3.1 miles
locks and dam #1 and back
72 degrees / humidity: 84%
air quality: 117
Hot! Humid! Hazy! The shade helped. Avoided the crowded river road trail. Heading south I ran on the narrow, root-filled dirt trail on the grassy boulevard until I reached the parking lot, then to trail to Locks and Dam #1. Heading back north, I ran on the Winchell Trail.
There was a moment when I heard the soft rush of cars, the trickle of water out of the sewer pipe, and . . .? I know there were 3 distinct sounds that I noticed all at once and that I imagined putting in a contrapuntal poem. Was the third sound the rowers? the birds? the tapping which might have been a woodpecker on a tree, or a squirrel with a nut? It wasn’t the wind, because there is no wind today. I felt its lack, but also saw it on the surface of the water. Still, thick. It wasn’t the buzzing of workers sawing or mowing or building something. What was it? Just remembered! The soft then sharp buzz of cicadas, which came in waves. I knew I’d remember it! (It only took 2 hours.)
The common thread for these 3 noises is their steady, insistent beat, not moving time forward, but around and around, on repeat.
swimming words
Catch water, thumb first then the semi-circle pull,
arms straight, centre, down. Palm push back, twist
shoulder to breath. And recover.
Kick. Kick. Kick.
Catch. Pull. Push. Twist, Recover.
CatchPullPush. TwistRecover.
CatchPullPushTwistRecover.
Catchpullpushtwistrecover
(No Moon/ Tanis Rideout)
The Catch/ Tanis Rideout
Stretch bone to breakwall and the tidal roar of thirty thousand
swamps, refuses to crest, to break. Thirst for the bubbled silence
of midnight, midlake, midstroke when the limelight was all
to reach for, a trap door opening to a world below.
Pulse counts in an orchestra — it’s only a paper moon
waterlogged and beaming up, a lighthouse lamp spinning
in time. A cose to decipher all the way to safe harbour.
There’s a table laid in checkered cloth. The catch of the day muscles away.
At the edge, pulled bodily from a lake that holds fast and drags
thighs, shins against stacked stone and laps the bloody threads.
It won’t return you whole to the land.
Love the title of this poem and the last line. Does the lake return me whole to the land? What does it mean to be returned whole? And, is that to be desired?
I was planning to do open swim at Cedar Lake tonight, but there is a head advisory and it’s 90 degrees, so Scott and I will go on Wednesday instead, when it’s much cooler.
don’t be afraid to break your own rules
Last week, I read about Sarah Riggs’ approach to writing her latest collection, Lines:
In my poem “November 14” from Lines we start with “Only hour only thought: speech speech.” At the age of 47 I set out to write the book in 47-minute time periods. Roughly an hour, an only hour so to speak, in a field of time dedicated only to thinking/ speaking. Increasingly hard to do this century, with text messages et cetera punctuating thought. So on October 15, 2018, I started on a dictation of the mind so to speak, in which second thoughts are also written, and set my phone timer for each writing session, at the same café for many of the poems. Not written so much as transposed. I determined each poem would be 47 lines, and the lines do not need to be connected to ones before or after, though they could be. There would be 47 poems. The name of each poem is the date it was written. To be in time, in the calendar, to have a project that is a book that is a series. To feel in the momentum of it. To slant into dream, to invite that we survive through the tilt and whir of connecting synapses.
Sarah Riggs on Writing Lines, and the Revolutionary Pleasure of Process, Influence, and Constraints
Process, Influence, and Constraints. I love all 3 of these, and think about them quite a bit. I like how Riggs opens the essay: “The bird song and street noise and lilt of the subway and recent phone conversations go into our poetry. We are made up of influences, there is no blank page or screen, as has been said many times.”
In terms of influence, Riggs offers these suggestions:
Channel an influence or more than one. You can choose to riff on or translate someone else’s work. You can choose epigraphs. Dedicate or address your work to someone.
I like the idea of translation. I’ve been playing around with something I call form fitters, where I take some words from other poets I love and fit them into my running rhythms (3/2 or 2/1 or 3/3/3/4) and swimming breath patterns (5 syllable lines or 3/4/3/4 or 5/4/5/4). I also like the idea of taking a line and making it the title or, what about the last line?, of a poem. Playing around with influences could be a fun month-long project?!