Tag: A. R. Ammons

april 14/RUN

3.1 miles
2 trails
67 degrees

The last summer-warm day for a while. I wore black shorts and a light green tank top and was too warm. Was able to run the winchell trail today! Got a closer look at the river. At first, heading down to the southern entrance of the trail, the river was blue with a streak of silver sparkles. Later, heading north, it gleamed bronze.

Lots of trees hanging ominously over the trail. Would one fall on me? When will the parks people come through and remove them. I think I counted at least five.

At least one of the trees on the edge of the trail in the tunnel of trees was sprouting green leaves.

Surfaces run on: grass, dirt, cracked asphalt, crumbling asphalt, smooth asphalt, dry leaves, road, sidewalk, roots.

Heard: a conversation between 2 women I can’t remember now, kids yelling at the playground, a man on a bench talking on his phone, the sizzle of my feet striking grit, a bike shifting gears, the trickle of water out of the sewer pipe at 44th, the gush of water out of sewer pipe at 42nd

A. R. Ammons’ garbage

section 12, the beginning:

a waste of words, a flattened-down, smoothed-
over mesa of styrofoam verbiage; since words were

introduced here things have gone poorly for the
planet: it’s been between words and rivers,

section 12, the middle:

we must have the biggest machine,

fifty miles round, find the smallest particles,
and the ditchwork of the deepest degradation

reflects waters brighter than common ground:
poetry to no purpose! all this garbage! all

these words:

section 12, the end:

imagine, though we think

ourselves purposeless, we may be the thinnest
cross-section of an upcoming announcement, and

though we cannot imagine what the purpose might
be, even now it may be extruding itself, tiny

threads of weak energy fields, right through
us: first an earth in peace; then, hundreds of

years looking for other wars: strife and peace,
love and grief, departure and return: gliding

we’ll kick the l out of world and cuddle
up with the avenues and byways of the word:

Again, this reminds me of Mary Oliver’s conflicted feelings about words and being a poet in The Leaf and the Cloud, minus all the garbage. I like the effect of Ammons’ excessive words — his garbage, even as I find it a lot to read.

Discovered a new poet this morning: Fay Dillof. Here’s one of her wonderful poems:

Little Infinities/ Fay Dillof

1.
Remember The Twilight Zone episode
in which a couple tries to escape town on a train
that loops them back to the same station?

Like that, there are tracks in my brain.

2.
Halted on the highway,
my friend Amy says We’re not in traffic,
we are traffic.

3.
I try not to look at the man in the park, doing pull-ups
on the limb of a tree. Sweaty,
bare-chested—he’s always there.

Not that it’s always the same guy.
Or the same poor tree.

4.
My father’s cousin, when he still could speak,
asked How big is your now?
but I was already looking back on the moment

from some sad future.

5.
The gratitude journal I keep by my bed is empty
because every night its the same:
trees.

6.
In the final reveal, the couple is trapped
in an endless game
being played by a giant child.

7.
Well, at least she never stopped
trying, my gravestone might read.

8.
When I say soul,
I mean like a photobooth photo—
quick this, this, this, oh, this.

a breakthrough!?

Before my run, I was thinking about my colorblind plates and the hidden message I might put behind the dots. What about having each plate hide 1-2 words that, when put together, create a sentence/another poem? Here’s the poem:

Can you see me? I cannot see you.

I’d break it up this way. 7 plate poems, words hidden in each plate:

  1. Can
  2. you see
  3. me?
  4. I
  5. can
  6. not see
  7. you.

Or, should it be:

I cannot see you. Can you not see me?

  1. I
  2. can
  3. not see
  4. you.
  5. Can you
  6. not see
  7. me?

Not sure, but I think I like the second version better. I’ll keep playing with it, but I really like this idea! I think it finally does something with this form that is more than just a gimmick. I imagine the you here as ambiguous. It could mean the hidden numbers or the reader of the poem/taker of the test. I also like the idea of breaking up cannot see into can not see, where “not seeing” is something I can do, I was relieved to do, because it enabled me to finally understand that something was strange about my vision/eyes. It’s so exciting to have figured this out! I’ve been working on it, letting it simmer, since September.

addendum, 26 april 2023: After thinking about it more, I wasn’t satisfied with this hidden poem. I came up with a much better one (no spoilers)!

april 13/RUN

2.5 miles
lake nokomis
62 degrees

After walking around Lake Nokomis yesterday afternoon and hearing the ice shattering and melting, then seeing some loons bobbing in the water, Scott and I decided to return this morning for a run. We started running before 8 am, which is early for me these days. It was windy and sunny and beautiful. The water was an intense blue and getting close to being iced out. Someone already had their canoe out. I wonder what the water temperature is? Open swim begins in 2 months!

When we finished the run, we walked up the hill to Nokomis Beach coffee. I used to get coffee here a lot when we lived closer to the lake, but it’s been years. When was the last time I was in here? Everything looked almost exactly the same. A strange feeling of time not passing.

On the way, we encountered a wonderful display of yard weirdness. Scott took a picture:

dozens of figurines displayed at the edge of a yard, including an owl, a gnome, several mushrooms, and the helm of a ship hanging from a tree.

A. R. Ammons’ garbage

1

at the end of section 10 (68):

oh, well: argument is like dining:
mess with a nice dinner long enough, it’s garbage.

