Year: 2022

august 26/RUN

5.15 miles
franklin loop
64 degrees / humidity: 85%
8:40 am

Wow, what a wonderful late summer morning! Sunny, but cool. Noisy (with cicadas), but calm. I was hoping to run nice and slow, and I did, until I started creeping up on a runner ahead of me. I was running just faster than them and slowly gaining. As I neared, I noticed the runner slowed their pace to let me pass (I do that too — unlike some other runners who speed up as you near — very annoying). So, I picked up the pace to pass and never slowed down again. Oops. So much for a slow run!

In the first miles of the run, lots of people seemed to be getting in my way. Running too close, or walking on the wrong side. When I noticed it was almost everyone, I realized it probably wasn’t them, but me. I must be in a bad mood. So I let go, stopped feeling hostility towards everyone else, and within a few minutes no one was getting in my way. Funny how that works.

10 Things I Heard

  1. the electric buzz of cicadas*
  2. a few fragments of conversation that I can’t remember
  3. an old van, bouncing around on the road, sounding like broken springs on an old mattress
  4. the radio in that same van, playing some music I couldn’t recognize
  5. a chipmunk** chucking or clucking (I like chuck better than cluck)
  6. water sprinkling out of the seeps in the limestone on the eastern side of the gorge, sounding almost like wind through the trees
  7. the rumble of a garbage truck in the alley at the beginning of my run as I made my way to the river
  8. the rowers down below
  9. the quick foot strikes of a runner behind, then beside, then way in front of me
  10. walking back, nearing my block, a mailman speaking to someone in his mail truck: Open the door and then look out to check for cars. Was he training another mailman? That’s my guess

*Speaking of cicadas, I recorded their loud buzz right after I finished my run:

august cicadas / 9:30 am on 26 august 2022

**Found this Ogden Nash poem about the chipmunk:

The Chipmunk/ Ogden Nash

My friends all know that I am shy,
But the chipmunk is twice as shy as I.
He moves with flickering indecision
Like stripes across the television.
He’s like the shadow of a cloud,
Or Emily Dickinson read aloud.

Emily Dickinson read aloud? Reactions to this line: Huh? No. Maybe. The maybe came when I remembered Susan Howe’s description of ED’s poetics of humility and hesitation in her book, My Emily Dickinson (I bought this book earlier this summer. Is this a sign that I should read it now?).

Emily Dickinson took the scraps from the separate “higher” female education many bright women of her time were increasingly resenting, combined them with voracious and “unladylike” outside reading, and used the combination. She built a new poetic form from her fractured sense of being eternally on inteIlectual borders, where confident masculine voices buzzed an alluring and inaccessible discourse, backward through history into aboriginal anagogy. Pulling pieces of geometry, geology, alchemy, philosophy, politics, biography, biology, mythology, and philology from alien territory, a “sheltered” woman audaciously invented a new grammar grounded in humility and hesitation. HESITATE from the Latin, meaning to stick. Stammer. To hold back in doubt, have difficulty speaking. “He may pause but he must not hesitate”-Ruskin. Hesitation circled back and surrounded everyone in that confident age of aggressive industrial expansion and brutal Empire building. Hesitation and Separation. The Civil War had split American in two. He might pause, She hesitated. Sexual, racial, and geographical separation are at the heart of Definition.

My Emily Dickinson/ Susan Howe

One more thing about the chipmunk. I find them irritating and loud and their hesitations (when crossing my path) or frantic scurrying after confounding my dog by hiding in the gutter, are annoying. Scott and I refer to them as chippies, like when we yell in exasperation at their incessant chucking or scurrying or darting, Chippies!

august 25/BIKESWIMBIKE

bike: 8.6 miles
lake nokomis and back
75 degrees
5:00 / 7:00 pm

Biked to Lake Nokomis for the last open swim of the season. Hooray for being able to see enough to bike safely! Hooray for having a trail for the whole way, and never having to ride in the road! Saw at least one surrey, a roller skier, some high school cross country runners, a little girl biking on her own (I thought about asking if she was okay, but she looked fine and I’m sure she was), a person on a blanket — or were they wrapped in a blanket? I couldn’t tell as I biked past — napping at the corner where you turn away from Hiawatha and towards the creek. This seemed like a strange place to stop and hang out. When I returned 2 hours later, they were still there. I mentioned this to Scott and he said he has seen a person at that spot too. He mentioned they were possible unhoused (which I learned from Scott is the term used now instead of homeless).

swim: 4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
75 degrees
5:30 pm


The final open swim of the year. I thought there would be one tomorrow — the calendar says there is — but the lifeguards announced that tonight was it. Glad I was able to make it. All season (and in seasons past, too), I’ve wanted to swim later, until the sun was lower on the water. Usually, I swim for an hour than I’m done. Tonight I stayed later (and the sun dropped sooner). I imagined the beautiful glow of a softening sun on the water as I neared the big beach. Instead, it was a harsh, overwhelmingly bright sun concealing all my sighting landmarks. I still knew where to go, but this time I was completely blind. When I looked up, all I saw was shine. No worries. I still made it with no problem (and no panic).

