow with mauve death;
A mother’s sad voice sends out
a tugboat whistle through the purple mist:
she worries about her children.

And the dangerous fishhook of melancholy
dangles from every dog’s ear.
The dog that saved my life,
that keeps on saving each long, humid night.
The dead dog. And so:

a shiny baseball hovers over the city.
No one asks why. And so: it passes on.
And so: a telephone starts to ring
in a widow’s cake-filled kitchen . . .

A rollerskate collides with a lunchpail.

~ by James Tate (8 December 1943 – 8 July 2015)

In the wake of Tate's death this summer, numerous tributes -- by Dave Eisenstadter, Rich Smith, and Ned Stuckey - French, to name a few -- honored Tate's vision and recalled exemplary poems. Jeffery Gleaves of The Paris Review, included these irresistible references:

"Tate’s poems were 'always concerned to tell us that beneath the busyness and loneliness of our daily lives, there remains in us the possibility for peace, happiness and real human connection,' wrote Adam Kirsch in the New York Times."

"But John Ashbery once opined that Tate is a 'poet of possibilities, of morph, of surprising consequences, lovely or disastrous, and these phenomena exist everywhere.' ”

"Surprising consequences" and "real human connections" -- these comments from Ashbery and Kirsch pretty much explain why it's no surprise that I've turned to Tate's work previously, in both a Fortnightly essay ("I sat at home and began to cheer up. What if none of this happened? I thought. What if there was nothing to be sad about?") and a Quotidian post ("What I thought was infinite will turn out to be just a couple / of odds and ends, a tiny miscellany, miniature stuff, fragments / . . . But it will also be enough, / maybe even more than enough . . . ").

My professor and friend, and long - time editor of The Chariton Review Jim Barnes reminisced, "Yes, sad to hear of Tate's death. The old Blue Booby is gone. Funny how I associate him with that one bird in his great little comic poem":

The Blue Booby
The blue booby lives
on the bare rocks
of Galápagos
and fears nothing.
It is a simple life:
they live on fish,
and there are few predators.
Also, the males do not
make fools of themselves
chasing after the young
ladies. Rather,
they gather the blue
objects of the world
and construct from them

a nest—an occasional
Gaulois package,
a string of beads,
a piece of cloth from
a sailor’s suit. This
replaces the need for
dazzling plumage;
in fact, in the past
fifty million years
the male has grown
considerably duller,
nor can he sing well.
The female, though,

asks little of him—
the blue satisfies her
completely, has
a magical effect
on her. When she returns
from her day of
gossip and shopping,
she sees he has found her
a new shred of blue foil:
for this she rewards him
with her dark body,
the stars turn slowly
in the blue foil beside them
like the eyes of a mild savior.

Time and again, Tate's poems open their arms to a poetry - starved world, embracing all the nonsense, affirming the quest for meaning, and giving the reader a little something to smile or smirk or laugh right out loud about, as well as plenty to worry about. Like this one, for example:

Dream On
Some people go their whole lives
without ever writing a single poem.
Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
to cut somebody's heart or skull open.
They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease.
and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing.
These same people stroll into a church
as if that were a natural part of life.
Investing money is second nature to them.
They contribute to political campaigns
that have absolutely no poetry in them
and promise none for the future.
They sit around the dinner table at night
and pretend as though nothing is missing.
Their children get caught shoplifting at the mall
and no one admits that it is poetry they are missing.
The family dog howls all night,
lonely and starving for more poetry in his life.
Why is it so difficult for them to see
that, without poetry, their lives are effluvial.
Sure, they have their banquets, their celebrations,
croquet, fox hunts, their sea shores and sunsets,
their cocktails on the balcony, dog races,
and all that kissing and hugging, and don't
forget the good deeds, the charity work,
nursing the baby squirrels all through the night,
filling the birdfeeders all winter,
helping the stranger change her tire.
Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation
from decaying matter, subtle but everpresent.
They walk around erect like champions.
They are smooth-spoken and witty.
When alone, rare occasion, they stare
into the mirror for hours, bewildered.
There was something they meant to say, but didn't:
"And if we put the statue of the rhinoceros
next to the tweezers, and walk around the room three times,
learn to yodel, shave our heads, call
our ancestors back from the dead--"
poetrywise it's still a bust, bankrupt.
You haven't scribbled a syllable of it.
You're a nowhere man misfiring
the very essence of your life, flustering
nothing from nothing and back again.
The hereafter may not last all that long.
Radiant childhood sweetheart,
secret code of everlasting joy and sorrow,
fanciful pen strokes beneath the eyelids:
all day, all night meditation, knot of hope,
kernel of desire, pure ordinariness of life
seeking, through poetry, a benediction
or a bed to lie down on, to connect, reveal,
explore, to imbue meaning on the day's extravagant labor.
And yet it's cruel to expect too much.
It's a rare species of bird
that refuses to be categorized.
Its song is barely audible.
It is like a dragonfly in a dream--
here, then there, then here again,
low-flying amber-wing darting upward
then out of sight.
And the dream has a pain in its heart
the wonders of which are manifold,
or so the story is told.

