Spring Bloom and Kenyon's Deterioration

Seaside Daisy







My mind is surprisingly blank this morning. It's another beautiful day; the weather of late has been sunny and cool, what we expect of the coast. The wildflowers have not yet peaked but cow parsnip is already blooming in its delicate parasols wide as a hand. Scotch broom lines the roadsides; the daffodils are over but wild irises still bloom, along with calla lilies. The wild rhododendron, rhododendron macrophyllum, is blooming beneath the redwoods as well. There are over 10,000 cultivars or subspecies of rhododendron, but this variety is our natural one. Thrift and ice plant color the headlands, with blue-eyed grass and seaside daisies. The yellow mats of first-steps-to-spring have faded. Golden poppies are everywhere. Blue blossom bushes have peaked but it seems the gorse never stops blooming. I could go on and on, just as the wildflowers do here, as our spring color has yet to crescendo.

Kathleen cries about our old dog, Kenyon, nearly every day. Last night she wept about him. "It's not long," she said. He shows symptoms of diabetes now, has cataracts and can barely hear. A neighbor joked with Kathleen: "Now Kenyon needs a hearing-ear dog." What's amazing is that when we take him to Big River Beach, he can still see the plastic bottle thrown on the water and swims like a champion to fetch it. It's in swimming he looks most like himself. When he comes home, however, he lies immobile for hours. He no longer makes it up the stairs at night to sleep near Kathleen. Sometimes when she comes home he doesn't even get up. He has good and bad days. I don't think he's suffering much; his hips hurt when he rises, and his left front leg has bothered him for over a year; he's licked it until the fur has turned from gold to red. His appetite is still good, although one expects that in diabetes. Given his overall condition, we don't think it's important to undertake the treatment of his presumed diabetes as long as he can eat and drink and eliminate and exercise.

The grief Kathleen feels at Kenyon's slow demise is like any grief at the deterioration of a loved one. What she sees and what she remembers of him are disparate, making the grief palpable while he is still with us. I feel a similar phenomenon, though by no means tragic, when I look at my grown children and think of them as little girls, mourning the children I lost. But they are not deteriorating before my eyes as Kenyon is.

I said to Kathleen: "Why must the ones we love linger? Why can't they all simply die in the prime of life?" Alas, nature is not that efficient. Yet our capacity to remember those we love as they were helps sustain us when they no longer resemble themselves except in outward form.

As for poetry, I have none. I feel there is none in me. I also feel there is a glass ceiling I will never break through; I won't break into Poetry or The Paris Review or The Kenyon Review or The We Look Down Our Nose at You, You Poor Slob! Review. I think I need to take up something else in earnest.

I performed music at a wine-tasting party the other night and was well received. I enjoy prose and would like to write more fiction. The best fiction can be as magical as poetry.

What fascinates me about poetry is its magic, and I feel no magic--indeed, in reading others see little magic as well. It seems the entire literary world is being swallowed up by "creative non-fiction." Since life is a fiction, this seems silly to me. It is a specious division at best. Fiction better represents our spiritual and emotional lives, I think, than fact. Now they are becoming so intermixed is seems not to matter.

I'll save my wandering through a herd of wild Roosevelt Elk on the Lost Coast for another post.


Elegiacally,

CE

Plantwatching vs. Birdwatching and Jane Hirschfield's "After"

I'm sitting here after a day of my brother-in-law's birdwatching while I plantwatched. He saw a Hutton's Vireo today. I saw Thrift and Blue-eyed Grass. In our parallel pursuits I praised him for his level of difficulty. Birds move but plant's don't. Richard has to wait on birds but plants wait on me.

I have often thought I may like plants better than animals or humans. (I suppose man's inplantimity to man has spurred me to it.) And animals you can groom, but you just can't prune. You can have a bigger impact on a plant's life than anything else I know. Feed it, prune it, shape it, make a topiary of it, hybridize, create a new cultivar with your name on a subspecies's tag--I mean, it would take much longer for me to breed a "Craig's Hound" than graft a fruting branch on a rootstock. And thinking of my doctoring years, I can't tell you how much easier plants are than patients. Plants can't disobey your orders.

I've been reading through Jane Hirschfield's After, a lovely book in which her diction becomes simpler with no loss of substance. I highly recommend it. Her "Assays" poems are particularly good, like "Envy: An Assay," "Termites: An Assay," and especially "Ah: An Assay."


Ah: An Assay

When the Greek gods would dip into the clothing and bodies of humans, it was not always as it appeared--not always, that is, for seduction, nor to test the warmth of welcome given to strangers. The sex--like the sudden unveiling and recognition--was not without pleasure. But later, they would remember: "The barley soup offered one night in the village of _____, its wild marjoram, scent of scorched iron, and carrots." "Ah!, and the ones who turned away from us, how their eyes would narrow and wrinkle the tops of their noses." "The barnyard odors." "And afterward, sleep in that salt-scent, close by their manure hoards and feathers." "Sleep itself!" "Ah!"

For this soft "ah!", immortals entered the world of bodies.


Such a great idea, walking in the shoes of gods. I'm not a fan of prose poems but I'm slowly being won over--about two decades after they became permanently accepted as a genre.

For those of you who think I'm just spinning my wheels, I presently have twenty poetry submissions pending to magazines that pay something. Some are big names (beyond my wildest dreams) but hey, just mail the stuff. Persistence is more important than talent. No one will discover you if you don't promote yourself. The world is not a merit system; it's connections, promotion, persistence, and a little talent that counts--not a lot. Just think Robert Creeley and Britney Spears. (I can't decide who of the two is less talented.)

I'm happy the NBA playoffs have begun, especially watching our local Warriors beat the number one team, Dallas, in their first game. For Christmas I got a subscription to NBA TV, so I don't have to miss anything. Tonight its the Lakers vs. the Suns and the Warriors vs. the Mavs. And don't miss Charles Barkley on TNT, truly the funniest Hall-of-Famer in the history of basketball, a gifted clown who can laugh at himself as much as he criticizes others. A national treasure (despite his ascending the stands in his playing days to spit on a fan, or his numerous bar brawls which he invariably won). He has displaced Ted Turner as "The Mouth of the South."

I will leave you here. Do stay in touch.


Thine in Truth and Art,

CE

unrated

Surviving the Abalone Hunt, or It Takes Spine to Hunt the Spineless

After three days of vowing to get up early in search of abalone, I finally succeeded today, probably because the height of the minus tide (forgive the oxymoron) occurred at 9:30 AM, a more civilized hour for a nocturnally tippling artist.

Unlike the other abalone pickers and divers, sheathed in wet suits, I went in some tropical L. L. Bean pants and old tennis shoes, a short-sleeved shirt and nylon shell. I had to walk to the cliffs them scramble down to a cove at Glass Beach, my chosen hunting ground.
Glass Beach used to be a dump but was washed clean by the waves. One unexpected effect of this process is that the beach gravel, in some places, is nearly fifty percent polished beach glass. I've blogged about my history of collecting beach glass and how discovering the riches at Glass Beach cheapened my hard-won collection from down south. (See "Beach Glass and Glass Beach" in the archives for March 2006.)

On to the story...

After passing the glittering gravel of the cove, I scrambled over rocks and slippery seaweed, and through pools as deep as my thighs in search of the elusive red abalone. Right away I slipped and fell twice on some particularly slimy rocks, wetting my ass in the process. Given the condition of my back, this was hardly propitious, but I knew the pain wouldn't hit me massively until later, so I continued on without falling another time, keeping my feet in the pools and channels rather than risking the rocks. If the rocks had to be negotiated I found the sea grass offered the best footing.

I found four abalone in hidden clefts, often shared by a large invertebrate with a leathery orange hide, rectangular, maybe three by eight inches. I don't know what it was, but it seemed a marker for abalone.

Unfortunately, none of the abalone I found were a legal seven inches; the closest was six-and-a-half. But unlike my last depressive scramble through the scrotum-shrinking water and fatal slime, this was a definite moral victory, if not one for the dinner table. I found abalone and from now on I know what to look for!

What most amazed me in this whole process was how time warped. The intensity of concentration required to keep my balance in my old Nikes through and over the rough, slick terrain, compressed time, for when I returned to the car, I thought two hours must have passed; instead, less than an hour had. I couldn't believe it; I thought I'd bumped my watch on the rocks somehow, but the car clock confirmed it. I conclude that extreme concentration a survival situation requires tends to lengthen time, just as in a car accident when time seems suspended.

When I returned to Kathleen like a wharf rat washed up on a piling, I brought her a copy of today's paper, whose front page story detailed the deaths of three abalone hunters on our local coast in the last week. "I'm glad I read this after you returned," she said. Per usual, given my reckless history, I violated the very first safety rule for abalone hunting: never go alone. Obviously I need more invertebrate-seeking friends. But where shall I find them? It takes spine to hunt the spineless.

My string of poetry rejections continues; I recently heard from Ploughshares that I didn't make the grade. They've rejected me before. There must be a better verb than "reject." To pass over? Not to include? Regretfully return? (Actually I prefer "rejection." Why sugar-coat failure?)

