Tag: James Schuyler

march 13/SWIMRUN

swim: 1.25 miles
ywca pool

I love to swim. Today felt really good, relaxed. I didn’t even care that my latest vision problem happened again. Walking on the pool deck, staring intently at the lanes, trying to see if the lane I’m looking at is as empty as I think it is. I checked at least 3 times, staring at the water. It seemed empty. Then I put my stuff down and was about to get in when I noticed someone in the lane. Very frustrating and unsettling to look closely, for a long time, and still not see what is right there. But really, it’s not that big of a deal. I didn’t jump in on top of anyone or cause a swimmer to mess up their rhythm. I just need to get used to it and accept that it will continue to happen.

Lots of friends in the water with me today: weird white, almost translucent, bits near the bottom, a balled up bandaid in one lane over, and perhaps the most disturbing, a fuzzy brown ball floating halfway up to the surface, slowly making it’s way to below me. Would I accidentally suck it up? Yuck! Must have gotten distracted because I lost track of it.

Noticed the sloshing sound of water as my hands broke the surface.

Everything was blue underwater. Blue tiles, a blue lower-cased t on the wall, blue-tinted water. Dark blue shadows below, cast by the trees outside the window, making the pool floor look alive.

Lots of breaststroke around me, some backstroke, an occasional freestyle. One woman was using a kick board. I used a pull buoy for a set.

run: 3.1 miles
under ford bridge and back
29 degrees
95% clear path

Ran in the afternoon, which is always harder than running in the morning for me. I feel more tired, heavier. My legs don’t want to move as much. No headphones on the way south, Beyoncé’s Renaissance on the way back north. The sky was mostly blue, with a few clusters of clouds. I felt a shadow cross over me as I started my run. Hello bird! I think I looked at the river, and I think it was open. Heard the drumming of a woodpecker. Admired the wide open view near Folwell and the Rachel Dow memorial bench. Now I remember seeing the river! Right there by that bench — brownish-gray and open. Encountered walkers, dogs, a runner with a stroller.

Down below, in a discussion of a gray line in Schuyler’s poem, I wonder if I could write about silver. I noticed it today, out on the trail. The blazing bright reflection off a car’s hood, the sun shining on wet pavement.

Schuyler, Hymn to Life, Page 4

Begins with Bring no pleasure and ends with As one strokes a cat.

And if you thought March was bad
Consider April, early April, wet snow falling into blue squills
That underneath a beech make an illusory lake, a haze of blue
With depth to it.

I love his illusory lake and the haze of blue with depth to it. Squills = a sea onion, a plant in the lily family with slender, strap-like leaves and blue flowers. Until I looked up squills, I didn’t get that the illusory lake was really a cluster of spring flowers. Maybe that’s because April in Minneapolis creates a different kind of fake lake: the giant puddle!

That is like pain, ordinary household pain,
Like piles, or bumping against a hernia.

First reaction: recognition. I am struggling through an extended bout of unexplained constipation that has resulted in piles. Nothing big or overly painful, ordinary, a part of the daily routine. Unsettling. Annoying. A low-lying worry that the ordinary could become something more.

Second reaction: In his episode for VS, Jericho Brown says this:

in any poem, anytime you write something down, one of the things that I’m always doing is I’m trying to make sure it’s opposite soon gets there. Soon as I write something down, I’m like, well, the opposite needs to be there too. The sound opposite, the sense opposite, the image opposite. How do you get the opposites in the poem? Because you want the poem to be like your life.

Jericho Brown VS The Process of Elimination

I’m thinking about how just as the ordinary includes the comfort of the mundane and routine, it includes the discomfort — the steady aches and pains that are nothing special, just always present, a part of the day.

And in the sitting room people sit
And rest their feet and talk of where they’ve been, motels and Monticello,
Dinner in the Fiji Room.

I love this plain, ordinary image of people in a sitting room doing what you do in a sitting room: sitting. There’s something magical about the sitting and talking and not doing anything grander, resting.

Someone forgets a camera. Each day forgetting:
What is there so striking to remember?

Each day forgetting.

The rain stops. April shines,
A Little
Gray descends.
An illuminous penetration of unbright light that seeps and coats
The ragged lawn and spells out bare spots and winter fallen branches.
Yardwork.

What a wonderful description of gray light! It shines a little, an unbright light that seeps and coats and exposes (spells out) the worn spots and the ordinary work needed to be done every spring. Lately, when I think of gray, I think of the opposite — not how it makes everything look shabby, worn, tired, but that it softens everything, making it mysterious and more gentle, relaxed.

