The Green Wave

July 27, 2008

Back to the Well for Water

Filed under: Poetry — kate @ 12:59 pm

One of the great pleasures for me so far this summer has been the opportunity to read so much poetry. I greet the day with a lovely routine: I lie in bed and read poetry, then I get up and write. Could anything be nicer?

Years ago my true love built a wide, handsome bookcase for me, painted it a fresh green color, and invited me to fill the shelves with poetry. Now it overflows with beauties, with inspiration, with challenges, lessons, and aid. It beckons. It nourishes. When I count the blessings of my life – and there are many! – I think so often about these books, their leafy green home, and the maker of that bookcase. All of these things and the time to enjoy them make me feel rich!

Here are some of the books I’ve read this summer, offered in hopes they might spark your interest, or that you’ll send suggestions of your own favorites my way.

  • Stanley Kunitz – The Wild Braid (one of the most extraordinary books I’ve come across in a long while; includes photographs of Stanley in his gardens, poems, and essays and conversations about growing poetry and gardens)
  • Stanley Kunitz – Passing Through (his last collection with such gems in it)
  • Ted Kooser – Sure Signs
  • Louise Gluck – The Wild Iris
  • Michael Longley – Gorse Fires
  • Mary Oliver – House of Light
  • Pablo Neruda – Selected Poems
  • Elizabeth Tibbetts – In the Well
  • Stephen Mitchell, ed. – The Englightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry

I’ve also been dipping in to some lovely rivers – revisiting some Keats, Auden, Heaney, and my dear Kate Barnes; reading poems written by friends; reading poems in Poetry and other magazines; reading the poem that arrives every morning like a present from Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. In bookstores I lean against the shelves in the poetry section, open book after book, and feel welcomed.

People often tell us that poetry is irrelevant or unnecessary, or more mildly, that it is extra. Perhaps it is for them – but not for me. We all look for ways to address and stir up our souls, to speak to them and through them. Reading poetry accomplishes these tasks and many others for me. So these days I feel I’m in touch with a world of voices, hopes, opinions, options, desires, wonderment: a world of souls seeking, finding, and making meaning.

Happy reading, friends.

PS – The title of this entry comes from a song by Cork songwriter, John Spillane, who is one of my very favorites. Check out any of his CDs. This song, “Back to the Well for Water,” comes from his CD, Will we be brilliant or what?

July 18, 2008

Live-lines

Filed under: Writing — kate @ 11:47 am

I missed a deadline this week. Yes, I was meant to have written a couple of short articles by today, and I greet the day without them finished. What the heck happened, Kate?

It’s rare for me to actually miss a deadline. In fact, I don’t remember the last time it happened – if ever. During all those 8 years of teaching Expository Writing at Harvard, I rather prided myself on accomplishing Herculean tasks in a timely fashion. I sacrificed sleep, strained my wrists and hands, and pushed through the resistance which was shouting, “No! I don’t want to do this! No, please, Kate! Please, can we just slow down?” Before that, as a graduate student, I don’t think I ever asked for an extension. And here’s my guilty secret: I secretly pitied those who did. They seemed to be trapped in torment, in a cycle of worrying and not doing. The more they neglected to “just do it,” the less likely they seemed to do it at all. Day by day, the will eroded, as wind carves into the dunes. It looked awful. Was I smug? I don’t think so – but awfully glad it wasn’t me. It seemed so simple to do just a little and escape the terrible web. (Now, this doesn’t mean I was one of those blessed few who had their work done three days ahead of time. No, I was a last-minute Lady. And you might ask again, What’s up with that, Kate? Good question – for another day).

So what has happened to me? I think I know.

I’m off the leash! It’s summer, my writing course has reached its end, and I’m at an end and a beginning. It has been years and years and years since I felt so free. The wild child I’ve kept chained to the wall is free to roam the jungle at last! And what is she doing? Kayaking, dreaming, puttering, making envelopes out of old calendars (yes, it’s true – and oddly satisfying, too), tuning the harp, visiting friends… and avoiding deadlines, obligations, tasks, and anything that smacks of responsibility.

Does this have me worried? Well, yes, a teensy bit. I feel exactly two things about the missed deadline:

1. remorse and guilt
2. wild, high laughter

OK. Let me explain that second one. I think I’ve done a sort of experiment: what happens if you don’t do something you’ve said you’d do? What does it feel like? Do you live through it? What are the consequences?

Fortunately for me, the kind editor has given me a few more weeks, and so I haven’t lost the opportunity. And funnily enough, now that I’ve missed the deadline, I feel quite eager to start working on these pieces. I love my topics, I love the magazine they’ll appear in, I love the thought of spending more time doing my own writing. Guess I just had to find out for myself the difference between a deadline and a live-line. My new live-line is the end of July. I’m excited to meet it!

July 6, 2008

The Brilliant Listeners

Filed under: Music — kate @ 2:17 pm

This Wednesday I had the great pleasure of doing a feature at my friend Libby Franck’s open-mike, Outspoken Word, at the Amazing Things Art Center. She’d asked me to put on my poet-hat and read poems from The Harp-Boat which will be arriving from the printers very soon, according to Arthur Dawson of Kulupi Press. Bless him! I’ll let you know when they’re available and how to get them. Thank you to all of you who have kindly inquired!

This little feature was special. I haven’t done too many poetry readings, though for the last year or so, I’ve found myself weaving poems into my concerts little by little. But there is something wonderful about reading a sequence of poems like this, and these in particular because they seem to open the way to a discussion of things that are important – love, mainly. Wednesday night was sultry and stormy by turns. A lot of people stayed home, couldn’t find transport to this little art center, or felt too tired to stir out. I totally understand. And in fact, I never mind about that at all.

We were a small group and perhaps that’s what made it so easy for me to experience their presence so deeply. If you have ever sung, danced, acted, read, or in any way performed before other people, you know this truth: the audience is active, not passive. Their smallest response reverberates. Their faces sculpt what happens. And even deeper than that, at a level invisible but absolutely tangible, their feelings can, ideally, support, shape, and inspire a performer. I felt that very powerfully with the people who came out on Wednesday night. They helped me. They lifted me. And they made a space where it was possible to be honest and expansive. What a tremendous gift! How gifted they are to be able to do this!

I thanked them on Wednesday and I thank them again now. I still feel that help, and the poems feel as though they’ve had a true welcome into the world – even before they arrive in book-form. I bow to you, Brilliant Listeners. Thank you.

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