Meanwhile I am happy to report than another former student of mine, Teresa White, has a new book of poems out, with an endorsement from no less than Billy Collins. I just got my copy today, Gardenias for a Beast. The link above lists the book.

This is the fourth student of mine who's published a book after taking my poetry course, though Teresa was the only one to have published a book before the course as well.

Perhaps I am a better teacher than a poet. Still, with regard to my present shunning by poetry editors, I really think it is more a matter of style. I don't write many open inductive poems. (See "Inductive, Deductive, Open and Closed Poetics" in the March 2007 archives.) My poems, however concrete, tend ultimately toward the philosophical, a not very popular direction in these times. I nevertheless continue to send out submissions. Poetry may give up on me but I can't give up on poetry.

As for my mood, I continue to have a low-level depression beneath my facade of activity and participation in life. Thus in current clinical parlance, my depression is not in remission but only partially treated. Still that's a hell of a lot better than being seriously depressed.


Thine at 1 Kilorat,

CE

Pollywogs and Proust

Sam Rasnake tagged me to list five poetry collections off the beaten path that ought to be read, in my opinion.

Unfortunately, I only take time to read established poets, eschewing current minor ones, unless I have a book review to do, as in the most recent book by Leonard Gontarek, a little-known poet from Philadelphia, Deja Vu Diner.

I can mention some poets I think presently neglected: Richard Wilbur, Philip Larkin, Howard Moss and Randall Jarrell (sp. suspect on two of these). Many of their lesser contemporaries get more attention, IMHO.

Today I went birding with my brother-in-law, Richard, who's visiting from NY. In exchange I bored him with native botany, at which I am becoming more proficient. He saw a pair of Bushtits, which he had only seen once before on the East Coast, whereupon I said: "Make up your mind. Did you see bush or tits?" Apparently it was both, but that, in my experience, requires a wide angle lens.

Cheap puns keep me going.

I was able to show Richard the Bush Monkey Flower, the Bull Thistle and the Scotch Broom, so I got my own Freudian revenge on his brag through the plant world.

I, too, am sad that Kurt Vonnegut died. He meant much to me and my middle daughter. (Nice to chain-smoke and survive until 80; longevity has much more to do with attitude, I think, than health habits, judging from my patients and anecdotal evidence. "Lies, damned lies, and statistics.")

Richard woke me at 8 AM this morning, apparently not knowing that most poets are not morning people, also interrupting my dream of a gourmet dinner where Kathleen had just passed me a taste of her fish to accompany my exotic soup--but Richard woke me before I could taste either.

Last night a friend gave me "liver tea" and I became very tired and Kathleen said my breath smelled of ketones. I'm wondering now whether that strange potion began a detox in me, given that I drink, I like to drink, and I likely drink more than I "should" (see Vonnegut, above). In Mendocino you never know what eye of newt and wing of bat the warlocks may be grinding into your tea. I'll have to ask my friend what the hell that was. The tea even tasted like liver.

While Richard was birding on our walk today I spent a long time staring into a stagnant pool covered with pond scum--or glisteningly beautiful green algae, if you prefer--watching pollywogs cavort. Some had grown hind legs already, assuming a square morphology near frog-like. Others were still tiny and looked like motile black sperm. I also saw a small brown spider skittering over the drier algae and a strange fly pursuing it. There were short-legged water striders as well. With the birding the binoculars Richard lent me it was amazing what I could see in the pond, though I'm sure stagnant pond gazing must be considered slumming by birders, especially since birding is the new yuppie craze out here.

Ah, all this trivia in so short a missive.

I'm almost halfway through Madam Bovary, and Flaubert is a poet. Unfortunately, he is not the best author of character, as Madame Bovary, so far, has developed little, and there are many stock characters. The best-develped so far is the druggist, Monsieur Ome'. I think Flaubert's prose presages Proust. Which reminds me of that great movie I highly recommend, "Little Miss Sunshine."

My back hurts too much to continue writing, even leaning far back with the laptop on my lap.

(Anon's comment from yesterday was sure an ego boost; thanks for that.)


Thine in Pond Slime,

CE

Ducks, Submissions and Heaney

My neighbor discovered one duck on his roof between the TV and wireless satellites. I don't know if the duck had a Blackberry and was wired in, but he soon disappeared from that roost as well. The bowl of feed and hard-boiled egg the duck lady assured me he loved to eat went untouched. The duck has not returned; his brother never did.

Live and learn, but I won't be raising ducks anytime soon again here.

The story of the Good Friday Elephant that LKD posted in yesterday's comments was much worse.

I've noticed that since my depression improved, fewer and fewer folks seem to be coming to the site. Mental illness is much more interesting than poetry, I suppose, though often the two are not very far apart. Or maybe there are people out there who actually care about me, so when I'm doing well they are less likely to stop by.

Right now I'm in a holding pattern emotionally. I almost cried yesterday afternoon while fishing, but I think there was a reason--Kathleen was sad over her son's birthday, he being in Mexico; I was sad at being rejected by Pedestal Magazine (again), though they have published me in the past, and I was also sad that my youngest daughter (18) doesn't communicate with me, despite the fact I opened up a My Space site just to message her (she doesn't return my calls.) Teenagers. Kathleen says I should be angry about it but I can't be angry with my baby. Just sad she doesn't call.

But on another day when my mood was more upbeat these things would not have brought me near tears. It's the soil, not the seeds.

Today I may have to testify against our former neighbors about their thievery, as I saw the stolen items in their house and told a detective about it when questioned. It's a long drive on treacherous roads to the county courthouse, but I'll do my duty if they call me. I'm on hold. They hoped to choose a jury this morning and begin with testimony this afternoon. Fat chance, I say. Then I'm from LA. Maybe small towns get it done more quickly?

I really have not have good luck with my poetry submissions of late. In fact, I've never had worse luck. I think the main issue is style, not skill. Editors seem to favor open, inductive poems, and I write more deductive poems, some of them closed. To increase my publication rate, which used to be quite high, I think I'm going to have to change my style to suit the times: regurgitate an actual experience with as many particulars as possible in as short a space as possible, cut it into lines, and add a feeling or two for spice and authenticity.

I can't do it. I mean, I can do it, I find it rather easy--but it is not my idea of what is best. I've been reading Seamus Heaney, and although he is not my favorite poet, I admire his skill, and he writes many deductive poems and his intellectual content is usually satisfying. He is not dominated by recounting unfettered experience. I don't know how he'd ever get into the New Yorker if he weren't a Nobel Laureate. His style is all wrong for them. But everyone knows the NY is a "label whore."

I wanted to post another poem on ordinariness today, but I have so few and could not find another that qualified--I mean, in poetry, we usually seek the exceptional. Even if the experience seems ordinary, we tend to focus on the exceptional part. Instead I offer an apostrophe to editors who pass over my poetry. The poets who browse these pages should readily identify.


To the Giants

I see you in the exalted journals,
astonished by your concrete subjects,
startling imagery and veiled conclusions.
Only you can do this. Others try
to cage what has to soar. You tie
one-pound-test to it and set it free
When the line breaks you have a poem.
I’ve seen you write four hundred lines
on roasted meat, a hundred on zucchinis.
You can make poetry out of a dishcloth.

I sent my work to one of you once.
Your secretary wrote me: "Mr. S-
no longer comments on others' work
because of his busy schedule."
I thought your next book sucked.
I swear the two events were not related.

Maybe you remember
how it was before you "made it?"
I thought if I could slide one poem
beneath your discriminating nose
I'd have a chance. Instead I drop
rectangular white prayers in mailboxes
and change commemoratives for luck.
When the rejection slips arrive
I file them under "What the editors missed."
They read the same. say, invariably:
"We regret your work does not suit
our publication’s needs at this time."
As if! As if they had needs!
As if it were a matter of timing!

I dream of an editor
in a blue paisley suit who likes martinis
rummaging through the slush pile.
She finds my poem about the possum.
Her cat-eye glasses slip her bridge,
eyes squint like commas. Another martini
and she thinks "Why not?" until the Glucks,
Merwins and Ashberys start levitating
from her in-box to divide
the sorcerers from the apprentices.

"I have so little time," she thinks,
"and this is not the time for risks—
subscriptions are static, the board is short
of funds, besides, even angstrom-thin pages
could not accommodate all the deserving.
Prides already war over my bleached savannas.
If another craves entrance, let him
bring rains like Elijah, make the ink run."


(Published in Afternoon, Tintern Abbey, and Poetry Superhighway)


At Two Kilobats,

CE

Ducks and Slugs

Kathleen discovered a woman who was giving away eight-week-old ducks, and having a garden enclosed by a deer fence, I thought I could keep them to control pests. So I took two. The duck lady delivered them, gave me a book on raising ducks and some feed. I released them in the garden. Within a minute they had waddled down the slope and out through the squares in the deer fence, which I thought would be too narrow for them to escape through. Not. I heard them in the bushes but they wouldn't come out.