I tried to absorb as much of the swim as I could for the long winter and the spring, especially the image I’ve chosen to haunt me: rounding the second green buoy, swimming parallel to the beach, reaching for the small orange dot of a buoy far off in the distance. Tonight I noticed how the lake was empty in front of me until I reached a certain point, then the orange dot appeared, disappeared, then appeared again. So far, until suddenly it wasn’t.

10 Things to Remember When the Water is Iced Over

  1. finishing a loop, swimming parallel to the big beach: a row of giant swans (boats) stretching across the lake
  2. how the water darkens right under the buoy as I round it
  3. the silver flashes below
  4. a vee of geese just above the water
  5. before entering the water: standing on the shore, lining up the orange buoys — 1 2 3 in a row
  6. starting my workout out, waiting a few seconds, then diving down into the water as I start my strokes
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left
  8. the confidence (and complete lack of doubt) over where the buoy is — knowing even when I can’t see it, I’m swimming straight to it
  9. the gentle rocking of the choppy water
  10. on the rare day without wind when the water is still and quiet and I feel like I’m out there almost alone — just me, the fish, and the water

9 months until I get to do this again. As I stood in the shallow water at the end of my swim, I overheard one swimmer say to another: “I’m thinking of joining a pool for the off-season, but it’s not the same.” It isn’t the same, but I’m thinking of doing that too. I feel this urge to swim all winter. It’s harder. More expensive, difficult to get to a pool (especially when you can’t drive, like me), too many flip turns, harsh chlorine, crowded lanes.

Anything else I noticed? A swimming duck, a roaring military plane, 2 paddle boarders crossing right in front of me, the (too) straight arms of a stroking swimmer as they neared the first orange buoy, the completely opaque water — almost yellow. I tried to see my hand in front of me as it entered the water, but I couldn’t, how the far white buoy kept getting farther and farther away as I swam towards it.

It was a great season. Lots of loops. Felt strong and confident and happy. Was able to share some of it with my son. Could still see well enough to bike. Only missed a few days. Reached my goal of 100 loops. Only lost one nose plug (and a swim cap).

about buoys

 buoys are liminal. Both immersed in the water and bobbing in air. They are both warning and protection. Buoys indicate boundaries which are dynamic rather than fixed—boundaries comprised of light and imagination and mutual agreement. No hard lines, no barriers, no fence of barbwire and concrete…

Bright Buoy, Dark Sea/ Lauren K. Carlson

august 24/RUNSWIM

run: 3 miles
2 trails
75 degrees
10:10 am

Up above, a playlist: Harry Styles, Queen, Foo Fighters. Down below, the river gorge. An easy run.

surfaces run on: concrete, asphalt, dirt, grass, gravel, partly crushed acorns, decomposing leaves

Lots of chipmunks darting across the path. Lots of squirrels rustling in the dry brush. Busy, preparing for winter.

Turkeys! 6 or 7 of them just off the trail near the WPA steps at the 44th street parking lot. The one closest to the trail opened its wings in warning. Keep your distance! I did. I’m not messing with any wild turkeys!

Dripping sewer pipes. Light blue river. Fuzzy green vegetation, air. I couldn’t tell if it was my bad vision or some haze, but everything was soft and out of focus. I felt removed from the world, floating above the path in a bubble.

Down in the oak savanna, they haven’t trimmed back the wildflowers and tall grass in months. I ran through a tall line of sunflowers. Hello friends!

Smelled the sewer, almost tripped on a root. Powered up the damp gravel to the beat of a gulping chipmunk — what would you call that sound they make, almost like the hitting of a woodblock?

Noticed several leaning trees. Will they fall during the next heavy storm?

Thought about a few lines I just read while reviewing a newspaper article about the farmer who sold the last plot of land to Minneapolis for Lake Nokomis. The farmer’s name? Ebenezer Hodson. An interesting guy. The lines?

