What Would You Be?

Imagine All the People
Fanny Howe

Imagine being unable to imagine
another side.

What would you be?

A hill so steep you'd throw your thoughts against it?

Segregated schools?
A decider who never had to fight?

Without advance imagination
the people perish.

Would you be a grandmother who keeps hands warm
no matter where they're from?

Or would you be a moth-like hat
on the head of a singer
lifting her higher and higher?

Would you be a newspaper soldier, easy to burn?
Would you choose to be something you can never change?

Or would you hold up your arms
during the metamorphosis?

I Could Follow You Anywhere

I don't know whatever made me think I knew John Martyn's music. Somehow I must have conflated him with Richard Thompson, or any number of others interested in fusing folk and jazz. I've been listening to him since reading of his death at 60 yesterday. Here's his "Solid Air," which was written in tribute to his friend, the great Nick Drake. You can hear the influence everywhere: the guitar work, the harmonic structures, the vocals.

Click here to read his New York Times obituary.

Solid Air - John Martyn

Favorite Place

I haven’t said very much about my mother’s health here, because every time I started to the language refused it—or I refused language. It just didn’t seem right. But I can say that she’s in better shape tonight, a serious relief, especially when we were certain we were going to lose her not long ago. A broken hip is no small thing, and when you join that to other conditions... I am in awe of her resilience—or at least the body’s resilience. Maybe this is a place for an old picture of her. I don’t think this is the best picture of her—she was a lot prettier than this back then—but I remember her getting a kick out of it. And it was taken in her favorite place, near our old summerhouse, off the Great Egg Harbor Bay.

As for that concerned little boy?

A Transcendent Day

Sometimes I wonder if I had to move away form the Philadelphia area in order to appreciate the good things about it. When I visit, however, I’m full of complaints. (Okay, the sidewalk? Didn’t anyone around here ever hear of a snow shovel?) But I got over that fast enough once I stepped into my friend’s apartment. Tomorrow’s her last day of chemo, after six months of punishing treatments, and the day felt like a sort of celebration. Actually, a transcendent day in the history of our friendship. I don’t think I quite recognized how emotional it was until I got back to Manhattan tonight, and there was a man on the subway platform singing an old Marvin Gaye song with incredible heart and restraint. It was impossible to ignore; even the people who were trying not to be swept by it were looking nervous and shifting their weight. And I just had to turn my head, because it was one of those rare moments when the people on the platform were almost too beautiful to take in.

(Above: the columns of Philadelphia's 30th Street Station tonight.)

My Inheritors Move in Me

Pears on the Windowsill from Letters to a Stranger
Thomas James

This morning I have been remembering
How my mother's hands knotted one September
And then grew very still.

A girl is coming up the hill
With apples in her white apron.
The light moves outside her body.

Outdoors, the leaves of the pear trees
Are the color of a house in need of paint.
They are like enormous flakes of darkness.

Sunlight is smeared over the flagstones.
A worm is measuring a tomato leaf
As if it were the map of Italy.

The sun strikes my perfect skin.
My inheritors move in me
Like darkening water.

You Know the Walk

from Two Prose Poems in The Real Enough World
Karen Brennan

1.

Reading from her critically acclaimed blah blah, Blah Blah will once again grace us with her presence, etc blah blah blah. The library will serve in a fishbowl everything you thought you'd read. Once upon a time, though, even the fish were bored. Traffic: too much of it. Then, chicken wings & a kind of harrowing experience with a cab. She wore what you'd expect with a name like that. Standing on the podium instead of "at," residing in her own wavering simulacra on the wall. Also on the wall little shadows of turnips & gloves. & at the opera a wail comes out of nowhere & the walrus still has that walk. You know the walk.

Dim Skies

As soon as I left the plane last night, my steps quickened, and there was my old walk back, the determined, but enjoyable I-don't-have-a-f*&*$@king-minute-to-waste Manhattan walk. The trip from airport to apartment couldn't have been breezier. Fifty minutes? The train doors opened exactly where I stood on the platform. And, later, when I went in to buy contact lens solution, my Duane Reade Club Card availed itself in my wallet in a way it never avails itself.

Not so charmed today. Errands taken care of: bank, post office, bills, bank. A long walk through Chelsea just to see the sights. A stop at Brooklyn Industries. And writing--at least the first draft of an opening--when I got back to the apartment. But those dim skies, the grim, tense faces shivering beneath hats and hoods: it couldn't have been clearer that this is the time of year when everyone wants out of here.