It seems like Schuyler could be writing against one classic image of luminous gray light or, it made me think of this at least: the silver lining. Wondering about the origins of the phrase, I looked it up. John Milton’s poem, Comus:

That he, the Supreme good t’ whom all all things ill
are but as slavish officers of vengeance,
Would send a glistring Guardian if need were
To keep my life and homour unassail’d.
Was I deceiv’d, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
I did not err, there does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night,
And casts a gleam over this tufted Grove.

Thinking about my color poems, and my interest in gray, I wonder how I could write about silver? For me, silver is the color that burns and shines when concentrated on the iced-over river, too bright for my eyes. Silver is also the color of the path when ice is present — it’s a warning sign, a whisper, Watch Out! Slippery.


And now the yardwork is over (it is never over), today’s
Stint anyway. Odd jobs, that stretch ahead, wide and mindless as
Pennsylvania Avenue or the bridge to Arlington, crossed and recrossed

I like wide and mindless, mundane tasks. Well, mostly I do. Tasks that can help me to shift into a different mental space where I wander and day dream. Mowing the lawn, pulling the weeds, doing the dishes.

And there the Lincoln Memorial crumbles. It looks so solid: it won’t
Last. The impermanence of permanence, is that all there is?

I’m reminded of an ED poem with Schuyler’s use of crumbling:

Crumbling is not an instant’s Act (1010)/ EMILY DICKINSON

Crumbling is not an instant’s Act
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation’s processes
Are organized Decays —

‘Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul
A Cuticle of Dust
A Borer in the Axis
An Elemental Rust —

Ruin is formal — Devil’s work
Consecutive and slow —
Fail in an instant, no man did
Slipping — is Crashe’s law —

Crumbling is routine, everyday life. Slow and steady, nothing special, ordinary. Not Ruin.

is that all there is? To look
And see the plane tree.

What an awesome enjambment! Sometimes all we need (or all we have) is that tree outside the window.

For this is spring, this mud and swelling fruit tree buds, furred
On the apple trees. And yet it still might snow: it’s been known

This poem is about D.C.. Here in Minneapolis, it almost always snows — a big storm — in April.

march 11/RUN

4.75 miles
river road, north/south
30 degrees / snow
100% snow-covered

Even though I saw that snow showers were predicted for this morning, I wasn’t expecting it to be snowing today, or if it was, to only be the big flakes that fall but never land. Wrong. The snow started around 8 and hasn’t let up yet (at noon). The most irritating thing about the snow was that it was blowing in my face, even with the brim of my cap pulled way down. The most delightful? Maybe the sharp, quick snap of the crunching snow, or the way the not slippery but also not solid surface made me feel faster or more like I was flying then plodding, or how the rare pops of color — the yellowish-green crosswalk sign, the blue bike path sign, a runner’s pink hat, the hot pink and lime green stripe on another runner’s pants, the orange water jug on the side of the path set up by some running group — stood out against the relentless backdrop of white, or the cross-country skier! skiing on the path. A great run!

At the end of my run, right in front of my house, I heard the snow crunching and the birds chirping and I had to pull out my phone to record them. I made the mistake of holding the phone down at my side — is it a mistake? — and so the crunching sound is so loud that it’s distorted. It was loud, though. I remember passing another running and hearing her feet CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCHing!

LOUD! / 11 march 2023

Before I went out for a run, I read through the third page of Schuyler’s poem. So much of it is about color. I wanted to spend my run looking for color, and I did, at least some of the time, but I became focused on avoiding rough snow and making sure I noticed the river — open, wide, the snow looking like a white mist hovering above the water.

Colors I Remember Noticing

  1. a pale yellow flag in the snow
  2. a yellowish-green crosswalk sign
  3. blue biking and walking path signs
  4. a bright pink hat on a runner
  5. chartreuse running tights on a runner
  6. my purple jacket
  7. almost everything, white
  8. a dark gray strip of bare pavement
  9. running tights with a stripe of lime green and hot pink
  10. an orange water jug

Schuyler, Hymn of Life, page 3

Begins with Below Lee, ends with Or simply lying down to read. A lot of color. Decided to pick out only the color lines, except for one delightful one about birds that I couldn’t resist:

Created no illusion of lived-in-ness. But the periwinkles do, in beds
That flatten and are starred blue-violet, a retiring flower loved,
It would seem, of the dead, so often found where they congregate.