In the 1850s, his aging uncle Isaac — who fought in the Revolutionary War — urged him to seek his fortune in the Minnesota Territory. Treaties with the Dakota people had opened up land for white settlers west of the Mississippi

Treaties with the Dakota people had opened up land for white settlers? I imagined writing an erasure poem using this article that focused on how the land was stolen, the treaties illegal. Now, after looking at that phrase again, I’m struck by its passivity, as if the land just opened up, or the treaty did the work and not the settler colonizers who crafted their dubious/illegal/violent treaties and then failed to honor them. It reminds me of a poem I posted on nov 13, 2021.

Passive Voice/ LAURA DA’

I use a trick to teach students
how to avoid passive voice.

Circle the verbs.
Imagine inserting “by zombies”
after each one.

Have the words been claimed
by the flesh-hungry undead?
If so, passive voice.

I wonder if these
sixth graders will recollect,
on summer vacation,
as they stretch their legs
on the way home
from Yellowstone or Yosemite
and the byway’s historical marker
beckons them to the
site of an Indian village—

Where trouble was brewing.
Where, after further hostilities, the army was directed to enter. 
Where the village was razed after the skirmish occurred.
Where most were women and children.

Riveted bramble of passive verbs
etched in wood—
stripped hands
breaking up from the dry ground
to pinch the meat
of their young red tongues.

swim: 1 small loop / .5 big loop
cedar lake open swim
84 degrees
5:30 pm

The last Cedar Lake swim of the season. FWA came along and we did a loop together — he swam breaststroke, I swam freestyle, with some butterfly and backstroke mixed in. FWA ended up going to 4 or 5 open swims this season, and swam a loop at Lake Nokomis once. It was fun to share it with him, and good for me to have a few swims where I didn’t just swim as fast and as hard as I could.

Cedar Lake was on brand tonight, for sure. No lifeguards around, no buoys, loud music blasting across the lake, open water swimmers swimming even without the lifeguards and wherever they wanted — way off to the side, stopping in the middle. In the past this probably would have bothered me, but not now. Am I mellowing out? I hope so.

There was no wind, no waves, a warming light from the setting sun. A beautiful night! So happy I was able to spend these moments with FWA!

august 23/RUNSWIM

run: 4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
66 degrees / humidity: 79%
8:30 am

As (almost) always, another good run. Was lulled into a dreamy state by the gentle whooshing of the cars as I ran south on the river road trail without headphones. Then ran a minute faster per mile while listening to Taylor Swift on the way back. Do I remember any of my thoughts? Not really.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. a metal shovel scraping the bare pavement
  2. a regular I haven’t seen in a while: the woman in a skirt and sandals that I used to see when I ran south last year. Not sure if I ever gave her a name
  3. an older couple with a dog, spread out across the entire walking path
  4. Mr. Morning! — Good morning!
  5. the loud crash of an acorn falling to the ground, then the crack of another as a squirrel opened it
  6. the falls, rushing over the limestone ledge
  7. my shadow, below me in the trees, getting a closer look of the creek below the falls. At one point, she waved to me
  8. the bugs! Just past the south end of the ford bridge, after Locks and Dam no 1, thee’s a field with tall grass and lots of bugs: crickets, cicadas…maybe some frogs too?
  9. no surreys out yet at the falls
  10. a roller skier in the parking lot of locks and dam no 1

Have I posted this poem before? I don’t think so, but I definitely read it and thought about the idea of being of use. I like the water/swimming metaphors throughout.

to be of use :: marge piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

I’m not sure how I feel about it, or how often I manage to achieve, but I am drawn to the idea of being useful, doing something useful. A problem: I am also drawn to things that might not immediately seem useful (or practical), but are essential and necessary. What does that mean? I’ll have to think about that some more.

addendum, 25 august: Thinking more about what is useful and useless, partly inspired by Jenny Odell’s How To Do Nothing (among others) and her critique of productivity and who it serves. The version of useful that Odell and others are critiquing is about being used/exploited and serving/feeding the interests of the most powerful. That it not what Marge Piercy is talking about, and yet, the terms work and usefulness are so tethered to capitalism, sometimes it’s hard for me to read them otherwise. My efforts to do so, and to rethink/reclaim work, is another one of my ongoing projects.

Today I started reading Julie Otsuka’s The Swimmers. I LOVED the first chapter (which is as far as I’ve gotten) and her description of the various types of people who are drawn to swimming regularly in a basement pool. I could really relate to her descriptions of the different types of people and their quirks.

I love this description of why swimming matters:

And for a brief interlude we are at home in the world. Bad moods lift, tics disappear, memories reawaken, migraines dissolve, and slowly, slowly the chatter in our minds begins to subside as stroke after stroke, length after length, we swim. And when we are finished with our laps we hoist outselves up out of the pool, dripping and refreshed, our equilibrium restored, ready to face another day on land.