Science is Coming, People

Poem
Matthew Rohrer

On Tuesday at noon the
sun suddenly came out I
swear I said to my
daughter something was happening but
what and the stars don't
care about us who we
elect or when we listen to
the radio and hear it
say President Obama is going
to shut down the prison
the stars don't care they
are forever exploding hydrogen atoms
slowly depleting dying like us
to them if they thought
at all they'd think everything
we do is in prison
the president said we could
write poems again saying "president"
that people would have to
think about not just understand
like he said "science is
coming, people" to which my
son said "did he say
science?" I said "I know
it's hard to believe but
the new president said science"

Spider in a Tree

Hello from high up above—Chicago? Lake Michigan? That sounds about right, given when we're landing. I think I might have been a little more resistant to leaving California if it hadn’t been such a clear, bright morning. All that golden-ness after five successive days of moody sky. Even the hillsides out the airport window seemed to vibrate and green. It’s probably going to be weird to be back in the dim freeze box of New York for the next four days, but there are errands to take care of, and a meeting later in the week. Till I land, I have the manuscript of Susan Stinson’s visionary novel, Spider in a Tree, to keep me company. Talk about golden. Talk about light-drenched sentences....

Another shot of Pescadero from yesterday. After some rain, the sun came out, and at once the side of that building seemed to soak it in.

California Puts On Another Show

The Animals of Pescadero

Part of our road trip up Route 1 today took us to the small town of Pescadero, halfway between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay. We walked through the town some--a small jumble of grocery stores, an antique store, a big café or two--got back in the car, and ended up on a road where we came upon the sweetest band of animals in a field: a kingly sheep, a noisy black pig, who thought it was his work to boss everyone else around, and a half dozen goats, curious and convivial, who came forward to greet us as we stepped out of the car. The goat on the right used the occasion as an excuse to put her forelegs up on the fence, then stretched her neck backward as if it felt good to do so. I believe she was the same sassy thing who couldn't resist planting a kiss on the face of a certain someone.

Tell Me, Friend, Can You Ask for Anything More?

It was a morning for standing on top of the dresser with fists upraised, then throwing myself facedown on the bed, to Mark’s laughter. I guess I should say we saw The Wrestler at one of those huge cineplexes last night, and I’ve been re-enacting scenes from it all day. I’m not sure why I feel slightly sheepish for liking it so much. (Okay, I shamelessly laughed and choked back tears through a good three-quarters of the film, but then again a part of me will always be a Catholic boy from New Jersey.) Sure it is outsized, and sure some of it is bloody--a stapler will never just be a stapler again--but much of it is done with wit, restraint, and a compassion that's rare on the big screen. And it’s pretty hard not to be riveted by what it knows about the life of the performer.

Click here for a brief montage of Marisa Tomei's scenes.

The Golden Gate (Or: A Day in San Francisco)

Primordial Rocks

Sometimes I think part of my work as a grown-up is to re-see the signposts of my childhood with clarity. I don’t think I was so much taken with Seal Rocks when I was twelve. My family had come to San Francisco after spending two weeks in Los Angeles, and I wasn’t exactly pleased to give up all that sunshine for raincoats and fog. But something about that experience—the ruins of Sutro Baths? The windows of the Cliff House facing those moody, primordial rocks?--must have stayed with me, or else I wouldn’t have wanted to go again with Mark. It turns out Mark also visited Seal Rocks as a kid, and he, like me, didn’t remember very much of it either. I think we were both much more interested in the man made at that time in our lives. Rocks and moss and moodiness and ruin—what’s a hormonal, sensory-overloaded teenager to do with all that?

Eichlers in the Rain: San Mateo Highlands

I know I've said a few words about Eichler Homes before, but these are the first taken with my new camera, which Mark gave to me on Christmas. I haven't exactly said it directly, but these are the houses that float in and out of all my books, if not literally, then figuratively, so I was beyond pleased to drive through the 700-home San Mateo Highlands, which is the largest contiguous neighborhood of Eichlers anywhere. Their optimism, their lack of pretense, the breaking down of indoor and outdoor--they're the kind of houses that some of the characters in my upcoming novel are dedicating themselves to restoring.






