February's Foolhearty Give-It-a-Go

Everything is an experiment, including you. What a relief, right? Here's a little exercise I really enjoy. It's fine to try in in a public space (I did it at work and got a bemused chortle), but it's better to be alone to start. You'll feel less self-conscious and will follow your instincts rather than whatever it is your mind tells you. This a chance to let whatever feelings are in you now to have a voice, form, and movement:

Make a wordless noise. Any noise (don't overthink, let whatever bubbles up be the sound), and then after repeating it a few times, find a movement that goes with it. What part of your body instinctively wants to move to that sound? It can be small (just a foot, or an eyebrow), or your whole body. Make the sound and movement until you tire of it, or it turns into another sound and movement.

If you have time, write a little about the experience. 

How do you feel? Did any sounds/movements feel like characters emerging? Did you find yourself thinking "what should come next" or did you find your internal chatter quiet down? How does everything around you appear now? What, if anything, has shifted? 

Owl Pellets

I think of my poetic process as the digestive tract of an owl. Of course, doesn't everyone? My poems take awhile to process, and each poem is a pellet full of fur and bones and other bits of indigestables, but something whole, a product of being well fed. I realize I am saying my poems are poop, but they are fascinating poop, worthy of poking around in for the occasional treasure.

Yesterday I saw two things I thought were remarkable, and that I hope made it into the deep recesses of my poet-owl's digestive tract. The first was a frilled, foil Dollar Tree Valentine heart decoration slapped on top of a "No Trespassing" sign. The words "No Trespassing" peeped through the empty space of the heart. 

The second was an attempt at beautifying the concrete barriers on a stretch of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Whoever constructed them used a texture tool to shape some lollipop trees  --  ideas of trees. The real trees behind them stretched out their intricately networked branches over the barriers and cast shadows on top of the fakery.

And today I've made myself cry by reading an excerpt of the Velveteen Rabbit, having gone down the "what is real?" thought process while writing this. It doesn't apply to concrete lollipop trees and real ones shadowing them, but it does apply to aging. Dan took a photo of me yesterday and texted it to me, and I zoomed in on my eyes, oh look at my eyes, almost loved into raisins from smiles and squints of sunny days.

The Why

My mother was my best reader. She always read what I wrote, and commented on it in some way. Either in the vague, not entirely complimentary way of "How'd you do that?" or "Why did you write that?" or in a very specific-to-the-line way that let me know she understood, and felt what I was trying to do. If I could make my mother or father laugh or cry through whatever project I was working on, I knew I was on the right track. Both of them were brilliant people with deep imaginations, talents, and skills. I wanted to be more like them, and I wanted them to understand how I viewed the world too.

What they loved to read was different. Mom read short stories, plays, Tom Robbins, David Sedaris, memoirs. Dad's tastes leaned toward the historic biography, sci-fi, and spy novels, and he loved any book that had to do with the legend of King Arthur. I'm not sure my father understood how he ended up with a poet for a daughter, but I think he enjoyed it to some degree.

After Mom died, I discovered all the publications of mine she'd saved. Many of them I'd forgotten about, including a newsletter I'd edited for a writing group, one of my very early poetry publications, and a program for a show I wrote.

My "why" for writing or creating anything was always to make my parents feel something, and respond. Pride in me was never the goal. The goal was always to connect with them on an emotional level.

Now I just hope to make anyone feel in a world full of numbing distractions, and I don't always feel up to it. My "why" is something of a "why bother?" on some days, a scattershot of thoughts I have to confront to get to the work. The only rule is work. That is how you catch onto things.

Ah, a memory: I am standing in my slanted kitchen in the house on Armstrong Street, twirling the six foot phone cord around my wrist like a bracelet. I am 35. I can hear my mother ask through the phone receiver, "So, what projects are you working on now?"

End of the Year Pep Talk From Cloudy Funkytown

My love is in being. My love is in writing poems, and letters. My love is in how I play, create, and share. My love is in my worst dancing. My love is in my laugh. 

My love is also in my struggle to share in what I feel is a meaningful way, in ways that will reach others. What do I do with all of my poems? My ideas? Where do I begin to find a home for the project I've been working on all year? Do I continue to teach and perform as I have in the past (I know the answer to that is no), or find new ways? Well, there's love in the not-knowingness, in this cloudy funkytown where I find myself, and a burble of excitement as well. Just enough, like a weak fountain full of pennies and dimes in the center of the roundabout.