I also enjoy her description of how people are categorized “down below.” Up above, in their “real lives,” people have a variety of jobs, character quirks, relationship struggles, illnesses, “but down below, at the pool, we are only one of three things: fast-lane people, medium-lane people or the slow.”

I feel like I could type up this entire chapter; there are so many details that resonate. Since that would be too much, I think I’ll just make a list of the various lists she has (which in the book aren’t in list form, but in descriptive paragraphs):

Lists in Julie Otsuka’s Chapter, “The Underground Pool”

  • the reasons why regular swimmers come to the underground pool
  • how the swimmers leave their troubles behind in the pool
  • what the swimmers are escaping “up above”
  • the rules at the pool
  • hobbies/mistakes/conditions/occupations up above, in the “real world”
  • the three types down below
  • how swimming restores the aging swimmers
  • people to watch out for
  • the locker room regulars who don’t swim
  • the rotating lifeguards
  • what the swimmers dream about when they dream about swimming (which is every night)
  • the various rituals the swimmers must complete as part of the swimming
  • things found at the bottom of the pool

Oh, I’m so happy I found this book! I checked it out of the library, but I might need to buy it.

updated, 23 september: If you’ve read this book, you know I’m in for a shock, and I was. Honestly, I will need to come back to the rest of the chapters, which never return to swimming again, sometime in the future. As I read about the main character being admitted to a care facility, I was dealing with my beloved mother-in-law being hospitalized and then needing a nursing home (and now in hospice and days? weeks? from dying).

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
83 degrees
5:30 pm

Made it to my 100th loop tonight! It was too crowded — on the beach and in the water, but it was a great swim. If I had had time, I could have done a loop or two more. Maybe on Thursday? The water was warm and a little choppy. I couldn’t see where I was going on the way back from the little beach, but it didn’t matter because I knew where to swim. A few menancing swans.

favorite thing about tonight’s swim? the light, especially what the light did to the water. A late summer light, softer, making the water look soft too. I could tell the sun would be setting earlier than it had in July.

an image I’ll remember in February: rounding the green buoy, swimming parallel to the big beach, heading towards the first orange buoy to start another loop. I see the orange buoy way off in the distance, looking impossibly far away and small. Such a strange vision: the buoy so far away, this part of the loop looking extra long. I imagine myself visualizing that stretch of water with the far off orange dot sometime this winter when I’m missing the water.

august 22/RUN

5 miles
franklin hill turn around
67 degrees
9:00 am

What a beautiful morning! No bugs, not much wind, shade. Ran to a little past the bottom of the franklin hill, turned around, then ran until I reached the franklin bridge. Stopped to walk for a few minutes. Recorded some thoughts. Put on a playlist.

Noticed the tree that looks like a tuning fork, but forgot to count the stones stacked on the cairn. Also noticed the spot at the bottom of the tunnel of bridges where there’s green air. Heard some rowers and at least one roller skier.

As I ran north on the river road trail, 3 different bikers passed me, a few minutes apart. They all looked the same: white woman in black shorts and black tank top. Were they, and if not, did they look the same to people with better vision? I looked at their shoes, all different. Woman 1: black biking shoes, white socks. Woman 2: running shoes. Woman 3: sandals. For me, looking at feet can be helpful. Why?

Chanted a few triple berries — strawberry/blueberry/blackberry — but then became distracted.

Listened to the birds, including the black-capped chickadee’s feebee song.

At the bottom of the hill, the river was flat and brown and still.

Noticed a bench facing a wall of green, no view of the river. A man was standing behind the bench, looking at the wall? Or maybe finding a way through to the river?

Speaking of a way through, I caught a glimpse of shimmering white light through the trees. The river on fire from the sun!

Lately I’ve been thinking that I feel more like a boat than a fish in the water. Today’s thought: although we often think that a fish is a living thing and a boat is not, is that true? I thought about how boats decay — wood decomposes, metal rusts. What lives on a boat that makes it die? Where am I going with this? Not sure. I am interested in the idea of rust and rot and decay and its relationship to change, transformation, and breathing/air. Also the idea of things like boats, that we might imagine only as objects that are dead, as living things that breathe.

Water and Stone/ Frances Boyle

“When viewed in deep time, things come alive that seemed inert. … Ice breathes. Rock has tides. Mountains ebb and flow. Stone pulses. We live on a restless Earth.”
—Robert Macfarlane in Underlands

Inside your house, the radiator ticks, floors
shift and mutter. The skeleton of struts
and beams is clad with plaster and paint.