2

in section 11 (70-71):

this is

we at our best, not killing, scheming, abusing,
running over, tearing down, burning up: why

did invention ever bother with all this, why
does the huge beech by the water come back every

year: oh, the sweet pleasures, the kiss, the letter from

someone, the word of sympathy or praise, or just
the shared settled look between us, that here

we are together, such as it is, cautious and
courageous, wily with genuine desire, policed

by how we behave, all out of eternity, into
eternity, but here now, where we make the most

of it:

3

at the end of section 11 (73):

I don’t
care whether anybody believes me or not: I

don’t know anything I want anybody to believe or
in: but if you will sit with me in the light

of speech, I will sit with you: I would rather
do this than eat your ice cream

colorblind plates

I continue to work on my colorblind poems. Inspired by some words in a section of garbage, I finished a solid draft of another one yesterday. Here’s a bit of it:

I look at the plate
and see nothing but a mass of
different size dots. No hidden numbers
or hand-painted hiragana. I stare harder and
the dots turn into loops able to map new routes
for making meaning out of electrical impulses.

april 12/RUN

5.85 miles
ford loop
68 degrees

Hot. Bright sun. No shade. All the snow melted, all the walking paths clear and open. I ran with my shadow today. Above shadow falls she stuck tight to my side, but farther south she dropped down into the gorge. My favorite part of the run was the river, burning silver in the sun and the wind. Second favorite thing: the intense blue of the sky — wow! — against the deep green of an evergreen tree, then the shuffle of my feet over the grit and the dry dirt, and the stopping at the overlook on the east side. Least favorite things: sweating so much and how the heat made my knees stiffen and swell after I was done.

Listened to other people’s conversations, traffic, the wind, geese for the first half of the run. Listened to an old playlist (Jan/Feb long run) for the second half.

A. R. Ammons’ garbage

some lines to remember:

1

let’s study the motions (55)

motions today: wind, waves, shimmery river, a soaring honking goose, the clicking and clacking or a roller skis poles, falling water seeping out of the limestone, light bouncing off the roof of a building on the other side, flashing lights from a truck, the long-reaching gait of a tall runner, the compact swing of a short runner.

2

when I learned
about poetry, I must have recognized a means

to command silence in them, the means so to
combine thinking and feeling, imagination and

movement as to spell them out of speech:
people would buy the enchantment and get the

point reason couldn’t, the point delivered below
the level of argument, straight into the fat

of feeling (55-56)

For me, silence = a silencing of judgment and the impulse to always dismiss or tear apart or not take seriously, to listen and let the words move you and make you wonder

delivered below/the level of argument, straight into the fat/of feeling. Love it!

Here’s a poem I encountered on twitter that I’d like to remember (and maybe memorize):

Equinox/ Diannely Antigua

The next spring iI said No.
I said no to the melting snow, the pile
making streams in the grocery store parking lot.
I said no to the sparrow at the birdfeeder, no
to its beak, the small seed it held, no
to the hem of my yellow skirt,
the one my grandmother could’ve sewed,
thread dangling down my thigh.
Then I said no to the sight of green—
the grass covered in winter’s salt, the still wet
lettuce on a plate, the static
glow in the corners of the TV.
But I didn’t know what to say
as I watched the praying mantis
feeding the eggs inside her
their father’s head.

april 10/RUN

5.1 miles
bottom of franklin and up again
56 degrees

Shorts! I wore shorts this morning with no tights! My first bare legs since (most likely) October 27th of last year when I wrote about wearing shorts. All the walking paths were open. Ran past the Welcoming Oaks. Hello friends! Down by the sprawling oak to the tunnel of trees. No green yet, only yellow and brown. Passed right above the Rowing Club. Overheard 2 different bike conversations:

3 older women at the top of the franklin hill, getting ready to descend:
biker 1: yes, let’s bike along the flats, I’m done with hills.
biker 2: oh, they’re not so bad.
biker 3: that’s easy for you to say!

a man and a woman, younger than the older women bikers, at the top of the hill near the tunnel of trees, just beginning their descent:
woman biker: now this is the part I like!

In my plague notebook, I wrote something about my run that started with each letter of the alphabet. Wasn’t sure why, it just seemed like it might be helpful. It was. When I got to x, I remembered something that I might otherwise have forgotten. Out of all the images/moments from today’s run (the blue river, the sibilant shuffling over grit, the warm air, the finally open trails, the absence of snow), it’s what I’d most like to remember:

The knocking of a woodpecker on dead wood somewhere in the gorge, sounding like a bone Xylophone.

I remember hearing the loud hollow drumming and imagining that the woodpecker was playing a xylophone with the keys made out of old bones.

Running north, I listened to the cars, the birds, the buzz of spring finally arriving. Running back south, I listened to an old playlist.

A. R. Ammons’ garbage

before the run

As I read the sections in garbage, I’m trying to figure out the best way to make note of this on this log. So much meandering and wandering and finding a thread then losing it again! Today I’ll try a summary, or summaries.

section 7 summary (first attempt)

the future of life is pain and suffering — strokes, hip replacements, insulin shots. we’re designed to fall apart (we’re garbage). but, there’s wonder too, and death and the end of existence, which brings relief. these facts (which exist whether we believe in them or not) are too brutal to be felt bare, so we create languages to soften them — “to warn, inform, reassure, compare, present.” humans construct language out of words, but words aren’t the only way. Other beings — birds, whales, horses, elephants — have created languages too, whale songs and horse whinnies and elephant sounds too low for our ears. we (humans) think words are the world, and they do have the power to change/manipulate the worlds of other beings, but they are not the truth of everything:

our language is something to write home about:

but is not the world: grooming does for
baboons most of what words do for us.

