3.15 miles
turkey hollow loop
69 degrees / humidity: 86%
10:00 am
Windy and warm this late morning. As I started the run, I recited Christina Rosetti’s “Who Has Seen the Wind?”:
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has the seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
Then Richard Siken’s “I am the wind and the wind is invisible, all the leaves/tremble but I am invisible” from “Lovesong of the Square Root of Negative One.”
It might be fun to have a few favorite lines for each type of weather so I could recite them as I ran. What could I do for heat and humidity?
Ran south on the river road trail. Crowded with too many pairs of bikers not moving over enough. Unlike yesterday, my attitude/mood, wasn’t the problem; it was the narrow trail and bikers’ unwillingness to bike single file in these narrow spots. I decided to cross over to Edmund and do the turkey hollow loop instead of staying on the trail. Before I crossed, I think I heard the rowers down below.
No turkeys in turkey hollow. Later, near Becketwood, I thought I saw a turkey, but it was only some dark plastic wrapped around a tree, protecting its trunk. I’ve thought these wraps were turkeys before, many times.
I don’t remember the river at all. Did I forgot to look? Was it still too veiled?
Disputed Tread/ Hazel Hall
Where she steps a whir,
Like dust about her feet,
Follows after her
Down the dustless street.
Something struggles there:
The forces that contend
Violently as to where
Her pathway is to end.
Issues, like great hands, grip
And wrestle for her tread;
One would strive to trip,
And one would go ahead.
Conflicting strengths in her
Grapple to guide her feet,
Raising an unclean whir,
Like dust, upon the street.
Here’s the About This Poem description:
“Disputed Tread” first appeared in Walkers (Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1922). The poem, composed of rhyming quatrains in a loose trimeter, likens the blur, or “whir,” of the movement of one’s feet to the cloud of dust it would otherwise rouse on a dusty road. Regarding the poem, poet Margery Swett Mansfield remarks, in her review of Hall’s Walkers published in Poetry vol. 22, no. 5 (August 1923), titled “Beyond Sight and Hearing,” that “[s]urely no one has ever wrung more meaning from a footfall! Feet tell her the truth even when her mind would prefer the more comforting conclusions of philosophy.”
Feet tell her the truth even when her mind would prefer the more comforting conclusions of philosophy. I like this idea of the truth of our striking feet.
Before I ran this morning, I found this interview with Victoria Chang: The Arc Moves a Little Upwards: A Conversation with Victoria Chang Curated by Lisa Olstein. Here are a few bits I’d like to remember:
I use many different types of syllabics such as tankas, katautas, chokas.
Later, I’ll look these up. I’m always looking for new forms!
LO: “Form sets the thought free,” says Anne Carson, and I believe her. How did form and thought co-evolve in the unfolding of this work?
VC: I love this quote. I have heard similar things said in different ways. I myself sometimes say form is like putting the guard rails up while bowling–what freedom that gives to the process of bowling (one feels more free while releasing the ball) and then there’s a better chance of getting a strike. But of course, Anne Carson is more elegant than I am with her quote.
For The Trees Witness Everything book, form was the main constraint (and freedom) of the poems. I had to rewrite lines, phrases, in some cases, entire poems because the syllables didn’t work. The constraints truly freed up my mind to go wherever the poem needed/wanted to go.