You’ve adorned the walls with more paint
—on canvas, on paper. A visiting friend
admires the art, the book-crammed shelves.

Talk turns to what she’s read, what
you haven’t. Excuses for uncracked spines.

Your dog’s steps are halting now, nail-
clack on hardwood more syncopated
than staccato. You hear him sigh.

In the driveway, a crunch as tires compress
the snow. A squirrel traverses wire and bare
branches. The tremble at leafless ends.

You feel the slow flow of tidal rock
how the current supports you, carries you.

august 21/SWIM

5.5 loops (5 big + 3 little)
lake nokomis open swim
68 degrees
9:45 am

Mission accomplished! Today, I was the last one off of the course. I had been planning to swim the entire 2 hours, but the lifeguards started late (staffing problems), so I didn’t get going across the lake until almost 10. Before the buoys were out, I swam 3 little loops around the white buoys. The water! So wonderful: calm, buoyant, not too hot or cold. Perfect conditions for swimming for 110 minutes.

This swim was a highlight of the summer. I felt strong and fast and confident. I never doubted myself — what I was doing or where I was going. I think I wrote about this last year (or a few years ago?). When I am swimming I don’t question what I’m doing, or wonder whether I should be doing it some other way. I don’t feel judged, by me or anyone else. I mostly feel this way when I’m running too, but not as intensely as when I’m in the water swimming. I would like to find this feeling in other things, but right now, swimming is enough.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. swans (boats), off to my right, 2 or 3 in a line, going the same speed as me
  2. later, a lone swan (boat) to my left, right by the far green buoy
  3. a few vines, passing over my arm
  4. the middle green buoy was flopping over to one side — did they forget to inflate it all the way, or does it have a leak?
  5. blue sky with a few streaks of clouds, bright sun
  6. a few birds — seagulls? geese? — above me, their wings spread wide
  7. a military plane, rumbling
  8. extremely cold pockets of water — so cold! It felt like swimming through ice water. Instant goosebumps
  9. felt extra buoyant and high on the water — no problems breathing to my left
  10. on the last loop (I started it at 11:10), I felt like I was the only one in the water. I stopped briefly to check: silence. Such a cool feeling to be out there alone

a few things to put in a poem, or poems

  • the joy of swimming fast, past other swimmers
  • the irritation of another swimmer pushing me off course
  • the image of pink disembodied heads bobbing in the water
  • feeling slightly competitive, wanting to be one of the fastest (I usually am), but also wanting faster swimmers to hurry up and get past me so I can be alone in the water again
  • the dreamy state I felt after getting out to go to the bathroom and returning to the water — almost like my body had dissolved into the lake
  • my feet, acting as rudders
  • when a green buoy lines up just right with the white sails of the boats just beyond it (which seems to happen a lot), I lose the color — the green is gone

I found this poem on twitter yesterday:

A Drink of Water/ Jeffrey Harrison

When my nineteen-year-old son turns on the kitchen tap
and leans down over the sink and tilts his head sideways
to drink directly from the stream of cool water,
I think of my older brother, now almost ten years gone,
who used to do the same thing at that age;

And when he lifts his head back up and, satisfied,
wipes the water dripping from his cheek
with his shirtsleeve, it’s the same casual gesture
my brother used to make; and I don’t tell him
to use a glass, the way our father told my brother,

because I like remembering my brother
when he was young, decades before anything
went wrong, and I like the way my son
becomes a little more my brother for a moment
through this small habit born of a simple need,

which, natural and unprompted, ties them together
across the bounds of death, and across time . . .
as if the clear stream flowed between two worlds
and entered this one through the kitchen faucet,
my son and brother drinking the same water.

I love this poem and the idea of gestures/acts/habits getting passed on, serving as reminders and connections.

august 20/RUN

5.1 miles
ford loop
65 degrees / humidity: 85%
9:15 am

A good run. I stopped after 3.5 miles. Partly to check out the view at the overlook, and partly because I sped up too much between miles 2 and 3 (I went a minute faster than mile 2 on mile 3) and needed a break. A beautiful morning. No rowers or roller skiers or radios blasting. A few big packs of runners. Mostly cloudless sky, bright, blue river.

favorite view

Take the steps down from the lake st/marshall ave bridge and head up the hill on the east river road trail. Near the top, enjoy the view on your right side of the wide open river, stretching out below you. The best part of this view: the openness! nothing between you and the river, except for air.

overheard conversation fragment

Two women walkers. One said this to the other: “It’s time for them to go back to school!” Agreed. But, who is them? Their kids? Somebody else’s kids? Their grandkids? And, why do they need to be back in school? Are they bored? Annoying? Causing problems? Wanting to learn?

an interview I’m reading

Writing a Grove: A Conversation with Poet Laureate Ada Limón

Ada: Absolutely. I worked on it over several months while meeting with this wonderful writing group. We have to bring in something each time we meet, and I just kept writing about trees. Week after week, it kept happening and happening. I couldn’t stop. But they were so supportive and wonderful. They became a sort of an anchor for the project. And it just kept growing. I didn’t expect it to be so long, but I also felt like it could go on forever.