Click here to read about the San Mateo Highlands Eichler Home Tour 2009.

One Ringing Chord that Pulsed

I. from Tinkers
Paul Harding

Howard shivered, suddenly cold. Summer would anneal the chilled earth, but for now the water was so mineral and hard it seemed to ring. Howard heard the water reverberating through the soil and around the roots. Water lay ankle-deep amid the grass. Puddles wobbled and the light cast on them through the clouds shimmered and they looked like tin cymbals. They looked as if they would ring if tapped with a stick. The puddles rang. The water rang. Howard dropped his tapestry of grass and flowers. The buzzing bees joined into one ringing chord that pulsed. The fields rang and spun.

II. In the Flowers from Merriweather Post Pavilion
Animal Collective

In the Flowers - Animal Collective

Hope Made Wise By Dread

Inauguration Day
Frank Bidart

Today, despite what is dead

staring out across America I see since
Lincoln gunmen
nursing fantasies of purity betrayed,
dreaming to restore
the glories of their blood and state

despite what is dead but lodged within us, hope

under the lustrous flooding moon
the White House is still
Whitman's White House, its
gorgeous front
full of reality, full of illusion

hope made wise by dread begins again

(Click here to hear Frank Bidart read this poem.)

Ordinary Time

Ordinary Time from The Kingdom of Ordinary Time
Marie Howe

A Thursday--no--a Friday someone said.
What year was it?
Just after the previous age ended, it began.
And although the scientists still studied the heavens
and the stars blazed--if the evening wasn't cloudy--
what happened did not occur in public view.
Some said it simply didn't happen, although others insisted they knew
        all about it
and made many intricate plans.

Sing the Names of the Dead Who Brought Us Here

Click here for the New York Times' transcript of Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem.

                                              * * *

Update: Mark just found the poem with Elizabeth's intended line and stanza breaks. To see the full text, click here.

To Speak (Or: Happy Inauguration Day!)

Ars Poetica #92: Marcus Garvey on Elocution from American Sublime
Elizabeth Alexander

Elocution means to speak out.
That is to say, if you have a tale to tell,
tell it and tell it well.

This I was taught.

To speak properly you must have sound and good teeth.
You must have clear nostrils.
Your lungs must be sound.
Never try to make a speech on a hungry stomach.

Don’t chew your words but talk them out plainly.
Always see that your clothing is properly arranged before you get
        on a platform.
You should not make any mistakes in pronouncing your words
because that invites amusement for certain people.

To realize I was trained for this,
expected to speak out, to speak well.
To realize, my family believed
I would have words for others.

An untidy leader is always a failure.
A leader’s hair should always be well kept.
His teeth must also be in perfect order.
Your shoes and other garments must also be clean.
If you look ragged, people will not trust you.

My father’s shoe-shine box:
black Kiwi, cordovan Kiwi,
the cloths, the lambswool brush.

My grandmother’s dressing table:
potions for disciplining
anything scraggle or stray

For goodness sake, always speak out,
said Marcus Garvey,
said my parents,
said my grandparents,
and meant it.

The Fierce Urgency of Now

From I Have a Dream
Martin Luther King, Jr.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

Above: Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders of a municipal bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, riding an integrated bus, December 1956.

MLK - U2

A Curse and a Blessing

I. To the States
Walt Whitman

To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad.

Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing?
What deepening twilight—scum floating atop of the waters,
Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol?
What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North,
          your arctic freezings!)
Are those really Congressmen? are those the great Judges? is that
          the President?
Then I will sleep awhile yet, for I see that these States sleep,
          for reasons;
(With gathering murk, with muttering thunder and lambent shoots
          we all duly awake,
South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake.)

II. Prayer for Inaugural Events
Gene Robinson

To Gather Mushrooms and Dreams

Though I've never been to Mendocino, or even that far up the California coast, I'm weirdly moved by these two songs and the way Mendocino stands in for home here. I just read that Mendocino, like many towns along the northern California coast, was inhabited by settlers from New England. Doesn't this photo look a little like Provincetown or Gloucester? In that way, the place itself might have been built as a tribute to--and bulwark against--the life left behind. No wonder the name itself serves as such a ripe metaphor. And is there a lovelier set of syllables?

To Mendocino - Essra Mohawk

Talk To Me Of Mendocino - Kate & Anna McGarrigle