It seems useful to have a summary, to keep track of all Ammons’ meandering, but a summary leaves a lot of the best stuff out:

After opening with some words about life as boring until it’s disrupted by tragedy, he writes:

meanwhile, baked potatoes are still fine,

split down the middles, buttered up, the two white
cakes steaming, the butter (or sour cream) oozing

down and sex is, if any, good, and there’s that time
between dawn and day when idle birds assert song

whereas a little while later they’re quiet at
hunt or nest: and when during the drying out after

rains the trickle in the ditch bottom
quivers by a twig-built strait, the

wonder of it all returns

I love how he starts with meanwhile, which reminds me of Mary Oliver and her wonderful use of meanwhile in “Wild Geese”:

Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,

Meanwhile the geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Meanwhile as both/and, as delight and grief at the same time.

I also love how Ammon describes the baked potato: 2 white steaming cakes oozing butter (or sour cream) — why not both?

Here’s another way Ammons describes wonder: it is a tiny/wriggle of light in the mind what says, “go on”:/that’s what it says: that’s all it says:

section 7 summary (second attempt)

humility and humiliation: you can write your poetry, thinking it enables you to transcend the bare facts of your existence ending. you can’t.

one thinks, slapping down the lines, making time
with eternity, one will thrive beyond the brink but

beyond the brink is no recollection but a wide
giving way into silver that filters farther away

into nothing

section 7 summary (third attempt):

So much of what Ammons is discussing in this book and in this section reminds me of Mary Oliver and her discussion of the work of the poet and the difference between words and the world in The Leaf and the Cloud. I decided to search, “Ammons and Mary Oliver.” The first result didn’t seem to include Oliver, but it caught my attention anyway, with its Ammons’ poem, “Play.” This poem seems to provide another ways for Ammons to say what he’s trying to say about existence, especially in terms of this line in section 7:

then existence recalls with relief that existence
ends, that our windy houses crack their frames

and spill, that nothing, not even cold killing bothers
the stars: twinkle twinkle: just a wonder

Play/ A. R. Ammons

Nothing’s going to become of anyone
except death:
therefore: it’s okay
to yearn
too high:
the grave accommodates
swell rambunctiousness &

ruin’s not
compromised by magnificence:

the cut-off point
liberates us to the
common disaster: so
       pick a perch —
apple bough for example in bloom —
tune up
and if you like

drill imagination right through necessity:
it’s all right:
it’s been taken care of:

is allowed, considering

after the run, hours later, sitting on the my deck and listening to the cardinals

Sitting in the warm sun, reading through section 7 of Ammons’ garbage some more, my mind began to wander and I had some ideas for my Ishihara colorblind plates poems. I’m not sure which of Ammons’ lines or ideas triggered my new thoughts, but I wrote 2 pages in my plague notebook about Ishihara’s test and colorblind plates, starting with some thoughts about looking behind and beyond the circles to some other meaning within my plate poem. The Ammons’ line that distracted me might have been this: what is most beyond must be seen into.

This wandering offered me a new way into a plate poem that I’ve been struggling to find. I like doing close readings of a poem with the hopes of getting distracted by some of its words and then wandering off somewhere else. I’ll call it reading sideways or slantways or besides.

april 9/RUN

2 miles
dogwood run
50 degrees

Spring! Ran with Scott this morning. Heard lots of different birds — woodpeckers, crows, bluejays, cardinals. Forgot to look down at the river. Talked about being colorblind and an article he sent me the other day, Designing for Colorblindness. Ran on more of the walking path. Greeted Mr. Morning! Anything else? I’m writing this at the end of the day (after driving to St. Peter to bring FWA back to school), so I can’t remember.

A. R. Ammons’ garbage

Yesterday afternoon, I kept reading and got through a few more sections (4 – most of 7). With Schuyler’s Hymn to Life, I focused on each section at a time. For Ammons, I think I’ll be jumping around more. Here’s something from section 3 I’d like to think about on my run:

note: after writing this sentence above, I asked Scott if he wanted to run together. He said yes and I forgot about Ammons as we ran and talked.

scientific and materialistic notion of the
spindle of energy: when energy is gross,

rocklike, it resembles the gross, and when
fine it mists away into mystical refinements,

sometimes passes right out of material
recognizability and becomes, what?, motion,

spirit, all forms translate into energy, as at
the bottom of Dante’s hell all motion is

translated into form: so, in value systems,
physical systems, artistic systems, always this

same disposition from the heavy to the light,
and then the returns form the light downward

to the staid gross: stone to wind, wind to
stone, there is no need for “outside,” hegemonic

derivations of value: nothing need be invented
or imposed: the aesthetic, scentific, moral

are organized like a muff along this spindle,
might as well relax: thus, the job done, the

mind having found its way through and marked
out the course, the intellect can be put by:

one can turn to tongue, crotch, boob, navel,
armpit, rock, slit, roseate rearend

I’m thinking about the relationship between mind, body, and spirit here, and then where I see motion fitting in. The idea of motion as spirit is interesting to me. Because I rely on peripheral vision, I’ve been thinking a lot about motion (which is detected in your peripheral). In terms of motion, I’m also thinking about my restlessness and my inability to sit still for too long, especially at night. Waking up every few hours to move around before going back to sleep. And I’m thinking about motion is relation to color, especially with my study of the ancient greeks and their ideas about color and the idea of “the glitter effect” (See The Sea Was Never Blue).