An inspiration for me is the work of Corita Kent. I keep her Ten Rules for Students and Teachers pinned to a corkboard above my desk. It is brilliant, as was Corita. She was a force of love and artistic talent, and she shared her gifts as a teacher, social justice advocate, artist, and as a sister in the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I recommend her and Jan Seward's book, Learning by Heart: Teachings to Free the Creative Spirit. Each day when I look at the rules, one sings to me more than another. Today, Rules 4, 6, 9 and 10 are in harmony.

Corita Kent: Ten Rules for Students and Teachers

RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile.

RULE TWO: General duties of a student: pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.

RULE THREE: General duties of a teacher: pull everything out of your students.

RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment.

RULE FIVE: Be self-disciplined: this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.

RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.

RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.

RULE EIGHT: Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.

RULE NINE: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.

RULE TEN: We’re breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.

HINTS: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything—it might come in handy later.

Delight Leads to Wisdom

The day Richard Aston died, I was teaching a poetry session to reluctant teens at a YMCA summer camp. I was about to recite a poem and asked the group, "What does it mean when we say we know something by heart?" One kid said, "You remember it." Another offered, "Your heart never forgets it."

Richard was a regular participant in and a great supporter of the Northeast Pennsylvania poetry scene. I met him in the mid 90s, when I began to attend poetry events through the Mulberry Poets and Writers Association. Richard was a sage. Grey bearded and bespectacled, he was a man with a scheduled rotation of professorial clothing. In winter, he wore a thick, orange cable knit turtleneck. When he spoke, he sometimes stroked his facial hair in thought. I often saw him reuse the same paper coffee cup at events. Seeing him drive for the first time I realized how much he valued the contents of his head, because he wore a helmet as he navigated the Wilkes-Barre roads in his little fuel-efficient car. He spoke to me many times about how he conserved energy in the home he and his wife lived in, the house his father built many years ago.  He took great pride in his ancestry, having come from a long line of skilled masons and craftsmen. 

People who only did a surface scan of Richard missed his brilliance and likely categorized him as an eccentric.  Richard was a quiet mentor to many coming up in the NEPA poetry scene. His ability to stand in front of any audience, big or small, and recite his work always left me in awe. Where was he holding all of those lines -- were they knitted into that sweater? Written on the inside of the recycled coffee cup? I think the day I realized that Richard's poems were living inside of Richard was the day I learned what the power and responsibility of committing a poem to memory to share it with an audience was. 

Vision + language + electrical impulses + heartbeat married to rhythm of language + the vessel of sonorous and singular body + breath and voice = poem delivered in true spirit to an audience.

Richard was curious about nearly everything, and approached his interests with poetry and scientific inquiry. He said to me once, "Delight leads to wisdom." I wrote it on a scrap of paper that hangs over my desk as a reminder to stay curious about everything -- to turn over stones, to inquire, to find delight in little things. 

He encouraged my writing, and often nudged me to attend the poetry festival in West Chester that he attended each year. He was at many events at Paper Kite, starting with the ones we held in a pottery studio in Kingston, and the mansion on South Franklin in Wilkes-Barre, and finally in our own studio in Edwardsville. He was ever-present, and truly present at readings. He paid attention when people read their work. He listened, then stuck around to discuss what he'd heard. It is impossible to know how many people he supported in this way, but I suspect it is a very large number of people indeed.

The last time I saw Richard was in Lancaster at the Ware Center for the Performing Arts where I performed a one-woman show titled Alonely. He and his wife Marcia drove all the way from Wilkes-Barre to attend, and had plans to stay overnight. After the show I went out into the audience and Richard gifted me with one of his poetry scrolls. I spoke with him again during the pandemic. He asked me for a video of the show to study. He was still thinking about it. I was sorry I didn't have one to give to him.

I couldn't make it to his poetry reading this spring with the Word to Word reading series. I regret that I missed that opportunity to see and hear him one more time.

So on the day Richard died, I recited Valentine for Earnest Mann by Naomi Shihab Nye to a group of impatient and unruly teens gathered in the Group Exercise room at the YMCA. As I assembled the vision, language, electrical impulses, heartbeat and rhythm of language, vessel of singular and (tired and exasperated) sonorous body, breath and voice, and began, some of the kids laughed and talked as I spoke. 