Later they came up the stairs on the side of the garden, and I tried to herd them back into their proper digs. This scared them and they fled down and away into the bushes again. I fear they have become raccoon bait. Clearly I must wrap chicken wire around the deer fence should I wish to entertain quackers again. Call me "a duck farmer for a day."

As for pests in the redwoods, you haven't lived until you've seen a banana slug.



I once picked one up with my bare hand. It took six washings to begin to get the feeling of slime off my fingers. The Pacific Giant Salamander eats them. I have a friend who saw a salamander actually stalking a slug. It was just like a cheetah on a zebra, or so it seems to us redwood dwellers who are used to watching trees grow.



But we do have bears, bobcats, mountain lions, weasels, foxes, raccoons, and no poisonous snakes. And you say, "You live in California?" Yes. Just don't tell anyone.

Ducks and slugs certainly qualify as ordinary. Let's see if I can find another ordinary poem:


Nothing to Say

I have nothing needful to say,
no comment on the glittering bay
or the dark, snow-topped wall
of the San Gabriels.

Things used to be pulled from me,
uprooted like weeds from a garden.
I let the weeds bloom now.

The red-throated bird
that lives in my chipped balcony light
sings for a mate I have never seen.

I let my words run like watercolors.
Time runs only forward.
Why should art be different?
Here is the last line.


--CE

More on Ordinary

Yesterday I happened upon a theme, the ordinary. Here's another poem on that theme, published in 2 River View as "They Were Enough":


The Anonymous

I slept with the anonymous dead
in mass graves,
quick-lime for blankets,
loose earth above,
and drilled a hole up
so light could tickle their bones,
but they didn't care.

So I sat with them,
those who never held a microphone
or received a medal,
whose chief recognition
was a birthday,
until I learned their secret:
They were enough,
in themselves, to matter.


Thine in Ordinariness,

CE

Ordinary

I think today's poem was inspired by yesterday's blog about Richard Ford's "Existence Period."


Ordinary

I never thought I’d be so ordinary--
another acorn or a worker ant,
another paper thrown onto the driveway
with the same weak, pink rubber band.

Are you ordinary, too?
Without a medal or a Guinness record,
unable to juggle more
than two balls at a time?

I make good omelets.
My secret is the microwave.
I cast lures well using a spinning reel
but have never learned to fly fish.
(That's what high class fishermen do.)

I glory in the ordinary! And why not?
What pumps up most of us beyond our fellows
is just the stuffing of tires with excess air.

It is enough for me to sweep the porch,
answer my e-mails, sometimes get drunk.
(OK—-get drunk more than that.)


Thine as ever,

CE

Richard Ford's "Existence Period"

After the slew of comments provoked by my last post, I am once again free of public opinion. My private opinion of myself, it goes without saying, is too private to publicize. Suffice it to say that the less I think about myself the better I feel. Thus to have an opinion of myself is dangerous and can be a symptom of depression.

Speaking of mental illness, I was happy to read that 39% of Americans admit to hearing voices--mainly inside their heads, I assume, the article wasn't clear--it brings my past psychoses and present mind closer to the middle of the Bell curve.

I just read Richard Ford's "Independence Day" for the first time and admired his concept of "The Existence Period," though I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the book, both its substance and style, just as I was by the culture and credo of the mid-nineties when it was published, when we became preoccupied as a nation with a stain on a blue dress. I remember a quote from one of Clinton's staffers back then: "Did she have big hair? Big tits? Oh no!" The whole country seemed a part of the Seinfeld Show back then.

As for Don Imus and his "nappy-headed hos," The real obscenity is our Captain Ahab's belief in pursuing the white whale of a feudal society with high tech weapons. It would take half a million troops to govern Iraq, and that would be an uneasy peace at best. Bosnia may be the only example of a war mainly quelled by air power. Ground troops are what are always needed. What I find hard to believe is that with our volunteer army we can't even deploy 500,000 troops--roughly the number of Americans who died in WW II. In any case, a "surge" is a ridiculous obscenity. Forget Imus. The real obscenities come from the administration's mouth. What I can't fathom is how John McCain can be so craven now, torpedoing any chance of a nomination, hoping for the Bush core support. "Toadies for president"--kiss up to the money. Obama raised 25 million by not kissing up, though he is extremely gracious. But I digress--what a blog is for, of course.

I find myself sometimes going to other literary blogs and bagging on poems by the famous, getting angry about nothing, as in the case of Adrienne Rich at Sam Rasnake's blog. Afterwards I have regrets, but I'm too ashamed to return to my post and try to erase it, especially if the blogger has already commented on it. Mea culpa. I know better than to go with my first gut response, but sometimes I lose that caution and wade in with mortars. I attack before I bethink. I want to be more reasonable and circumspect, but I fear it is my nature to jump on the horse before offering it an apple.

One line repeated twice in "Independence Day": "It was like a metaphor that stood for something else."

Back to that book. Having recently been reading Chekhov and Bellow and O'Connor, the superficial, Seinfeld-like self involvement of Frank Bascombe is so hard to imagine deserving of 400+ pages when compared to things that really matter. Sure, there is the dark background of a son who died and a painful divorce, but the real answer for Frank is not in these things but in the mild discipline of real estate. He is not lost; he is satisfied to tread water. The birth of new passion implied at the book's ending is not sufficient to overcome the ennui of the first 400 pages. But this is what passes for importance nowadays, for realism, for relevance. And I found his prose style at times sloppy and certainly choppy.

One of those books I got through because it was considered important, when in fact its importance is that it glorifies what is not important.

Here's to poor Frank Bascombe; I'm glad there's passion in my life, of which my disdain for the Bush administration is but a part.

As to mood, I'm still fragile, but not fragile enough to belabor it. Still, struggling with depression is not an "Existence Period;" it is a life-and-death battle, trying to come out of what Coleridge called "life-in-death and death-in-life." No one wants to be a ghost suspended between pole and tropic.


Thine,

CE

Easter 2000

I'm not at home, but I found this on the web for an Easter poem. Admittedly it isn't a very happy poem, but it is an honest poem about too early a conversion and the psychological damage that ensued from that adoption of absolutes while still a teen. Published in Poets' Canvas.


Easter 2000

In Hyperion Dan Simmons invents the Shrike,
a monster of blades and rays outside of time.
All that approach are slain, yet I find him
less fearful than Jehovah, and as for Christ,
I am ashamed. What should I say?
"Forgive, O Lord the way I wound my fellows,
calling my black humor a rubber knife?"
"Forgive my jealousy of you
who renders me forever second-born?"

At sixteen, head emptied by acid,
I didn't feel joy but dread
electrify my sternum when converted.
The pimpled corpse God claimed
inside that yearbook picture
would never rise. A virgin until married,
I gave triple tithes while a poor student—
what does a child know?

Your unimaginable grace was just that.
I labored not in faith but out of fear,
fear of missing your voice—
for which I paid in voices multiplied,
none of them yours.

I expect no better of the dead—
and so you say we are born—
but when my world was young
you made me old, a dwarf oak
riddled with scars and squirrel holes.
This is no brag but what the Pentecostal
whirlwind reaped of me, and little enough it is.
Mercy is beyond me. Lent may take
cigarettes or chocolate but not my blood—
besides, mine isn't magic.


Have a joyous Easter in any case. When it comes to an example of a happy faith, I'm not much better than Kierkegaard.

CE

Poetic Archaeology; Kilobats

God, what a nuisance! I've been trying to sort my publications, some indexed by the names of journals, some by the titles of individual pieces, and some by other titles for the same pieces. Using Google and other sources, I have managed to discover, so far, the following journals either without a website or without archives:

Apples and Oranges
A Writer’s Choice
Adirondack Review
Artemis
Avalon
Beauty for Ashes
Blue Moon Review
Brownflower
Burn
Conspire
Disclosures
Dust on My Palms
EZ Books
Free Cuisenart
Gravity
Horsethief’s Journal
Lid
Mefisto
Muse Apprentice Guild
Olympus
Poetry Cafe
Poetry Magazine (online journal, not the big one)
Poetry Now
Poetry Tonight
Recursive Angel
Samsara
Savoy
Serpentine
Shallow End
Slumgullion
Spoken Word
Susquehanna Review
Tintern Abbey
Wired Heart
World Poetry
Writer’s Hood
Ze Books
Zuzu’s Petals

If I am in error about any of these, I would appreciate a note from readers or their scattered connections on the literary Internet.

There are also those journals who list me in their archives as a contributor, but strangely, have no record of or links to my poems--often right next to another poet whose links are still good. I assume this is random and not personal, though I have made some enemies in my faux career.

Anyway, my back hurts terribly from sitting despite the new pain medication, even though I did go easy at the gym yesterday. Since my recent cold I've put at least ten pounds back on from not exercising regularly, then Kathleen and I also became derelict re: our low carb high protein diet.

Three steps forward and four steps back.