Camille: Some of the obsessions are never going to leave you, and to me, that was part of what I loved. With each page I thought, Oh, I’ve seen this before, but how is she going to manage it differently? It reminded me of the Miles Davis quote about John Coltrane that was a guiding force for me as I was writing my first book, when I was really worried that I was doing the same thing over and over and over again. And I read the liner notes where Davis wrote about Coltrane’s first solo album. He said, “I don’t understand why people don’t get John Coltrane’s music. All he is trying to do is play the same note as many ways as he possibly can.”

I love this quote from Miles Davis and this idea of doing something over and over again but in different ways and the idea of obsessions. Some of my obsessions: open views (running) and staying on course (open swimming). It’s interesting to notice how I return again and again to these two things in this online log. I’d like to play around with variations on this theme: Even though I can barely or hardly ever see the buoys, I manage to stay on course. This never stops astonishing me.

Scrolling through my reading list, I found another interview with Ada Limón (she’s very busy these days!) over at The Rumpus: Resurrection On A Daily Basis: Exploring The Hurting Kind with Ada Limón. Here’s a bit about deep looking:

The Rumpus: You write, “I am getting so good at watching.” What is the role of close observation in poetry, and how as poets can we better cultivate the skill?

Ada Limón: I think that’s a great place to start. Really watching, noticing, and deep looking—not the distracted looking, but really curious looking—that’s a way of loving and a way of valuing, and I don’t think I knew that before. I think that I thought watching was part of life, and I thought it was part of the creative work of being a poet. And I always thought observation was important, but I didn’t know it was also the thing that connected you to the world on a larger scale, not just in the way of making poems and making art, but in the way of making your life feel connected and whole and complete.

When I’m feeling blue, which I often do, just watching even for five minutes, the birds, or even just looking at my plant in the window, just the smallest thing, or looking at my dog, I’m reminded of what it is to be a living thing amidst this living world. In some ways it takes me out of myself. If I were to offer that to other people, what it is to look without the foregone conclusion, without the narrative, without the—What am I going to turn this into?—but instead to look with a real curiosity and to de-center themselves a little bit in that looking.

Resurrection On A Daily Basis: Exploring The Hurting Kind with Ada Limón.

Deep looking is without judgment or expectation or a pre-formed narrative. It involves de-centering ourselves. She describes it as watching or looking or staring? Does this looking always mean close scrutiny? Limón suggests that this watching connects us to the world.

Now I’m thinking about another passage on looking/observing/noticing that I recently encountered (via BrainPickings/the Marginalia) from the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne:

The best way to get a vivid impression and feeling of a landscape, is to sit down before it and read, or become otherwise absorbed in thought; for then, when your eyes happen to be attracted to the landscape, you seem to catch Nature unawares, and see her before she has time to change her aspect. The effect lasts but for a single instant, and passes away almost as soon as you are conscious of it; but it is real, for that moment. It is as if you could overhear and understand what the trees are whispering to one another; as if you caught a glimpse of a face unveiled, which veils itself from every willful glance. The mystery is revealed, and after a breath or two, becomes just as great a mystery as before.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

I like the idea of not focusing on (or closely watching) something, but letting it find you. As I read this again though, I don’t like the language he uses — “overhear, catch Nature unawares, catching a glimpse of a face unveiled.” I don’t like the idea of spying on nature (or being a peeping Tom!).

One more thing I found in my Safari Reading List that fits (loosely) with my discussion so far. In the first interview with Limón mentioned in this entry, Camille Dunghy names Ada Limón’s collection of small essays a grove. Here’s a wonderful poem I found on twitter a few days ago, with the same name:

The Grove/ Jay Hopler

Like unborn suns in bunches hung from branches bent by
years spent holding up such pulp-plump fruit,
Gorgeous and corpulent, their green rinds tight
And shining, sheened with rain, the season’s first blood
Oranges are on the trees.

How beautiful they would look against a blue
Sky! How weary they look against this black
One–––.