And this one, from The Paris Review (Summer 2006, #177):

The Old Soldiers
When I came out of my study, Ginny was standing there with
wet hair. “Are you going to town today?” she asked me. “I wasn’t
planning on it,” I said. “Oh, never mind,” she said. “What is it?”
I said. “I need some stuff for my allergies, but I can get it
tomorrow,” she said. “No, I can go. It’s no big deal. Just make
me a list,” I said. Ginny had to be at a planning session for the
League of Women Voters. I went back to my study to line up
several dozen lead soldiers on my desk. They were expensive antique
specimens I had saved since childhood. When I had them all lined up
the way I wanted them, I knocked them all down. Ginny shouted, “Are
you alright?” “It’s nothing, just a small accident,” I shouted back.
She said goodbye and left me the list on the counter. I made myself
a bologna sandwich and sat staring at the list. It all sounded like
stuff that could kill you. But if it could also stop your nose from
dripping and your eyes from running, then good. I walked back and
stood at the door to my study: all dead. Then I put on my jacket
and drove into town, which was crowded and bustling for some reason.
I found my secret parking space at back of the deli. In the drugstore
I roamed the aisles until I found the section devoted to allergies.
There seemed to be hundreds of products making great claims, all with
dire warnings: dizziness, fainting, nausea, etcetera. I felt myself
getting sick just standing there. Finally I found everything Ginny
needed. It was really quite expensive. It wiped out all the cash
I had. When I stepped outside, I saw a mob had gathered in the park.
I asked a woman standing next to me, “What’s going on?” “They’re
protesting,” she said. “Protesting what?” I said. “Just protesting.
You don’t need to have a special cause anymore. In fact that’s now
thought to be kind of quaint and old-fashioned. I do think it’s an
improvement, don’t you?” she said. “I always miss the old ways, until
they come back to haunt you,” I said. She moved away from me, as if
from a bad aroma. The police were moving in on the mob, nightsticks
at the ready. I heard one of them say, “What is this about?” The other
one answered, “Spoiled brats don’t know what to do with their Saturdays.”
Finally I made it to my car behind the deli, and it had a ticket on
it. This made me sad. There had been a flaw in my otherwise perfect
mission. I drove home and lined up the medicines on the counter.
I hoped Ginny wouldn’t faint and throw up, fall down the steps, and
crack her head open. I walked into my study and the first thing
I noticed was that all the soldiers were standing up. I was
certain I had knocked them down. Ginny had left the house. No
one was here but me. I didn’t like thinking of the possibilities.
Nonetheless, I walked from room to room, slowly, quietly, glancing
at every item carefully. Everything seemed to be normal, undisturbed,
leaving only the uprighted soldiers unexplained. I could just be
losing my mind. That was a simple explanation. Yes, that was it.
Unless the soldiers righted themselves. They are old and have experienced
thousands of battles. Maybe they’ve learned a thing or two. I
entered my study and sat down at my desk. With a sweeping gesture
I knocked them all against the wall, breaking several bayonets
and a leg or two. I sat there solemnly contemplating my deed.
Ginny wouldn’t be home for three hours. That seemed like a very
long time. I went into the living room and waited for them to regroup.
I had a feeling this was going to be a fight to the death, but still
I was surprisingly calm.

In closing, a little irreverence never hurts; in fact, it often helps:

Goodtime Jesus
Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dream-
ing so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it?
A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled
back, skin falling off. But he wasn't afraid of that. It was a beau-
tiful day. How 'bout some coffee? Don't mind if I do. Take a little
ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.

~~ Rest in Peace James Tate ~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~ More Chariton Photos from Jay Beets ~
Looking North, August 2015

Shadows on the Chariton, August 2015

A Rocky Patch, May 2015

A Somewhat Bleaker Chariton, March 2015

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Monday, September 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com