Is it discouraging to find so much of your work erased from the net forever? Here's an advantage: when there is no record of a work I consider it unpublished and open for submission again, a liberty I don't take with print--which may appear inconsistent until you realize that with print publications I can still hold the evidence in my greedy little narcissistic hand. Where all evidence is erased, can anything have happened?

Speaking of narcissism, Kathleen and I watched the original "Sunset Boulevard" last night, and Kathleen threatened to fall asleep before the end, whereupon I threatened her with this: "You can never call me narcissistic again if you don't finish this movie." I mean, c'mon--compared to Norma Desmond even poets are normal. (Such a comparison does stretch the (Marvin) Bell curve.)

Ah, so little to say, so much to write. We'll be house sitting for my sister this weekend in the lovely SF suburb of Burlingame, while she goes south to check out the alma mater of my middle daughter and myself, UCLA. My sister's only daughter is making the college tour now, and from what I understand, likely has her choice of most, and money is no object thanks to the prudent planning of her parents. I had to put myself through college and medical school, which includes loans, of course. And I couldn't help my one college graduate daughter much monetarily, though some; mostly I provided emotional support and medical expertise--I'm still very proud that she, a bipolar I, got through UCLA in four years--a miracle. She has guts and determination, which can sometimes appear as an extreme and brittle stubbornness.

Enough about family. Like photos from a wallet, all that patter is a bore, isn't it? Here's a photo of my grandson:




I'm in a mixed state--fragile and sort of +2 and -2 at the same time--cried on the treadmill yesterday, have been anxious--but while I'm working I naturally feel better as I am not thinking about myself even if I'm writing about myself, which writers understand.

What's a kilorat and a kilobunny at the same time?

Put me at two kilobats.


Thine,

CE

Love Poem; Note on Depression

I have found that more traditional love poems are frowned upon by most editors, that anti-love poems are preferred nowadays. When I say "traditional," I do not mean maudlin or derivative, rather something from the heart that respects line breaks and rhythm. I think rhythm very important in a love poem, for obvious reasons, and I don't mean that as a Freudian aside.

It seems that when I'm not depressed, I blog about literature or post poetry, and when depressed, I write about myself. Likely whatever readership I have alternates between those who come here to read about mood disorders and those who come for poetry. When I am not depressed, my concerns involve others and the world. When depressed, I am absolutely cut off from the world and exiled to the bell jar of which Sylvia Plath wrote so eloquently, when this blog becomes a method for survival.

In general, however, depression is an aberrant state for me, so the necessity for posting about it, I hope, will not return for many years after this last tortuous year, except in brief dips. But with this unpredictable disease, one never knows. I'm still feeling fragile. Kathleen is my steadying force.

Should I turn manic, however, I usually end up in jail, so I would have to blog about that after the fact. ;-)

I disobey my own rule in posting this love poem the same day I wrote it. I asked Kathleen if I should, and she said, "Go ahead. Make the other women jealous." In as it's addressed to her, she is the last one to be relied upon as a critic. But not to follow her advice is a risk I'm unwilling to take at this point in my recovery.

Have a wonderful day,

CE.



Aubade II

We wake to the alarm, I turn
and palm your breasts, softer than tulip petals,
and feel your nipples straighten in response
before your breathing heaves you back to sleep
like cargo meant for heaven. I stay awake, gently
compress your breasts each time you must inhale.

Your moon fits in the hollow of my groin,
your thighs repeat my thighs, my knees
fit in the hollows of your knees.
I would envelop you like a shell around a seed
and let my body break to further yours:
Scatter me beneath the walnut tree.

I watch the sunlight shafting through the firs,
I hear our old dog rearrange himself
on his brown blanket and green pillow.
He will not rise until you rise,
I will not leave your body until you wake.
We are both prisoners of our adoration;
we cannot move until you speak.




.

Final Versions?

Below are two poems that have suffered multiple rejections, now transformed by the comments other writers posted here to help me. Having implemented most of the suggestions, I went back and changed them to my liking.

Given the general unimportance of poetry, and my endless fussing with an art that has such a small following, I feel like apologizing for putting the reader through this--if indeed, there are any readers left. I promise my next post will be scintillating, titillating and positively addictive. Let's put this poetry thing aside for now, though I remain grateful for all the comments--while knowing I shall carry my silly poetic perfectionism to my grave.


Chico Creek

(For my late quadriplegic student, Jill)

Standing on the footbridge
beneath the huge black oaks
I thought of how trees
grow gigantic by a river,
though I never knew oaks
could bear so much water.

Water is what I remember.
Peering down, my eyes
were forced to choose between
the rounded bottom stones
trailing green algae
and the surface
twisting like Saran wrap.
One can’t see both--
just as self-pity
makes laughter impossible.



Stolen

Something is missing,
something important:
not your wallet or keys
or the knowledge of whether
the burner was left on
or the fan left running
near your dog's silken paws,
but as if the slightest amperage
had been siphoned from your body
without your notice.

I don’t know when
or how you were diminished
but your head no longer fits
the bronze helmet of the colossus
you thought you were.


Revised per your comments,

CE

James Wright, "A Blessing;" Poem: "Frogs"

I haven't blogged in a while, obviously. Does this mean I've been busy? I don't know. I went on a peace march two weeks ago and read some anti-war poetry that first saw light here, "Men in Suits," and "Hail to the Chiefs"--two villanelles. I've been gardening, attending a gardening class, and suffering from an interminable cold that has now progressed into a sinus infection. I've been reading Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, O'Connor, James, Bellow, Aeschylus, Heaney, and Plath, to mention a few.

Kathleen and I went down to the Bay Area over the weekend to visit with my sibs and celebrate my youngest brother's birthday, although the birthday boy got himself into a pickle and couldn't come. So we toasted his absence. Kathleen had also knitted a beautiful shawl of cashmere and silk for my sister, and it was roundly admired and I hope, coveted.

I've been contacted by an archaeologist in an adjoining county who happened upon my blog and who recommended both James and Franz Wright to me, and upon deeper acquaintance with their work, I am amazed and humbled. Here's one from James, father of Franz:


A Blessing

by James Wright


Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.


Poems this good make you wish you were this good. Luckily I have no poem about horses with which to compare this. And not entirely bereft, I had three poems and an essay recently accepted by Umbrella and a poem and essay accepted by Blue Fifth Review. They should be out this summer.

To stay on an animal theme, here's a poem of mine about frogs that was published in Tryst:

Frogs

Where are the frogs,
those wide-mouthed bassoons,
where have they gone?
Where the long-tongued
bass chucklers of the riverbed
with their resonating neck pouches,
where our amphibian tubas?
Gone, they are gone.

I have heard tree frogs,
their music ethereal as the sheen
of oil on a rain puddle,
but where are the ground frogs,
pond frogs, river frogs?
Their absence astounds me.

I have heard of the decline of frogs,
of mutant, two-headed frogs, of flaws
in the helical thread of their genome,
but no one can explain it.

Where have they gone?
I miss their croaking counterpoint
to the traffic of rapids and the blue jays' shriek.
I need their staccato didgeridoos
to balance the hypnotic sawing of insects.

The streams and rivers are hushed;
the herons have dropped their willow batons.
Waterfalls may thud like tympanies
but the orchestra can't be mended
without frogs. Where have they gone?
Did you hide them?


Thine at Kiloneutral,

CE

Freud and Yeats Have Male Enhancement Surgery

In reading a book review on "The First Man-Made Man, The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution," I came upon a curious reference to "Steinach surgery," something Freud had in 1926 and Yeats in 1934.

It was meant to rejuvenate a man sexually, and like the vasectomy it was, took all of fifteen minutes. It did nothing for Freud, but Yeats was convinced it had revived his poetic and sexual energy. Apparently Steinach's idea was that if you prevented the free flow of sperm from the testes, the hormone levels would respond and increase sexual performance and youthful energy.

In researching the Steinach operation on the Net, the first seven references were those irritating teases one finds more and more--"Here's the abstract of the article. Now if you only subscribe to the Journal of Gerontology, you can read the whole thing. Just give us your credit card number." Is it just me or has this mercenary marketing of information become more prevalent in the last five years? It seemed I used to be able to reference arcane information more easily without these barriers, this "expert's tax."

Anyway, back to the story. (Due to a crash I now have lost the source of this free information, though I know an Australian wrote it.)

"One April day in 1934, at the age of 69, William Butler Yeats entered the Harley Street clinic of an Australian sexologist, Norman Haire. Sunk into gloom, convinced that his inspiration and his sexual potency were decaying together, the poet had heard about an operation that promised to rejuvenate old men.

Although the procedure was called a Steinach operation (after its inventor, Eugen Steinach, a Viennese doctor), it was, in effect, a vasectomy. It took 15 minutes. From a scientific point of view, it shouldn't have worked. But Yeats, who had dreaded the effect of age on his virility since he was young, wanted so hard to believe in it that he was, mentally at least, given new energy. Six months later, he embarked on a close new friendship with a beautiful 27-year-old actress, Margot Ruddock. His late poetry - he lived and wrote until 1939 - burned with fresh fire, and some defensiveness. The Dublin papers started calling Yeats "the gland old man".