april 8/RUN

3.85 miles
marshall loop
42 degrees

Less layers this morning! Bright sun and lots of noisy birds. Hooray for Spring! By next Saturday will all the snow be melted and lake nokomis be iced out? I hope so. Speaking of birds, I heard a caw-cophony near the river. Yes, a bad pun. Not crows, but seagulls, I think. I’ve heard seagulls in grocery store parking lots, but rarely down by the river.

And here’s another story about birds. This one’s from yesterday. Walking Delia the dog with my son FWA in the afternoon, I noticed 2 crows, high in the sky, harassing another bird. They seemed to be running into it mid-air while cawing furiously. A block later, we saw them again, still at it. Then, a few blocks further, just one crow, which both FWA and I assumed was one of the combative crows. It flew by, cawing, then perched on a lamp post and looked down at us. It had something in its mouth. FWA quipped, the other bird’s eyeball. My response: Yes! In my world, that’s exactly what it is. As we kept walking the caw continued to look at us, almost to say, watch out or I’ll take your eyeballs next!

Anything else about today’s run? Wet, muddy, filled with fast moving cars, other runners in bright orange running shirts, and walkers. Smelled waffles as I passed by Black Coffee and Waffles. Heard kids down by Shadow Falls.

A.R. Ammons’ garbage

before the run

Starting with section 3 today. Here are some thoughts:

In yesterday’s post, I wanted to distinguish humility from humiliation, which was inspired by these lines:

where but in the very asshole of comedown is
redemption: as where but brought low, where

but in the grief of failure, loss, error do we
discern the savage afflictions that turn us around:

where but in the arrangements love crawls us
through, not a thing left in our self-display

unhumiliated, do we find the sweet seed of
new routes

This morning, reading through my post for april 8, 2022, I was reminded of dirt and decomposition and a Ross Gay interview where he describes our entanglement (interconnectedness/dependence) with the world and the decomposition of the self, not as a loss, or a humiliation, but a recognition of our connections and dependence on each other. Humility in terms of vulnerability and openness instead of just humiliation and weakness.

Reading these lines again, I’m also reminded of CAConrad’s “Ignition Chronicles” and the idea that it is not grief/loss/despair that enables new routes, but how that grief disrupts our routines and forces us to focus. The key is focus not despair. So, we don’t need grief, or in the case of Ammons humiliation/breaking down, for new routes. We need focus, which maybe is another word for attention here?

One reason I’m reading this poem is to learn more about how poets write. Poetry is not just a matter of line breaks and rhymes, poetry is about how you approach stories, subjects, the way you use language to make something or do something. For me, this means studying lots of lines (I’m a slow thinker, a ruminator, and mostly new to poetry, so I need lots of lines) to see how poets use language in ways that are very different than I’m used to with my decades of training in academic writing. One small example, here’s how Ammons describes dead/decomposing worms in a puddle after the rain:

young earthworms,

drowned up in macadam pools by spring rains, moisten
out white in a day or so and, round spots,

look like sputum or creamy-rich, broken-up cold
clams.

I particularly like the idea of puddles as macadma pools, but this whole description is delightfully gross!

Studying poets and poems is also about thinking about what they’re doing and making. In section 3, Ammons writes:

no use to linger over beauty or simple effect:
this is just a poem with a job to do: and that

is to declare, however roundabout, sideways,
or meanderingly (or in those ways) the perfect

scientific and materialistic notion of the
spindle of energy

I love all of Ammons’ discussion of roundabouts, sideways, meanderings, and the periphery:

keeping the aberrant periphery worked

clear so the central current may shift or slow
or rouse adjusting to the necessary dynamic

But, even as I love this idea of wandering and the periphery, I’m a bit overwhelmed by the length of his roundabouts and sidetracks. So many words! So many pages! Too many doors opened by too many ideas! I might need to read through these sections faster or I’ll get too tired or too lost and never make it to the end!

All of Ammons talk about garbage and poetry makes me wonder about his book’s connection to eco-poetry. I found a helpful article to read: The Semiotics of Garbage, East and West: A Case Study of A. R. Ammons and Choi Sung-ho

april 7/RUN

3.5 miles
locks and dam #1
39 degrees

Tomorrow starts the warmer weather. A high of 59, then 78 by Wednesday. I’m sure this spring weather won’t last, but at least we are getting some warm days.

A good run. I was overdressed. Ran south to the locks and dam #1 parking lot, then down the hill to the entrance to the dam and back up it. A quick walk break to put in my headphones, Bruno Mars Essentials on apple music, and to admire the river. Then back north to home.