"I have to stop," I said. "I can't do it. I can't recite this poem right now." I looked the chattiest kid in the eye. "Maybe if it's quiet,  I can." 

I began again. I tripped up on the words. I delivered most of the poem, and like a hobbled runner I made it all the way to the end. The kids didn't know anything was missing, but I did. 

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us

we find poems. 

I will remember that moment, my skipped beats and recovery, all the teenage recalcitrance in the room, as the one when Richard made his exit from this world and entered the next. I hope he saw my foolish humanity in trying to remember what I thought I knew by heart, and took delight in it all. 

--

Some of Richard's writing can be found in Torch Magazine. His collection of poetry, Valley Voices, was published by FootHills Publishing. 

Complaints Department

I'm the most honest when I write letters to friends. Is it a fool's errand to write here? It's a bit like picking up the phone and talking when no one is on the other end. A pretend conversation. Zero connection. Surface activity. 

I'm over summer. Yesterday I saw a Lycoris squamigera (what a name!) in front of my window and thought "Good! Summer will be over soon." I didn't think "Oh, how pretty!" I was just relieved that this pale, leafless trumpet was here to herald the start of fall. Let us harvest whatever survived the deer browsing in the field and let the leaves shrivel and drop.

A beautiful white hair just fell out of my scalp. Lots of the brown ones are letting go too. I'm thinning out. Shedding.

Lycoris squamigera.

A couple of 20-somethings re-enacted a video game on the stage yesterday when I was helping their friend find something in the shop. They narrated what they saw and collected in the game when they play it online. There was no imagination. They never asked if they could be on the stage, just assumed it was ok to move chairs around while saying, "This is where you pick up the battle axe."

Lycoris squamigera. They are known as the "surprise lily" for showing up unannounced, foliage-free.

Diminution and Amplification

A few years ago I bought a t-shirt at a zine fest. On the front was the message "I will not make myself smaller." The shirt was a light green color, and had an image of a plant on it. The bold message spoke to me. "Hell yeah!" I thought to myself, "I won't make myself smaller!"  I wore it once and then donated it to a thrift shop. The message was dishonest on me, a woman who juggles her wallet, pocketbook, and several loose bags to make a quick getaway and not be in anyone's path at the grocery checkout. I am almost always making myself smaller, so I won't be a bother. My body is large. I'm tall and towering and stalk-like. My feet are a size ten, to hold up the height so I won't topple in a stiff wind. I am worried I am blocking you with these words. Let me grab them real quick and dash off over here, ok? So sorry.

Oops. I lied! There are more words, because there's Pointy Mary, Rita Poem, Chintz Davenport, Tom Mato. Pointy gets what she wants from you. Fill out this form, in triplicate. Pointy wanted to wear that t-shirt with the message on it, but it wasn't red, it was green, which is a very unflattering color on her. Rita will tell a man who has just spent fifteen minutes talking down to everyone at the table that he has just wasted everyone's time with his shit wits. Chintzy adores the spotlight, and takes it wherever she finds it. She orders Manhattans and wears bright red lipstick. Tom is male and can report on anything from poison ivy to dead mice and people will listen and comment.

When I am complimented for something -- an act of kindness, a performance, a poem, a meal, those accolades go to the audacious parts of me. Last week I received a glowing email from a stranger, and the day before yesterday I was told after a performance, "We're so glad you could make it this year! You're our favorite." I don't know what to do with these compliments, so I imagine them as trophies I hand over to all these larger, and somehow more deserving, parts of me. Jennifer is happy to stay out of your way, in her closet with a notebook and pen. When Chintzy, Rita, Tom, or Pointy take the stage, Jennifer stays in the wings. 

I'm not sure how to explain this, with all these points-of-view. Who is writing this? All of me. Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello.

I like Manhattans because they taste like the smell of an old dresser. Call me Jenny or Jennifer or Jenn while I sip one, but you're going to have to order for yourself because I don't want to muscle my way through the crowd at the bar. I got here early to avoid it. There's no way I will get the attention of the bartender. How dare I interrupt? They look busier than an octopus hanging laundry.