The poet wrote "The Spur," a four-line verse: "You think it horrible that lust and rage/Should dance attention upon my old age;/They were not such a plague when I was young;/What else have I to spur me into song?"

The Steinach operation didn't always renew its beneficiaries. Sigmund Freud had it done in 1926. He said it did nothing for him. Another Steinach patient, Albert Wilson, was so enthusiastic about the benefits of the operation that he booked the Albert Hall to deliver a lecture entitled How I Was Made Twenty Years Younger. On the eve of the lecture, he died."

Yeah, but he died younger.

Interesting how the pursuit of the fountain of youth affects men irrationally, despite their intelligence or scientific pretensions. The irony is particularly thick with Freud, who also believed the operation--though I don't know if this was a late justification--would prevent the recurrence of his oral cancers--although he didn't give up his cigars.

As a country singer once said: "He knew better, he just couldn't do better."

As for yesterday's draft of the "Rapunzel" poem, I agree with the critic who pointed out that the second part was livelier than the first. And indeed, I now think that is the poem. The process of revision often becomes searching for the poem within the poem. Here's the new version:

Rapunzel

I’m sorry to say it, but "The World Trade Center?”--
Good target!--as if we owned the world!

It is this hubris that the world hates,
the blindness of a consumer-driven culture

of anti-culture, a whore's bed of merchandise.
There is no hegemony, Wolfowitz.

The dollar's fallen. Long live the Yen!
Come down, American, come down, Rapunzel.

Your hair is tangled with barbwire.
Your gown is made of Kevlar.

Apes swing on your braid;
The impotent Congress nods.

They will pull us out by the roots,
stain our tower with the blood of scalps.


Now I need to take my own advice and put this poem in a drawer for a month and then look at it again, see what needs to be done or undone--or admit it has no future and discard it. That's the hard part--"killing your darlings."


Thine in Steinach Solidarity (I haven't had the operation),

CE

Rapunzel: The process of a first draft

I thought today I might illustrate how a rant can become a poem. Normally yesterday's experiment would have been reformed into something more resembling a poem in what is called "a first draft." A first draft includes revisions, revisions which will likely be revised later in second and third drafts. The difficulty is in not squeezing the original feeling of a poem into a straitjacket so tight it fails to move the reader, losing all spontaneity and connection. A technically great poem is just that; technically great, but essentially forgettable if all the juice has been squeezed out of it. I have been especially guilty of over-revising in the past, though usually a poem that suffers that fate never had much of a future anyway. You can turn a sow's ear into a silk purse if you try hard enough, but the sow's ear is much more interesting. So here's a first draft:


Rapunzel


I

War is fractious, filled with dirty bombs.
We sell these bombs. Imagine!

"Do not be deceived, God is not mocked:
Whatever a man sows, he shall also reap."

We sow global discord in the name of peace,
praise slaughter in the name of stability.

We kill the innocent because
we cannot find the guilty.

How elusive our enemies have proven!
Wolves hidden in sniper’s robes.

Tragedy is loosed upon the world like a virus
and more than birds are dying and will die.


II

I’m sorry to say it, but "The World Trade Center?”--
Good target!--as if we owned the world!

It is this hubris that the world hates,
the blindness of a consumer-driven culture

of anti-culture, a whore's bed of merchandise.
There is no hegemony, Wolfowitz.

The dollar's fallen. Long live the Yen!
Come down, American, come down, Rapunzel.

Your hair is tangled with barbwire.
Your gown is made of Kevlar.

Apes swing on your braid;
The impotent Congress nods.

They will pull us out by the roots,
stain the tower with the blood of scalps.


Thine in truth and protest,

CE

(essentially kilorat neutral but still feeling sketchy underneath)

Anti-War Activity; Chinese Brush Experiment...

We participated in a peace march today. Monday we may participate in an illegal sit-in at our congressman's office. We are finding routes to oppose this insane occupation. Do not call it a war. Below, a Chinese Brush Experiment, a poem in which you can go forward and never back. Admittedly, more substantive than poetic. But it's what came out. I read a couple of anti-war poems at today's rally in Fort Bragg, villanelles posted here some time ago.


Retreat

All you who prize success above wisdom,
the lottery ticket over emptying the bedpan
of your ailing grandmother,
the one who taught you origami--

Oh. it's all too much to ask now,
half of our taxes for the military,
happy consumers irritated by requests
for funds to fight our unintentional genocide,

Poetry should have more metaphor and music
but war is fractious and filled with dirty bombs
whose exploding shrapnel embeds itself
in breasts, faces, eyes, asses, democratically.

We sell these bombs. Imagine!
And spend 200 billion dollars a year on war
and another 800 billion maintaining the military,
us, a country with friendly neighbors and oceans for borders.

I am tired of telling the truth.
I am tired of saying the same words in different contexts:
"Do not be deceived, God is not mocked:
Whatever a man sows, he shall also reap."

We sow global discord in the name of peace.
We praise slaughter in the name of stability.
We kill the innocent because we cannot find the guilty.
How elusive our enemies have proven!

Snakes colored like fallen Baghdad bricks.
Wolves the color of snipers' robes.
Lions the color of dust in the streets.
Jackals below the radar of the righteous.

Tragedy is loosed like a virus
that reproduces for no reason,
no reason except to harm and propagate
the origin of the same mindless virus.

We ought to die. We ought to surrender
and tell the Arabs we were children,
we didn't understand the wisdom
of their past millennium.

They invented chess, discovered astronomy,
produced mosaic towers we can't reproduce,
conquered the clueless West and converted most
to a faith less hypocritical than Papism.

This is not a poem, just a diatribe.
The Middle East is beyond our wildest approximations
of logic or prediction, of peace or chaos.
We must surrender, we must depart.

We must embrace the wisdom of acceptance:
accept our idiocy in ever invading;
accept the meaningless sacrifice of our troops;
accept the great mistake of pride and fear

That drove us to attack, attack anything
remotely connected to the leveling
of our pride, "The World Trade Center"--
As if we owned the world!

As if our consumer-driven culture
were worth preserving, not a disease
driven by greed and advertising, a culture
of anti-culture, a whore's bed of merchandise.

Good-bye America, we tried
to liberate you from your hubristic vision.
There is no hegemony; the dollar's fallen.
Long live the Yen. Come down, Rapunzel:

Your hair is tangled with barbwire.
Your gown is made of Kevlar.
Apes swing on your braid; Congress nods
and passes the simian agenda; everyone is happy!


America, you grieve me.

CE

No one cares about dead Russians...

As I can see by all the comments. Here's Fyodor:



Here's Leo:



Here's the American reading public:




God, the truth hurts!

CE

More on Fyodor; Crib Sheet for Brothers K!

For those of you who never got through the book, I offer this poem as a summary:


Cliff Notes on The Brothers Karamazov

Dmitri, passion of the flesh; Ivan, first existentialist.
Alyosha: saintly protagonist, but more a neutral foil,
flat as a Eucharist. Body, soul, and spirit, in other words.

Smerdyakov: bastard half-brother, schizoid dandy,
epileptic son of the village idiot, Lizaveta,
whom Fyodor fucked on a drunken dare.
He later became his cook.
“He makes the best fish soup!”
Fyodor liked to say.

Fyodor: lecherous buffoon, proverbial garden party skunk
as in the scene he made at Father Zossima’s funeral.
Evil clown-- or is he evil? He is pure in a way,
purely offensive unapologetic hedonist narcissist,
lacking external reference save his pleasure;
"An insect!” Ivan calls him while despising
his own Karamazov nature.

Here: It’s all about three thousand rubles,
the sum Dmitri thinks his father owes him,
the sum Dmitri owes Katerina to save his honor,
the sum Fyodor offers Grushenka to stain her own—
(Katerina already calls her “That creature!”)

Fyodor never pays Dmitri nor does Dmitri pay Katerina,
nor does Grushenka ever whore for her reward.
Instead, Smerdyakov kills Fyodor
while blaming Ivan for complicity
based on some vaguely worded conversations.

I’ve studied these and Ivan is innocent
but half-believes in his own guilt;
then Ivan only half-believes
in anything, which is his suffering.

From his sickbed Smerdyakov confesses
to Ivan, producing from a sock the rubles
Fyodor intended for Grushenka.
Later he hangs himself.

Ivan brings the bloody currency to the trial,
the prosecution laughs: “He could have gotten them anywhere!”
Smerdyakov’s confession proves hearsay—
without brain fever Ivan would have anticipated this.

“Psychology is a double-edged sword,” the defense thunders
but it won't save poor Dmitri from conviction
because his former fiancée’, Katerina,
betrays him on the stand, fearing for Ivan.

