The Great Poem

I seem to have completely lost the ability to put anything on paper (or to the screen) that isn't completely awful drivel. I've recently ripped page after page from my notebook to cast into the flames. Crap that made me cringe to read it.... Well, this too shall pass...hopefully....

And then this morning I saw this at the Writers Almanac. I've bolded a part resonant with me. I've bolded and italicized a part most resonant...:

The Great Poem
Lawrence Raab

The great poem is always possible.
Think of Keats and his odes.
But we shouldn't have to be dying,

What I'm writing now is not
the great poem. After a few lines
I could tell. It may not even be

a particularly good poem, although
it's too early to decide about that.
Keep going, I say. See what happens.

But trying hard is one of the problems.
since it shows in the lines as a strain
or struggle that reminds the reader

too much of the writer, whereas
most readers want to listen alone.
The great poem, I think, will arrive

when I no longer care. Perhaps
I'll have abandoned art altogether,
and I won't even want to write

the poem down. But then I'll remember
what I once would have given
for this moment, and I'll go back

to my desk. And I'll write the poem
as though I were another person,
someone I will never be again.

from The History of Forgetting.

Yes, I think that's exactly when the great poem will probably arrive. Kinda reminds me of another post I once made.

Let go, Forest...let go....

Just to say thank you

This simple thank you to all of my readers and commenters was inspired by the great discussion on my previous post. This is certainly not the first time there have been such discussions in the comment space....

One of the strengths/weaknesses of my particular wiring is that I like to make people think deeply about things. (Hmmm, maybe I wish to infect everyone else with my own "disease"? ;) And often here on this blog, I float some half baked, incomplete thought out there for consideration, perhaps things that I am thinking about, that I have not formed a firm opinion about (and perhaps never will), or something that I hope will provoke...just a bit. I try to be a gentle provoker....

And many times here when I have floated these half baked thoughts, many of you have offered wisdom, insight, and your own provocations to my thinking. On many occasions you have taken my prompts for pondering and worthwhile discussions have come about in the comment space.

And I am very grateful. I count myself fortunate to have the thoughtful readers and commenters that come to this blog.

Thank you. Thank you all for reading, for offering your thoughts, for listening....

Peace to you all

Things I think about at 3:00 AM, #228

Sometimes I wonder, are we really more "advanced" than many of the other creatures that inhabit this planet with us?:

"Unlike humans, wild creatures strive for survival and die without complaint or expectation of anything better." --Flandrum Hill

Just a question.... I actually claim very few answers....

Life and death. On and on. Here in the north, whether in Flandrum Hill's Nova Scotia or here in my Minnesota, "Nothing makes the outdoors more uninviting at this time of year than blackflies and mosquitoes. There are thick swarms of them in the more humid areas.... It’s the females that are after blood to enable them to incubate their eggs, and they’re relentless in their pursuit. Any warm-blooded creature will do. But it won’t be long before they’re gobbled up in turn by baby birds. The cycle of life and death goes on."

Profundity from a Nova Scotian "pen." And I thought I would pass along the pondering....

Peace to you all today.

Addendum, Sunday, 7 June:

Or, a counter point to ponder offered by The Rambling Taoist (lifted from the comments box):

"How do we really know if other species "die without complaint or expectation"? Since we don't speak their language nor understand very much about the complexities of their worlds, they may complain just as loudly as we do and we simply don't realize it."

Thanks, RT.

Further addendum, Monday, 8 June:

I would also encourage you to check out the rest of the excellent discussion that ensued in response to The Rambling Taoist's comment above, and as well as his post "We Don't Know Jack," which was inspired by this discussion.

How to Climb a Mountain

how to climb a mountain
Maya Stein

Make no mistake. This will be an exercise in staying vertical.
Yes, there will be a view, later, a wide swath of open sky,
but in the meantime: tree and stone. If you're lucky, a hawk will
coast overhead, scanning the forest floor. If you're lucky,
a set of wildflowers will keep you cheerful. Mostly, though,
a steady sweat, your heart fluttering indelicately, a solid ache
perforating your calves. This is called work, what you
will come to know, eventually and simply, as movement,
as all the evidence you need to make your way.
Forget where you were. That story is no longer true.
Level your gaze to the trail you're on,
and even the dark won't stop you.

Song of Myself

Today is the birthday of Walt Whitman, that "sweaty-toothed madman," one of the earthiest of poets, a contemporary of Thoreau, both of them most often lumped with Emerson and others in the "Transcendentalists" of the mid-19th century in America. As a nature lover and a wannabe poet, Whitman is one of the "gods" for a guy like me...and so I celebrate him on his day.

His Leaves of Grass was a revolutionary work upon the poetic landscape at the time of its publication. Whitman changed the face of modern poetry. He changed the way poets did poetry from his time onward. Almost every poet since Whitman owes him a debt, acknowledged or not. His poetic descendants come down to today, even to another voice of the earth such as Gary Snyder.

Whitman was an earthy poet, but he also wrote unabashedly of his innermost passions and struggles. He admittedly "celebrated" himself. That is not a style that this reserved Scandinavian tending toward self-deprecation is comfortable with, but 'ol Walt could pull it off as few ever have. Here is an excerpt from one of his more famous pieces, the Song of Myself:

This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger,
It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make
appointments with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipp'd slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.

This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of
hair,

This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning,
This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face,
This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica
on the side of a rock has.

Do you take it I would astonish?
Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering
through the woods?Do I astonish more than they?

This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
Else it were time lost listening to me.

I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth.

Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids,
conformity goes to the fourth-remov'd,
I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.

Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair,
counsel'd with doctors and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones....

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is
myself,And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or
ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can
wait.

A "song of myself;" in a sense, is that not sort of what a blog is?

Here's a video bonus for you from one of my all time favorite films, in which Uncle Walt figures prominently. Enjoy:

Saint Regis Reflections

For those of you who have never experienced the magic, never fallen under the spell...of a northwoods canoe trip...and even if you have...

Chris Loomis of Tenzing's Adventures has captured and documented the experience well in a short film he made called Saint Regis Reflections, about a trip he made in his home waters in the Adirondacks in New York State. Visually, the landscape in the film is really indistinguishable from my beloved Boundary Waters here in Minnesota, or any of the vast tracts of "canoe wilderness" of the Canadian Shield from Saskatchewan to Quebec. I have posted parts 1 and 2 below. They run a little under seven minutes each. I hope you will sit back and take a few minutes and enjoy them, and let them weave just a little bit of the spell....

The Patience of Ordinary Things

The Patience of Ordinary Things
Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?

How the cup holds the tea,

How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,

How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes

Or toes. How soles of feet know

Where they’re supposed to be.

I’ve been thinking about the patience

Of ordinary things, how clothes

Wait respectfully in closets

And soap dries quietly in the dish,

And towels drink the wet

From the skin of the back.

And the lovely repetition of stairs.

And what is more generous than a window?

Source: Another River: New and Selected Poems