Running south, I heard some birds singing. It sounded like the melody to Weather Report’s Birdland. Is that possible? The song is about the nightclub and Charlie Parker, but is also about birds? Probably not. Oh well, today that’s what I heard: some birds singing the melody to Birdland.

Anything else? More melted snow, sharp shadows, sandy grit. More time on the walking trail. Heard kids on the playground, felt my hands bumping against the zipper pull on my pockets, saw a kid sitting on the top of a big boulder.

A. R. Ammons’ garbage

written before the run:

Yesterday I wrote about wanting to revise my mannequin poem and submit it to a journal. Yesterday I was enthusiastic. Today, I am not. I’m stuck. Instead of staying stuck, I’m returning to my other project: reading Ammons’ garbage. It’s an intimidating poem — long (17 sections, 121 pages), strange. I’m not sure if I will (or can) read the entire thing, but I decided to start it, at least. I read section 1 the other day, so today I’m starting with section 2. I did this same, starting with section 2, thing when I read Schuyler’s Hymn to Life. Is a new approach?

Starting a poem like this, or maybe any poem, involves a moment of mild panic — what the hell is he talking about? I don’t understand! — then a deep breath and a belief that something will make some sort of sense if I just keep going. One foot in front of the other, step by step, bird by bird, word by word. In the case of section 2, it took a lot of words to find a way in, two whole pages of them.

I read about garbage as the poem of our time, then trash in Florida, then a question about how to write the poem. Finally, at the top of page 20, I found a phrase that I wanted to look up: “the poem/is about the pre-socratic idea of the/dispositional axis from stone to wind, wind/to stone” I think I was compelled to look it up because I took a class on the pre-Socratics almost 30 years ago in college and I wanted to remember what I had forgotten. As I understand it, Ammons is referring to the pre-socratic foundational belief (sloppy shorthand for dispositional axis) in material monism, or that everything can be reduced to one element. Water (Thales), limitlessness (Anaximander), Air (Anaximenes). For Ammons, it’s garbage. Is this right? Some of my research for this comes from Wikipedia, almost none of it from my memory of that Intro to Philosophy class with a wonderful adjunct professor (Corinne Bedecarre) who referred to animals as critters.

Anyway, looking up this line and thinking about garbage as the single element, encouraged me to slow down and wonder about more of Ammons’ words. I started writing in the margins, wandering in more directions with my thoughts. Thinking about Mary Oliver’s eternity, Elizabeth Bishop’s fish eye, and humility as not the same as humiliation (unlike Ammons, it seems).

His discussion of eternity and the other “heaven we mostly/want, though, is this jet-hoveled hell back,/heaven’s daunting asshole,” reminds me of Mary Oliver and her distinction between ordinary and eternal time. Much of his connection between ordinary/garbage time and writing poetry reminds me of Mary Oliver’s The Leaf and the Cloud. I’d like to read them together.

After his line about garbage as the element, and his questions about how he should write this poem — short, a small popping of/duplexes, or long, hunting wide, coming home/late, losing the trail and recovering it, he writes this:

I needn’t
myself hurry into brevity, though a weary reader

might briefly be done: the axis will be clear
enough daubed here and there with a little ink

or fined out into every shade and form of its
revelation

As I read this long poem, I want to remember these lines and look for what’s daubed here and there or fined out into every shade in order to describe his basic principle: garbage has to be the poem of our time or, everything is/comes from garbage.

after the run:

As an aside to hopefully return to: I appreciate the turn to garbage. When I was a professor, teaching queer ethics to grad students, I was intrigued by some theories that focused on shit, both literally and metaphorically as excess, waste, what we consume and expel. I don’t have time to look for sources right now, but maybe I can later?

a few more things to remember:

  • a new word: macadam, aggregate road surface, compacted stone held together with a binder, like asphalt or concrete…not mixed in. Or, tar, as in tarmac. Nice!
  • the line that inspired my search: “young earthworms/drowned up in macadam pools” instead of potholes filled with water, macadam pools. I might have to use that with asphalt.

april 2/RUN

4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
38 degrees
99% clear path

Yesterday we woke up to more than 1/2 foot (7 inches?) of wet, heavy snow. I opened the curtain and our service berry bush, which looks more like a tree to me, was so weighed down with snow that it drooped over the deck and blocked the steps down to the yard. Back by the garage, the four tall, narrow trees were bent over, looking like an ice spider. Scott took a video:

the aftermath of April snow

Of course, because this is April snow, it was all melted by the time I went out for a run this morning around 10:30. Hooray! By the end of next week, it might be close to 60. I am ready for spring.

Before I went out for my run, I read this poem by A. R. Ammons:

Grassy Sound/ A. R. Ammons

It occurred to me there are no sharp corners
in the wind
and I was very glad to think
I had so close a neighbor
to my thoughts but decided to sleep before
inquiring

The next morning I got up early
and after yesterday had come
clear again went
down to the salt marshes
to talk with
the straight wind there
I have observed I said
your formlessness
and am

enchanted to know how
you manage loose to be
so influential

The wind came as grassy sound
and between its
grassy teeth
spoke words said with grass
and read itself
on tidal creeks as on
the screens of oscilloscopes
A heron opposing
it rose wing to wind

turned and glided to another creek
so I named a body of water
Grassy Sound
and came home dissatisfied there
had been no direct reply
but rubbed with my soul an
apple to eat
till it shone

some favorite lines:
there are no sharp corners in the wind
after yesterday had come clear again
wind as grassy sound with grassy teeth speaking grassy words
it rose wing to wind

I gave myself a task for my run on a windy (12 mph) day: observe how the wind speaks. I tried, but all I could hear was the wind rushing past my ears as I ran east toward the river. It didn’t speak as grass or swaying trees or wind chimes, just hissing whispers in my ears. By the time I reached the river I had already forgotten the task.