Ivan recovers enough to plan Dmitri’s escape
by railroad; Alyosha concurs, telling Dmitri,
“Imprisonment is not the suffering meant for you.”

p.s. Grushenka never forgives Katerina—
I skipped Ilusha’s death scene (from tuberculosis)
and the dog that Kolya rescued whom Ilusha feared
he’d murdered by a method Smerdyakov
had taught him— (putting a needle in a scrap of food.)

p.p.s. It’s too big a book to fit into a poem,
in a book, even: eight hundred pages
of prostrations, sufferings, humiliations,
prostrations, forgivenesses and miracles--
the greatest being how an author can sustain
such fever pitch of feeling for so long,
leaving me drained on my fourth reading.

Afterword

Finally, I wonder if Father Zossima’s embarrassing decay
(some had expected his body not to stink after death)
was a prophecy of Lenin’s preservation.


This was published and de-published by August Highland's once ambitious M.A.G.


Have a Black Russian on me,

CE

Channeling Dostoevsky

(Just for fun.)


You, you, how dare you look down on me! My coat may be shabby and missing buttons; it does a better job of keeping out the rain than your fine silk umbrella, I assure you. I notice how you avert your eyes from me on the sidewalk, on the bridge, in cafés. It is easy to see how your feigned politeness only masks disgust. It would not become you to engage in conversation with such a shabby personage as myself, not that it would shame you, or damage your pride, but because it is not proper. I am a scrounging artist with an insolent servant I cannot afford in straitened quarters; you no doubt have a house on the hill or on the river and at least four servants. Perhaps you are having relations with one; perhaps you have dismissed two for becoming pregnant, handing them a little sack of rubles as compensation, knowing full well none will believe their tales— because on their one night out a week they must have been with sailors, or drunks, or others of the serving class with no self-control.

Your pocket watch chain may be gold, it may only be gilded. Your felt hat looks of good quality but is a little questionable around the edges. Your cravat? Ostentatious red silk. Cravats are cheap, of course. Your waistcoat looks in fine repair although your belly strains against it, a prosperous appearance if not refined. Your coat appears to be English tweed, certainly some sort of continental affectation, especially with those crude elbow patches. And the coat is not right for the cravat, which is certain. Which demands the question: Do you pick out your clothes or does your man? Obviously you do. Valets have better taste.

That you eschew boots in this thawing spring also proclaims your vanity; someone else will have to polish your brogues, but boots would not suit the gabardine slacks you affect. And is that an alligator belt? Again, your mismatched ensemble says more about you than fashion. You are bourgeois, an upper functionary perhaps, perhaps the last in a line of dwindling minor aristocrats with an income taken from the flesh of your serfs. You are not in the arts; doubtful in business, either, or you would have the sense to dress more tastefully. Had I your money I would certainly dress better than you; but I would rather have this ragged coat than your inelegant ensemble, however rich the material. You remind me of the “Emperor with No Clothes,” except it would be “The Emperor with Bad Clothes.”

As you smoke your cigarillo from an ivory holder, and gesture, world-weary to your better-dressed friends over a glass of vodka, you appear in command, a man among men, a man above the shabbiness I endure. But who’s to say how shabby you are inside? “One thing you can’t hide is when you’re crippled inside,” Lennoninsky wrote. Indeed, your subterfuges don’t fool me.

Your face is more indulgent than cruel, your cheeks soft and full, your moustache thick but not overweening, no need to hide your worsening teeth with a larger brush just yet; an early wattle on your neck that will come to swing with the years; the pomade on your thinning hair, the sensuous Mediterranean lips, the broad nose and the thin almond eyes recalling some Mongol ancestor, like your clothes, these features seem not to belong together, belying your outward, superficial, self-satisfied confidence!

I am wearing leather boots, the heels worn down but no holes as of yet; they manage to keep the rain out, though I am frequently footsore. No fancy shoes to hand waterlogged and scuffed over to a fawning servant. And though I have worn this, one of my two good shirts, for three days prior to this occasion tonight, and its cuffs are a little frayed, it is of good quality, a very fine wool, most likely a better quality once than you are wearing now. My stained beret, impractical for this weather, hangs on the rack. I took my hat off as I came in, a tradition you jauntily disrespect. And is the beret an affectation? No! By no means. It is a symbol by which I mock myself as an artist with little utility in this suffocating society of bores. I mock myself intentionally.

Have you ever mocked yourself? Have you ever looked in the mirror and beheld the essential evil behind your ingratiating smile? I doubt there has ever been a time in your life when you looked upon your reflection with anything save self-congratulation; such insight would be beyond you.

And yet you might represent a publishing house, a magazine, someone for whom I must scrape and bow to to eke out a living as an artist, someone not worth the last five thoughts from my brain. And if I met you in that relation, with these, my best clothes, you would certainly think to get the better of me and negotiate some scandalous payment for the sweat of my brain. You would not think me someone capable of bargaining over the quality of a piece; no, you would try to steal it from me, steal my thoughts and hope it improves your circulation, like some bug collector charging admission to his museum while adding a new bug. I am that bug, aren’t I?

How I despise you! How I despise the falsity of your pose, of everything it represents, half-measures, nods to liberalism, even Marxism, perhaps— no; that would be too daring and might make you slightly suspect even among those whom you call “friends,” no doubt old chums from the university who would abandon you if you fell out of society for your debts. I had to leave the university because of debts and become this creature you naturally avoid.

What if I were to walk up to your circle, right now, and begin talking as if I had been invited? I might talk of the recent architectural changes to Petersburg, or the price of pork rising above the peasant’s means, or the eternal illusion of freeing and reforming the serfs. I could nod and listen with the best of you, and for your sake pretend you were of equal intellectual standing as I, yes, I could pretend to humility among your overfed circle of bourgeoisie functionaries, minor aristocrats, businessmen, liberal-minded poseurs and the lot. And would you forgive my appearance? This three days’ beard? This ragged and thinning hair creeping over my ears like a bad fungus? Perhaps. Perhaps there is in you, or one of your circle, the ability to see beyond a man’s shell, to see into the heart and the mind—but what is the purpose of all your desultory and condescending conversation and polite niceties and slight bows toward your betters? To avoid this very thing, to lose humanity in inane politeness.

I pity you, Sir, I pray when your last breath comes it will be breathed with the sudden and horrifying realization of the triviality of your entire life. Only this will save you. Or should you lose a daughter or son or a beloved wife or friend you loved before that last deathbed revelation I doubt will ever overtake you, I pray the tragedy might be enough to make you kneel in church and confess, “Be merciful to me, O God, for I am a sinner,” and mean it. But you cannot do that now; church is for the best pews and the satisfaction that you are only a formal sinner, not in the real sense. You have not been unfaithful toward your wife in a long while, despite the opportunities your club regularly affords, and the last time meant nothing. The dismissed servants asked for your attentions, hardly your fault. You don’t cheat at cards and you return invitations for invitations; surely you are good, and insulated from common evil. Surely you are above the degradation God visits on the vast majority of humans, with their dirt floors and thatched roofs and drunken Saturdays, burying half their infants in graves whose markings disappear with the rains; surely you will never see how this might be your salvation, no, you must precede them into heaven! Surely you are the grasshopper with others to play the ant for you, while we, the hard working ants, suffer the fate of grasshoppers in the winter, that which you deserve--hungry and piled with blankets around a few coals. Have you earned anything in your life? You will know if that which has only been given is likewise taken away.


I'm a big fan of Fyodor, he vies with Eliot as my favorite author. Eliot is harder to imitate, and though it can be done, it usually ends in parody. Imitating Dostoevsky I find easier to do without degenerating into parody, but let the reader judge--that inveterate reader who will actually put up with 1400 words in one day's blog.


Thine at 1 Kilorat (feeling irritable and caged up),

CE

Depression and the Dog; Literary Nonsense Sonnet

There will be more about Kenyon below, but the blog mechanics put his picture at the top of today's post. This is Kenyon at Big River Beach among the driftwood.

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

I woke up this morning feeling a little shaky. When my computer would not connect to the net I became even more so. Having finally solved the connection problem, the anxiety increased, now mixed with sadness.

Since I felt a little better yesterday, I was hoping I would wake today without depressive symptoms, but here they are. Generally depression is diurnal, that is, worse in the morning and better at night. Thus I was fairly insensible of my mood disorder late last night watching the Sopranos, yet wake to this churning in my stomach today.

I began to unload the dishwasher then interrupted the process to return to my now connected computer. The indecision between completing the one task and beginning the other is typical of the depressed state; whether I unload the dishwasher or blog, I instinctively know I'm doing the wrong thing and am wasting my time. I feel I ought to get up and finish the dishwasher unloading now, but then I would lose my train of thought, or whatever these confessions amount to. Actually I'm trying to describe what this feels like--the pressure behind your eyes, the tightening in your cheeks, the gulp in your throat, as if you're about to cry; the acid apprehension in your stomach, the tingling in your sternum, the fear of what's to happen next, though nothing unexpected will, since you are alone, typing, and listening to the Beatles: "Nothing's gonna change my world" (the last thing a depressive wants to hear).

I think I've made it clear how much I wish I weren't manic-depressive. Now I'm starting to cry. I hear Kathleen coughing upstairs; perhaps she's awake. She is the first person in my life I've ever been almost comfortable with observing my tears. If she comes down the stairs and sees them, that's OK, but by the time she made it down, miserable and coughing, my tears had stopped.