To be born tired and to live tired and to die tired.
To die of tiredness. Not as hard to imagine as it used to be.
Was ever there a sky this low?
No, and still there’s not.
It’s just a flock of black-

Birds shrouding out above the trees. The moon
Is up there…somewhere.
And the stars.

august 19/SWIM

2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
65 degrees
10:00 am

Again this morning, I thought open swim would be cancelled because of thunderstorms. Only delayed! I did a fast two loops while Scott ran around the lake. The water was cooler, but I liked that.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. the cry of a seagull
  2. then, a bunch of seagulls* congregating on the beach
  3. a grayish white sky
  4. the green buoy looked white from a distance and like a sail from a sailboat
  5. setting up the course, the lifeguard directing the other lifeguards on where to place the buoys used the following as points of orientation: the 50th street beach (the little beach), cedar bridge, and wheels of fun. Wheels of fun? I delightedly thought this might be some inside joke until I mentioned it to Scott and he said it was a reference to the bike rental place. I prefer to think of it as an inside joke between lifeguards referring to some place or thing or memory about the lake or guarding it
  6. a few silver flashes below
  7. a vine crossing over my arm
  8. a menancing swan pedal boat in the middle of the course**
  9. feeling buoyant and strong, floating on top of the water
  10. breathing every 5 strokes

*some names for a collection of seagulls: a flock (and I ran, I ran so far away), colony, squabble, flotilla, scavenging, gullery

**some names for a collection of swans: wedge, ballet, lamentation, whiteness, regatta. I think I prefer, a menace of swans.

Here’s a useful article about collective names for birds: Popular Names for Flocks of Birds and How They Fly Together

Sometimes when I’m in the water, swimming fast and with strong strokes, I remember my much younger self: Sara, age 8. Strong, brave, sturdy, solid, a force to be reckoned with. This poem makes me think of her:

Girl in the Woods/ Alice White

I get glimpses of her in pictures, in
a t-shirt and no underwear, before
she cared, or bareback on a horse before
the branch. Before boobs, before boys. Before
school she was everywhere, that much is sure —
before the world condensed into a shape
to fit into. Some days I can sense her:
I disappeard from a girl scout campout
to comandeer a wooden raft I found,
looking. My counsellor shook her head, just said
I wouldn’t have expected this of you.
Whever I think I’ve got hold of her,
she kicks my shin and wriggles from my grasp,
runs for the trees, calls back, Try and catch me —

august 18/SWIM

3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
75 degrees
5:30 pm

Hooray for thunderstorms holding off until I was done! At the end of my third loop, I reached the beach, stood up, then heard thunder and the lifeguard telling everyone to exit the water. Great timing!

I had been tracking the storm all day. I knew it was coming after 6. I figured I would be able to do one loop, maybe two.

At the start of the swim, the sky was blue and I thought, there’s no way it’s raining during open swim. But within a few minutes, I started to notice the sky was darkening to my left. 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right, clear blue sky. 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left, dark blue. Then darker blue.

I swam faster, trying to outrun the storm. You could tell it was coming because the swells were getting bigger. No whitecaps, but biggish waves crashing into me. I was working hard — and getting to punch the water a lot, which I enjoy.

At the end of two loops, I stood in the shallow water and thought about stopping. Then I heard someone say, I’m going to do one more loop and I thought, yes, another loop sounds good. And it was, but also very hard. My legs were ready to be done way out in the middle of the lake. I’m very glad I made it back without any cramps.

I stayed on course the whole time, swimming right to the buoys even when I didn’t think I was seeing them. My legs, like rudders, correcting for when the wind blew me off course.

Saw at least one military plane, flying lower in the sky. Lots of seagulls swooping down. Some silver flashes of fish below. One prickly vine that grazed my leg, making it briefly sting.

Found this great essay about one of my favorite poem forms, the Abecedarius (which I’ve been calling the Abecedarian): Don Dada on the Down Low Getting Godly in His Game: Between and Beyond Play and Prayer in the Abecedarius (This article was mentioned in an excerpt of an interview with Matthew Harvey that I read).

I love playing with words, sometimes in the hopes of opening doors to new poems, and sometimes for distraction and escape. Yesterday, I was stuck in the waiting room of a medical clinic, which was both a “regular” doctors’ office and urgent care. I forgot my phone — what a bad time to forget my phone! — and couldn’t block out the sounds — the menancing coughs, the grunts and sighs, one angry man demanding a COVID test. I tried to read The Odyssey, but I was too distracted. So I got out my Plague Notebook, and decided to rethink the acronym, ER (I was not in an ER, but Urgent Care…close enough). Instead of Emergency Room, ER might mean:

  • End Racism
  • Endure Rain
  • Eat Radishes
  • Emit Radon
  • Erase Rust
  • Engulf Red
  • Enough Ruffage!
  • Early Run
  • Easter Roast
  • Ether Residue
  • Eggplant Ratatouille
  • Exam Review
  • Everything Ruined
  • Escape Room
  • Edible Road
  • Elephant Rug
  • Evergreen Rhyme
  • Escalating Risk
  • Expanding Rip
  • Elevator Rot
  • Empty Repair
  • Evasive Rock
  • Engineered Roof
  • Ecological Rap
  • Envelope Ripped
  • Epileptic Rooster
  • Enormous Racoon
  • Eleven Rainbows
  • Enchilada Recon
  • Elegant Rhinos
  • Electric Rump
  • Emerging Rest
  • Energy Rental
  • Eek! a Rat!

My favorites: Enchilada Recon, Electric Rump, Elevator Rot, Ecological Rap
Will any poems/lyric essays emerge from this? Probably not, but it sure helped me endure an uncomfortable hour in a crowded, coughing waiting room!

august 17/RUNSWIM

run: 5 miles
franklin loop
70 degrees
9:00 am

Such a nice morning for a run! Sunny, with lots of shade. No stiff wind, only a welcoming breeze. Heard the rowers on the river. Yesterday, as Scott and I were driving on the river road, we encountered a truck with a trailer filled with 4 (or more?) big, 8-person rowing boats — they’re called octuple sculls. So long. Wow!

Can I remember 10 things from my run? I’ll try…

10 Things I Noticed

  1. a revving chainsaw in the gorge, near the floodplain forest
  2. a coxswain’s distorted voice, counting off drills
  3. someone cutting across the trail, then disappearing through a hole in the treeline
  4. cracked open acorns underfoot
  5. 4 or 5 stones stacked on the cairn
  6. a slash of orange spray paint marking a tree’s trunk — will it be cut down soon?
  7. crossing the franklin bridge, a sign: roadwork ahead (RJP’s perpetual joke: Road work ahead? I sure hope so!). Then, a few trucks parked on the side of the road
  8. the ravine smelling like a porta potty or a poorly venitilated outhouse
  9. my toe — the one next to the big toe on my left foot. Ouch! After my swim on Monday, I thought I had completely washed the sand from between my toes before I went out for a run. Nope. A few miles in, I got a blister. That blister popped and become a raw sore that ached today, even through the bandaid
  10. no geese, no music, no roller skiers

Last night, Scott and I started watching the second season of Only Murders in the Building. So good! In the second episode, a character played by Shirley MacLaine describes her vision:

I have a bill of sale here somewhere that I… when I first bought it from the artist, and…

Oh God. Here! You find it! ( grunts )

I’ve got macular degeneration. I…

Nothing but a big bubble in my middle vision, and…

But I have very accurate peripheral vision, so you just…

Scott and I agreed that we had never heard vision/macular degeneration described in that way before on television. Very cool, and accurate. Such a great thing to include as a way to educate people on different ways of seeing.

I found a wonderful craft essay this morning by Amorak Huey: The Prose Poem & the Startling Image. I hope to write more about it soon. For now, here’s a prose poem he includes in his discussion of finding images that startle:

poem about water/ sam sax

i get it. your body is blah blah blah percent water. oceans levitate, clouds urinate on the ground that grows our food. this is considered a miracle – this is a problem of language. i could go on for days with facts about the ocean and it will always sound like i’m talking about love. i could say: no man has ever seen its deepest trenches, we know less about its floor than the stars, if you could go deep enough all your softest organs will be forced out of your mouth. you can be swallowed alive and no one will hear a sound. last summer three boys drowned in the sound and no one remembers their names, they came up white and soft as plastic grocery bags. i guess you could call that love. you’d be wrong.

Now I’ve started reading more of sam sax’s work. Water is a big theme in their collection, Bury it. And, how about this wonderful image in their poem, Prayer for the Mutilated World?

after phone lines do nothing
but cut the sky into sheet music
& our phones are just expensive
bricks of metal & glass

Or how water works in this poem:

swim: 1 small loop = .5 loop
cedar lake open swim
76 degrees
6:00 pm

Went to open swim with FWA. Just as we arrived, it started to rain. Then it rained harder. We almost turned back, but we didn’t. By the time we made it to the water, the rain had stopped and the sun was peeking through the clouds. The water wasn’t as clear as it has been, but still much clearer than Lake Nokomis. When we reached the far beach, we stopped for a few minutes. FWA picked up some rocks (with his feet, underwater), and started knocking them together. They made a sharp satisfying clicking noise that we could hear above water. I wonder if other swimmer could hear it below, and from how far away? Did it bother the fish?