Running south to the falls, I listened to the birds, shuffling feet, and the fragment of a conversation that I hoped to remember, but have forgotten. On the way back, I put in a Taylor Swift playlist.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. the cardinal’s torpedoed call (a line from Didi Jackson’s “Listen”), not coming in slow waves, not coming in waves at all, but one rapid trill — too many notes coming too fast to count
  2. the river, a beautiful shiny bronze
  3. right after I reached the river, encountering 2 walkers pushing strollers, taking up almost the entire path
  4. at least 2 fat tires
  5. almost everywhere, the path was clear and dry, except for at the double-bridge where it was almost completely covered with lumpy snow
  6. a big pine tree down at locks and dam #1, blocking the running path. As I ducked under it, I noticed where it the trunk had split — was that the only tree that was down? Had there been more, or had they already cleared them?
  7. at the falls, someone was driving a giant snowblower and shooting snow off to the side of the trail. I could see a blur of white, hear the whirr of the snow flying through the air
  8. I know I stopped to look at the falls, but I can’t remember what it looked like, or how it sounded
  9. at least one runner (male) in shorts
  10. no mud or dirt or bare grass, everything covered (again) in snow

Back to Ammons’ poem:

oscilloscopes a device for viewing oscillations, as of electrical voltage or current, by a display on the screen of a cathode ray tube.

I’m thinking about how the narrator in Ammons’ poem is dissatisfied that the wind didn’t answer his question directly. My thought, did you really expect the wind to reveal its secrets? Such arrogance! Then I thought about a poem I read the other day by Denise Levertov:

The Secret/ Denise Levertov

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don’t know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can’t find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

I love the contrast between the Ammons and Levertov poems, their different perspectives on indirect communication — Ammons’ disappointed arrogance, Levertov’s grateful delight. Here, I’m on team Levertov. How boring to receive a direct, final answer. Much better to perceive incomplete answers that are soon forgotten and must be discovered again and again.

I’ll forgive Ammons for his arrogance though because of his wonderful image of the wind speaking as/with/through grass. I’d like to learn to speak as grass too or learn to listen for it. And, sometime when I’m running beside a field of tall grass, I’d like to recite his beautiful lines back to it:

The wind came as grassy sound
and between its
grassy teeth
spoke words said with grass

march 31/WALKRUN

walk: 20 minutes
around the block with Delia
36 degrees
light rain with snow coming later

A chance for 6-10 inches of snow later tonight. Before that, rain and thunderstorms. Maybe the snow won’t come? Decided to take Delia out for a quick walk before the rain began falling more heavily. The boulevards are still buried in walls of gray, cratered snow, but the alley is finally clear and our backyard is as much mud as it is snow.

run: 3.15 miles
north/lake street bridge/south
37 degrees

A few hours after my walk. Wasn’t planning to run, but when it stopped raining, I decided this was my chance before the paths are covered in snow and ice again. As always, I’m glad I decided to go. Everything was wet and windy. Big puddles, little puddles, deep puddles. The river seemed to be preparing itself for more weather. Noticed a few runners and walkers, but not too many.

Saw orange everywhere. Orange signs, orange construction cones, dead orange leaves.

Heard the wind, my headphones case banging around in my zipped purple pocket, cars. Smelled smoke from a fireplace. Noticed another new house going up. Soon, the neighborhood will be overrun with the same stupid over-sized houses on every block. Boo.

Near the end of the run, I thought about orange and a phrase popped into my head: keep orbiting around the orange, which means: when you can’t, like me, see the orange, look for what’s happening around where it should be. Is there movement, people acting oddly, anything unusual near a spot where you think orange is? This orbiting works on a literal level, but it’s also more. One thing poetry is about is orbiting things that you can’t quite find the words to describe or pin down with meaning. Becoming obsessed with them. Writing around them again and again. This reminded me of the Frank O’Hara poem about orange, “Why I Am Not a Painter,” and the lines:

One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES.

A possible title for my poem: Orange, an ars poetica Excellent!

A. R. Ammons

Yesterday, i found, read, and posted a wonderful poem by Elizabeth Bishop, “The End of March,” which reminded me of some lines from an A. R. Ammons poem, “Corsons Inlet,” that I’ve admired for some time. So today I’ve started spending some more time with Ammons. I just ordered his 1993 long poem, Garbage, and re-read a New Yorker article that I first read when it came out in 2017. The title of the article, “The Great American Poet of Daily Chores,” makes me think of James Schuyler and all his talk of laundry and yard work and washing dishes in “Hymn to Life.”

A book of Ammons that I haven’t ordered yet, but I might, is The Really Short Poems of A. R. Ammons. Here’s a few poems from it that I especially like:

Weathering/ A. R. Ammons

A day without rain is like
a day without sunshine.

Mirrorment/ A. R. Ammons

Birds are flowers flying
and flowers perched birds.