The only sad thing that happened yesterday, and last night again, and this was really sad, was to see Kenyon collapse. After fetching his bottle from the ocean, he walked up the sand and his hips gave out and he fell. This happened again with another fetch, despite his strong swimming. My first reaction was, "Shit!" But after he came up the stairs last night and promptly fell at the foot of our bed I was greatly saddened. Perhaps yesterday's villanelle was prophetic; I hope not. I meant to say in that poem that we're all "waiting for our dog to die," that even in a universal apocalypse the personal remains more important to us than the cosmic--you know, Nero fiddling while Rome burns, Captain Queeg wondering who stole his strawberries.

With Kathleen and Kenyon downstairs it's time for Kenyon's morning constitutional with me. He often stops and looks lost. He tries to smell his way around, but I don't even think he remembers the pattern of the property's scents. To get his attention I have to yell. I guide him across the highway to where he prefers to attend to his business; I guide him back. As he crosses from the asphalt to the gravel of the driveway he falls, gets up on his own. I wonder, "Should I tell Kathleen?" She will know anyway.

Before Kathleen I never knew what it meant to love and care for an animal deeply. And what she said yesterday, at the beach, I'm sure all animal lovers agree with: "It's such a shame they don't live longer." How much better would be an animal for life! And contrary to non-animal lovers' instincts, the last thing you want to say to someone who has just lost a beloved pet is, "Get another one." As if! As if the former could be replaced!

There being no threat of real poetry today, I penned this silly sonnet:


Literary Nonsense

And Flannery O’Connor came to stay,
And Herman Melville, and Kafka, too,
And Kipling sang “The Road to Mandalay,”
And Tennyson’s “Ulysses” made us blue.
Along came Eliot in his narrow tie
And Oscar Wilde in his yellow coat;
Walt Whitman raised his beard to prophesy,
Which made young Ginsberg randy as a goat.
One asked, “Whose hands are smaller than the rain?”
One answered: “The world in a grain of sand.”
One said, “Come take the ‘Observation Train;’"
One answered, “One if by sea, two if by land.”
Shakespeare grabbed his goatee and remarked:
“I think that all these scribblers should be arked.”


Two Kilorats and Holding,

CE

Wife smacks me with words....

Anonymous said...

"Whadabunchacrap. Suck it up."

This comment came from my adoring wife, who in addition sent me a hilariously scathing letter about my last post, particularly for thinking I could possibly hide any mood change from her all-seeing eye, although she did admit her illness made her, perhaps, just a little less perceptive than usual--quite an admission from the all-knowing spouse.

I totally agree with her comment, of course. I tell myself the same thing but it doesn't help until my chemicals improve.

Yesterday I didn't cry because I was too zonked out by the antipsychotic I added to my regimen Thursday night, which allows little feeling--I was moving through water all day. I kept as busy as I could despite my gnawing cold. Today I am irritable, I don't want to be bothered by anything or anybody, I can be snappish. I feel bitchy. As I have said before, this is often a good sign of coming out of a depression, even a short one. Have I told you my bipolar daughter has been in crisis lately and I've been on the phone with her a lot? She most needs me when her illness acts up, although it takes a different form than mine--she tends to go into mixed states more, with alternating tears, curses, and laughter in a matter of minutes--very emotionally labile. I tend to get stuck for months on one end or the other. I just wanted you to know that whatever my state, I can always forget myself for the benefit of my children.

I pray I don't fall for pain pills or antihistamines again. I still feel like such an ass. My feelings are in accord with my being, I think.

I wrote a villanelle this morning which I think expresses some of the angry ambivalence of a mixed state, a state neither depressed nor happy, rather bitchy and unstable, although, of course, these mood tones are transformed into something else once you commit to a poem:


Waiting

Look! Fireworks fang the bloody sky!
The end has come; the button’s on repeat.
I’m just waiting for my dog to die.

Faces melt and bones electrify.
When we’re gone, someone pull up the sheet.
Look! Fireworks fang the bloody sky!

The sport of kings has changed to genocide:
“Kill them all, kill all the fucking sheep!"
I’m just waiting for my dog to die.

I didn’t vote and someone asked me why:
“One madman or another must compete.”
Look! Fireworks fang the bloody sky!

It’s easy, this apocalyptic cry.
If you brought hope we’d all fall at your feet.
I’m just waiting for my dog to die.

He’s old, he limps and barely hears my cry.
He won’t get off the floor to fetch a treat.
Look! Fireworks fang the bloody sky!
I’m just waiting for my dog to die.


Kathleen, of course, didn't like the poem, as it included our aged dog. But what can you do? A writer needs material, and the more depressed I am, the worse Kenyon looks to me.

Neil Young's tune is on the radio, "Helpless, helpless, helpless, helpless." Aren't we all? Ka-Ching! I never liked the song. I never liked his falsetto or three-chord-repetition songs like this one, not to mention his ham-handed lead guitar playing, but I have come to like Neil better in my dotage, just as I've finally begun to accept what little talent U2 has to offer--mostly Bono's.

How I digress. I want everyone to slap me today. I want people to throw rocks at me to help externalize my own anger towards myself. I think Kathleen will do a fair job of it.


Two Kilorats,

CE

Another Relapse...

My last depressive relapse was explained on 2/3; it lasted about two weeks until 2/15. I have been "euthymic" ("good-mooded") since, but relapsed yesterday afternoon into a crying spell and melancholy thoughts. Yes, it does happen that fast. But there are again, clear biochemical reasons behind it.

1) I've had a nasty cold and bronchitis.

2) I stupidly took an antihistamine Wednesday night, the 7th, because of the cough and runny nose, even though I knew anthistamines can cause a sudden depression in me.

3) With my mood stable for three weeks, I idiotically ingested small doses of a pain medicine which can mess with my mood; I mentioned this in my last relapse posted 2/3, although that one began earlier. To be fair, I had run out of my usual pain medication, Celebrex, because for once the clinic had no samples, but I could have done something to prepare for that.

4) I had been exercising regularly and vigorously before I caught this cold; the abrupt stop in exercising would naturally lower my endorphins and make me vulnerable to a mood dip.

I remember Father Mulcagey (sp.?) from MASH treating an alcoholic dog. What he did was give him a whole bowl full of whiskey. The dog drank it all and became violently ill. Afterwards the pooch turned away from liquor with disgust.

How this differs from humans! I know better than to mess with certain pain medications! I know better than to risk antihistamines! But I was feeling what manic-depressives call "bullet-proof"--because I had had three good weeks, nothing could hurt me! Three good weeks and I forget everything I ever learned. Not that I forgot; I failed to respect what I knew. This is sheer stupidity, and typical of humans, who will return to the bowl of whiskey over and over again and never really learn a thing, behaviorally speaking. In this sense my relapse is certainly deserved. I trust that it will be short-lived because I have been more well than not over the last two months.

I feel shame attached in reporting this. Why do we never learn? Why do so many of us keep indulging in risky behavior when we know better? Paul addresses this in Romans 7 and 8, but I can't grasp his solution, nor do I experience it. I'm just as human as the next guy--if not more so. When it comes to temporary pleasure, self-control has never been my strong suit.

I also feel as if I must be well for my younger brother's birthday party March 24, which is silly, of course, as it puts conditions on my unpredictable disease. I only pray I don't go underwater too long.

Another negative factor is that Kathleen has since gotten my cold and is quite miserable. And the heat went out last night so she was cold besides. I hate to see her suffer; pain from degenerative changes in her hip and a ruptured disk continue to plague her as well. I hate seeing her suffer, have therefore not mentioned my temporary relapse, as she suffers too much already.

Look at how precipitous this relapse is! I wrote about poetry yesterday morning, and by afternoon I was in a melancholic fog, and today I am writing about myself and my illness again. You know I'm well when I'm not writing about myself, but perhaps this dip will give me the opportunity to describe how it is to come out of a depression more fully.


At Two Kilorats,

CE

Ten Questions on Poetry Today

Nic Sebastian posed these at his blog, so I thought I'd answer them:

The Ten Questions

1. In this 2003 interview, Canadian poet George Bowering quotes Shelley: “The poet is the unacknowledged legislator of the world.” Do you think the poet has a specific role to play in human affairs in this century? If so, what is it?

1) No role. Or nearly none. Poetry is a cultural vestigial organ, like lawn bowling. Only a few aficionados appreciate it. “What poetry most lacks is an audience worthy of it.” “Poetry was always for the elite.”

2. Talk about the importance of poetry workshops to you as a poet - now and in your earlier development. Do you differentiate between in-person and on-line workshops?

2) I took only one poetry workshop in person, and it wasn’t helpful. All the other participants were callow, unfledged, unfamiliar with the history or distinctions in the art. Online workshops? The old Zeugma listserv helped me; boards rarely influenced me; publication in a decent journal was my general measure.

3. Comment on this passage by former U.S. poet laureate Donald Hall in his 1983 essay Poetry and Ambition: “Horace, when he wrote the Ars Poetica, recommended that poets keep their poems home for ten years; don’t let them go, don’t publish them until you have kept them around for ten years: by that time, they ought to stop moving on you; by that time, you ought to have them right. […] When Pope wrote An Essay on Criticism seventeen hundred years after Horace, he cut the waiting time in half, suggesting that poets keep their poems for five years before publication. […] By this time, I would be grateful - and published poetry would be better - if people kept their poems home for eighteen months.”

3) Absolutely agree. I tell students not to revise a first draft for a month, not to edit that for six months, and not to submit for a year. Donald Hall is not a favorite of mine; his wife was much the better poet.

4. Comment on this passage from Why Poetry Criticism Sucks, an article by Kristin Prevallet in the April 2000 issue of Jacket magazine: “It is very difficult to write poetry criticism and not have poets feel personally maimed […]. For some reason poetry criticism does not advance the formal, intellectual, or contextual parameters of poetry. It always gets confused with the personal.”

4) Not in my essays. Search “Logopoetry” for instance; more theoretical than personal; my essays on Eliot inform without degrading; only my essay on Bukowski could be considered perjorative. Fundamental poetry criticism is interesting for its own sake. A friend of mine reads it more than poetry itself just for fun.

5. Do you have an internet presence? If so, describe it and comment on the state of the poetry blogsphere. If not, why not?

5) Yes. Edited The Melic Review for eight years. Published in journals voraciously. Many folks, I’m told, have heard of me. There’s some article on the net entitled “A Presence on the Net” KayDay wrote about me without ever contacting me. As for today, my presence has diminished in proportion to my growth; I don’t need boards for growth or criticism; my wife acts as my editor, a poet in her own right, and she’s better than any I’ve ever met on a board. She founded Zeugma in its infancy and glory, not the Zeugma that now exists.

6. To what degree have you been published and to what degree has that helped or hindered your development as a poet?

6) Publishing: 1 book of poetry, edited an anthology; upwards of five hundred poems, columns, essays and some fiction. Unfortunately, at least half of these have been lost to failed electronic magazines who no longer maintain archives. Being published in a good journal is always a tonic to my self-esteem, as I believe all poets suffer from lifelong doubts about the value of their work.

7. Comment on today’s huge numbers of on-line poetry publications.

7) Most are at best mediocre, one sign of which is publishing their own staff. Some are good; many good ones have failed. Usually I hear of a new, promising one through contacts and I send them something. Also, that The New Yorker and Ploughshares, for example, now accept online submissions brings two worlds together for the better.

8. Self-publishing has become inexpensive and relatively painless. What are your thoughts on self-publishing?

8) I’m old school. I don’t self-publish, except my old essays in Melic. Poets tell me I’m stupid to cling to such a value; I know 85% of all books in the USA are self-published; but then there’s the question of marketing–after you run out of friends and relatives, where do you go? Arrange a book tour out of the back of your van? I’ve read at major bookstores, and most audiences are poets themselves wondering why you’re at the podium and they’re not. I haven’t had a book of poems published in ten years; then I haven’t been aggressive in promoting later mss., of which I have three, to small presses, because I have little confidence that they are much better than self-publishing. And the major publishers are closed to newbies, like Copper Canyon Press. Why publish if no one reads your books? A successful book of poetry should sell 1000 copies. I estimate less than 1% do.

9. What do you see as the biggest opportunity facing a poet today, as compared to 50 years ago?

9) By diluting the talent pool into bedlam, by dumbing down the curriculum, etc., nearly every poet can obtain some public exposure, when it used to be much harder without true talent and hard work. The democratization of poetry allows many more to participate. Unfortunately, it muddies all the distinctions, at the common level, between the bad, the mediocre, the good and the great. Anyone can get published today; that’s the opportunity and that’s the curse.

10. What do you see as the biggest challenge to a poet today, as compared to 50 years ago?

10) Striving to be as knowlegeable, literate and skilled as a poet from 50 years ago. Nowadays every uneducated slob thinks his doodlings are poetry. There are very few truly skilled poets practicing. I’ve had students who could never actually fulfill the assignment to write a sonnet; where would they have been 100 years ago? I think you should master formal verse before indulging in free verse. The one bleeds into the other. You can hear formal rhythms in the best free verse poets. Most poets today are simply unskilled in the basic tenets of poetic history and form, and it shows particularly in their sloppy line breaks and little difference from prose; it’s just chopped prose.

I hope I don’t come off as too much of a curmudgeon, but I’m 52 and have been publishing since the age of 18, while fitting in a medical career, a musical career, and raising a family–besides trying to manage my manic-depressive illness. So I’ve seen a lot come and go. Why someone like Robert Creeley garnered so much acclaim puzzles me; success often has little to do with quality; sometimes they seem absolutely divorced. Put Ted Hughes in that queue, too.

A note on recovering from depression..

Today is not the best day to try to describe the change in consciousness from depressed to normal--at least as normal as I know of normality--as I did not sleep well, it's raining, and I'm recovering from a cold.

To tell the truth, I don't know if I really can describe what it is like to be depressed and then not depressed. My first thought is: "What a miracle! I'm not depressed!" And then I go running about starting new projects and trying to make up for lost time, as if, in not being depressed, I should immediately demand something of myself. What I really need to do is to enjoy not being depressed--the taste of good food, the love of my wife, laughter, good literature, music and all the rest.

Though I am not capable yet of describing the process, I can give examples.

While depressed I could barely read the paper. Now I'm reading Thoreau, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and poetry. While depressed my only real writing was this blog; I could do nothing else. Now I've written two good essays, one already accepted, and had three poems accepted (and one just published) while resuming work on my thriller novel. Not only that, I've applied to audition for several music venues. This is what I do when I'm not depressed. I've been much more sociable as well. Kathleen says I can be very charming. Me! Imagine!

What is the difference? First and foremost I don't think about myself all the time, I'm not lost in a conversation about all my deficits, shortcomings, failures, wasted life, and all the other melancholy inhabitants of a diseased mind. Now if I find I'm starting to have a conversation with myself, I tell myself to shut up, and it works. Previously my brain told me to shut up and I couldn't help but listen to the endless, pointless conversation about myself.

I look different. I make jokes. I feel stronger physically. I'm quicker physically. Depression is a very physical disease, and bodily changes are striking. From old photographs my friends can easily see when I was depressed and when not.

That's a beginning. I'll try more when I'm feeling a bit better.

CE

Dostoevsky and Thoreau

Today's quotes; which is which?


"I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer."

"The best definition of man is the ungrateful biped."


It has occurred to me that since I've been feeling better, there has been no sufficient account of my interior workings, which is natural when one is no longer depressed, as one's attention turns to things other than oneself. Nevertheless, I think it only fair that I try, perhaps tomorrow, to write about my new experience of consciousness with at least half the avidity with which I described the dark side of my illness. More anon.


Thine,

CE

Thoreau and Dostoevsky

It has occurred to me, that though dissimilar in tone, Thoreau's "Walden" and Dostoevsky's "Notes from the Underground" bear certain similarities (though no doubt more differences). I thought it would be entertaining to juxtapose quotes from each. Who proves wiser in today's example? And which is which?

"Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save one tomorrow. As for work, we haven't any of consequence."

"Perhaps the only goal on earth toward which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained."


Two Kilobunnies,

CE

Faux Fame; See No Evil

You, too, can be famous! Click here!

Or here!

Or even here!

Here's my two brothers and I posing long ago for "Speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil":

And here's the three of us again, years later, stuck on the same morality play:



Notice the effect this stern moral stance has exacted from our scalps.

Off to chowder and wine tasting in a celebration of Mendocino's winning war to save the whales, started thirty years ago. By the way, we won.


Thine at one kilobunny though still ill,

CE

Kathleen

First, a rare publication I had long forgotten about just appeared:

To His Wife Asleep

It was actually an "Editor's Pick," and if you want to vote for it as the top pick, here's the voting address:

Vote for CE!

Maybe you can help me finally win some kind of award. I've failed to place in the Morse Poetry Prize, the Ohio State Poetry Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize, and at least two others I can't even remember ths past fall. The bad news came in January and February.

Either I suck or the judges suck or both.

Second, I'm suffering from a miserable cold. To quote Robert Frost:

"Something there is that doesn't love a cold,
That sends the frozen-mucous-drip under it,
And spills the phlegm from bronchi in the sun..."

It's hard to tell a bad cold or flu from narcotic withdrawal. Thankfully I'm saddled with only one. Can't wait to get that knight off my back.

If I had more to say I would say it. All I can emit are dribs and drabs of thoughts. This is common to boogers, I mean bloggers. My longer essay-type entries are not what blogees seek.

How about a picture? They take up a lot of space so I don't have to write. In the following picture, my beautiful wife, Kathleen, stands above her mother with her brother to her left.


In spite of my manic-depression and chronic pain, you can see I'm a lucky man. One of the luckiest in the world!


Thine,

CE