Equilibrium/ A. R. Ammons

If you walk back
and forth

through a puddle pretty
soon

you wet the whole
driveway but of

course dry
the puddle up.

And here are two Ammons’ poems I found in the New Yorker article:

Project/ A. R. Ammons

My subject’s
still the wind still
difficult to
present
being invisible:
nevertheless should I
presume it not
I’d be compelled
to say
how the honeysuckle bushlimbs
wave themselves:
difficult
beyond presumption.

Love how the line breaks — still the wind still. Also, the strange idea of proving the invisible wind’s existence, which made me think of a poem I’m writing about orange and my faith in it, even though I rarely see it. This faith — an orange faith — is different than a belief in the wind. The wind is invisible to everyone, but most people can see orange, don’t need to believe in it the way I do. And the evidence I have for orange’s existence is less straightforward than evidence of the wind. These lines perhaps only make sense to me right now, but they’re a start of something interesting.

Poetics/ A. R. Ammons

I look for the way
things will turn
out spiraling from a center,
the shape
things will take to come forth in

so that the birch tree white
touched black at branches
will stand out
wind-glittering
totally its apparent self:

I look for the forms
things want to come as

from what black wells of possibility,
how a thing will
unfold:

not the shape on paper — though
that, too — but the
uninterfering means on paper:

not so much looking for the shape
as being available
to any shape that may be
summoning itself
through me
from the self not mine but ours.

Wind-glittering, possibility, being available to any shape summoning itself. Love these ideas!

march 30/WALKRUN

walk: 45 minues
neighborhood, with Delia the dog
30 degrees

Took Delia out for a walk around the neighborhood. North, then east past Cooper School and the giant mounds of snow plowed somewhere else then deposited on this field. Past the house that had been half-finished then abandoned a few years ago and is now finished and on the market for almost $900,000. Past the new Minnehaha Academy, which replaced the old one that blew up a few summers ago because of a gas leak — I heard it happen when I was out in my backyard mowing the lawn. Such a strange, loud BOOM!

Then south near the spot where some of the best fall color trees used to reside until they were marked for death with orange spray paint then chopped down — the brightest, most wonderful yellow every year. Under the huge, towering trio of cottonwood trees — the Cottonwood 3. Past the house with the oddly terraced lawn and the big windows, rarely covered with curtains or blinds in the evening so we were able to see, when returning by car in the evening from a baseball game or a clarinet recital, all the way to the back wall where letters hung on a shelf spelling out a word that none of us — not me or Scott, RJP or FWA — could ever decipher.

West, past the house with the wonderful butterfly garden on the boulevard, and the house that used to string bright lights around their giant — higher than the house — fir tree every winter. Was 2022/23 the first year they didn’t? Past the house with the bushes that, the first Christmas we lived in this neighborhood suddenly stopped their exuberant chatter when we walked by and Scott started talking. I noticed that those same bushes, birdless today, were a strange orangey, yellowy green. My guess is that they are dying, but maybe it’s just new growth that is confused by the return of the cold winter weather. Past the house that has one of the best gardens in the neighborhood and where I saw/heard someone giving a backyard cello lesson during the first year of the pandemic.

When we started the walk, the sky was blue and it was bright enough for sunglasses. Within a few blocks the sky was a grayish white. Still, quiet, no one around. Thought some more about color and how I still (mostly) see it, but that it doesn’t mean much anymore. It doesn’t mean nothing, just not much (this line is inspired by a line from the Bishop poem below that I read before my walk and run). Color doesn’t brighten or enhance what I see. Everything is soft and subdued. About halfway through the walk, I stopped to record some of my thoughts, including:

  • orange, which has been the most important color for me practically, doesn’t matter as much anymore
  • orange sounds (inspired by hearing some dead orange leaves rustling in the wind): sizzle, crackle
  • The only color that matters to me now is the silver flash of the bottom of the lifeguard’s boat on the other side of the lake; I use the silver flash for navigating during open swim

run: 3.1 miles
turkey hollow
33 degrees

While walking, I noticed at least 3 people running, which inspired me to go out there myself after I dropped Delia off at home. I felt a little stiff as I ran. My hip again? Otherwise, the run was fine. Ran turkey hollow but didn’t see any turkeys. Ran most of it without headphones. Put in a Taylor Swift playlist for the last mile. Was able to run on the walking path a lot of the time. Noticed more people heading below to the Winchell Trail. Sped up to pass a walker and a dog moving fast. Heard some sharp dog barks, saw some car headlights, their reflections flashing on a window.

(before the run)

This poem popped up on my twitter feed this morning. I was drawn to it because of its description of a walk — it’s a walk poem! Also: her use of color and of the phrase, “nothing much,” and how marvelously sets up the scene in the first stanza.

The End Of March/ Elizabeth Bishop (June 1974)

For John Malcolm Brinnin and Bill Read: Duxbury

It was cold and windy, scarcely the day
to take a walk on that long beach
Everything was withdrawn as far as possible,
indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken,
seabirds in ones or twos.
The rackety, icy, offshore wind
numbed our faces on one side;
disrupted the formation
of a lone flight of Canada geese;
and blew back the low, inaudible rollers
in upright, steely mist.

The sky was darker than the water
–it was the color of mutton-fat jade.
Along the wet sand, in rubber boots, we followed
a track of big dog-prints (so big
they were more like lion-prints). Then we came on
lengths and lengths, endless, of wet white string,
looping up to the tide-line, down to the water,
over and over. Finally, they did end:
a thick white snarl, man-size, awash,
rising on every wave, a sodden ghost,
falling back, sodden, giving up the ghost…
A kite string?–But no kite.

I wanted to get as far as my proto-dream-house,
my crypto-dream-house, that crooked box
set up on pilings, shingled green,
a sort of artichoke of a house, but greener
(boiled with bicarbonate of soda?),
protected from spring tides by a palisade
of–are they railroad ties?
(Many things about this place are dubious.)
I’d like to retire there and do nothing,
or nothing much, forever, in two bare rooms:
look through binoculars, read boring books,
old, long, long books, and write down useless notes,
talk to myself, and, foggy days,
watch the droplets slipping, heavy with light.
At night, a grog a l’américaine.
I’d blaze it with a kitchen match
and lovely diaphanous blue flame
would waver, doubled in the window.
There must be a stove; there is a chimney,
askew, but braced with wires,
and electricity, possibly
–at least, at the back another wire
limply leashes the whole affair
to something off behind the dunes.
A light to read by–perfect! But–impossible.
And that day the wind was much too cold
even to get that far,
and of course the house was boarded up.

On the way back our faces froze on the other side.
The sun came out for just a minute.
For just a minute, set in their bezels of sand,
the drab, damp, scattered stones
were multi-colored,
and all those high enough threw out long shadows,
individual shadows, then pulled them in again.
They could have been teasing the lion sun,
except that now he was behind them
–a sun who’d walked the beach the last low tide,
making those big, majestic paw-prints,
who perhaps had batted a kite out of the sky to play with.

colors

  • The sky was darker than the water
    –it was the color of mutton-fat jade.
    Mutton-fat jade = white to pale yellow, so it must refer to the color of the water, not the sky.
  • wet, white string
  • my crypto-dream-house, that crooked box
    set up on pilings, shingled green,
    a sort of artichoke of a house, but greener
    (boiled with bicarbonate of soda?)
  • diaphanous blue flame
    would waver, doubled in the window
  • the drab, damp, scattered stones
    were multi-colored

a line I like

I’d like to retire there and do nothing,
or nothing much,

Thinking about the difference between nothing and nothing much. Nothing seems bigger and grander, more dramatic — too dramatic. Is it even possible to do nothing and still be alive? I like nothing much. There’s nothing grand or dramatic about it, yet it still undercuts the idea that we should be Doing Something! all the time. Nothing much is mundane, routine. You’ve done some things but nothing special or worth making a big deal out of.

I like this poem. Even so, the more I read it the darker and heavier it seems. The gross colors (mutton fat jade? boiled artichoke?), the icy wind, everything gone or almost beyond repair. And here’s something else I just realized: according to an essay I read about this poem, it was written after a visit in June. June! (And no random June, but June of 1974, the month and year I was born.)

In June of 1974 Elizabeth Bishop and her partner Alice Methfessel stayed at the Duxbury, Massachusetts beach house belonging to Bishop’s friends John Malcolm  Brinnin and Bill Read. Bishop reported that she initially wrote “The End of March” as a kind of thank-you note to her friends (Biele 55).

“The End of March”: Bishop and Stevens on the Sublime—Union or Relation?

If Duxbury, Massachusetts is anything like the UP (where I was born and visited a lot in the summer until the early 2000s), Bishop could be describing a summer’s day. Icy wind, too cold to walk for long, sunless? Yuck.

In the article I read skimmed, the author puts Bishops’ poem into conversation with Wallace Stevens, specifically his poem, “The Sun this March” but also other poems of his. I kept thinking about it in relation to A. R. Ammons’ “Corsons Inlet”, another walk poem by the sea. It’s long, so here’s just the opening:

I went for a walk over the dunes again this morning
to the sea,
then turned right along
the surf
rounded a naked headland
and returned

along the inlet shore:

it was muggy sunny, the wind from the sea steady and high,
crisp in the running sand,
some breakthroughs of sun
but after a bit

continuous overcast:

the walk liberating, I was released from forms,
from the perpendiculars,
straight lines, blocks, boxes, binds
of thought
into the hues, shadings, rises, flowing bends and blends
of sight:

Both poems have wind and only a little bit of sun. Ammons seems warmer, at least at the beginning with its muggy sun and crisp wind. And both involve not doing much. Here’s how Ammons concludes the poem:

I see narrow orders, limited tightness, but will
not run to that easy victory:
still around the looser, wider forces work:
I will try
to fasten into order enlarging grasps of disorder, widening
scope, but enjoying the freedom that
Scope eludes my grasp, that there is no finality of vision,
that I have perceived nothing completely,
that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk.

Their different perspectives on how a walk, and the world by the sea that they move through, inspire them and their writing is fascinating to me. Bishops is narrow and restraining and finished?, while Ammons is all over the place and almost too free, too formless. And, it’s alive, new, continuously renewed day after day.

I’ve wanted to study A.R. Ammons poetry for a few years now. I think finding the Bishop poem, then being reminded of Ammons, is the nudge I need to make this a mini-project! I’ll end March/begin April with Ammons!