I’m unfamiliar with periwinkles, so I looked them up:

Tough, low-maintenance, and pest-free, Vinca minor (commonly known as periwinkle) has pretty broadleaf foliage and flowers that thrive in the sun or shade. It is also useful for providing ground cover and is known for its creeping habit. Periwinkle can come back every year as a perennial when planted in warmer climates but is an annual in cooler regions. Vinca minor vines most commonly put out a blue flower in spring, but the color can also be lavender, purple, or white. 

How to Grow and Care for Vinca Minor

Oh wow, I think I have these in my back yard! I love the little purple pops of color, breaking up the monotony of green. Usually I’m able to see them. And, are these flowers that I write about in an entry dated july 29, 2019 periwinkles?

Forgot to look for the river again today. Instead saw lots of green. A few slashes of light purple. What are those wildflowers? Green with purple all over the edge of the path.

Doubtful. I searched periwinkles and Mississippi River Gorge and vinca minor and Mississippi River Gorge and nothing came up.

The sky
Colors itself rosily behind gray-black and the rain falls through
The basketball hoop on a garage, streaking its backboard with further
Trails of rust, a lovely color to set with periwinkle violet-blue.

A rosy sky behind gray-black clouds? Not pure reddish-pink or pinkish-red but the hint of it behind something darker. The rust — did I see rust anywhere on my run? I don’t think so.

in the west appear streaks of different green

So under lilacs unleaved/ Lie a clump of snowdrops

What are snowdrops, and can I find them here in Minneapolis? Yes! But not today.

The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum gardeners and I are on the lookout each March for the first snowdrop flowers, the first perennial garden plant to bloom and a marker of the beginning of the growing season.

A few of the white, bell-like flowers opened March 16 last year, announcing the end of winter.

In botanical and gardening books, snowdrops are described as hardy bulbs with nodding flowers that bloom, while lingering patches of snow are still seen.

Nature Notes: Snowdrops (from 2016)

I think I’ve seen them in my backyard in very early spring. I’ll have to look out for them at the end of this month or in April.

and one purple crocus. Purple. A polka-dotted
Color little girls are fond of: “See my new dress!” and she twirls
On one foot. Then, crossed, bursts into tears.

Purple. A polka-dotted Color? Is there a crocus that is purple with polka dots, or is he suggesting that like polka-dots, purple is a color that delights little girls? I don’t like his emotionally erratic little girl image.

Smiles and rain, like
These passing days in which buds swell, unseen as yet, waiting
For the elms to color their further out most twigs,

The early buds on the tips of tree twigs! I notice these all winter, waiting for them to turn green.

only the willow
Gleams yellow.

When I lived much closer to Minnehaha Creek, I would often walk by a beautiful willow tree. Several years ago, it was cut down. It has appeared in a few of my early poem fragments. I remember how it looked yellow in the spring. What a beautiful tree! Now, when I think of willow trees, I mostly think of Carl Phillips (see the end of this log entry).

These
Days need birds and so they come, a flock of ducks, and a bunch of
Small fluffy unnamed balls that hide in hedges and make a racket.

These days need birds. Yes! I love that line, and the sentiment. Also, the small, fluffy unnamed balls that hide in hedges. No color mentioned; I just wanted to make note of this great bit. I can see a soft, intense, egg yellow of fluff.

It is more
Mysterious than that, pierced by blue

I think the pierced by blue is a reference to the color that cuts through the gloom of a rainy, cloudy day.

I read somewhere that in addition to writing poetry, James Schuyler was an art critic. I would imagine that all the time he spent studying various paintings has influenced how he sees, understands, is able to describe color. He’s a great color poet.

march 10/SHOVELWALK

shovel: 25 minutes
about 2 inces

At some point during the speculation over this storm, they predicted 3-5 inches. We might have gotten 3 total, over 2 days of on and off snow. The snow was soft and not too difficult to shovel, except for the bits caked on that my shitty Target shovel couldn’t seem to scrape.

walk: 1 mile
neighborhood with Scott and Delia

A beautiful walk through a winter wonderland. We headed north on Edmund and I was able to admire the white Welcoming Oaks from across the road. Later, on 34th, I made sure to check and see if the house that recently acquired new owners still had the little anemometer (measures wind speed) perched on the fence near the garage. Yes! Noticed how all the snow on the streets had melted. Excellent.

the tree outside my window

During my month with Linda Pastan, I read a lot about the tree outside her window. The tree outside my window belongs to my neighbor. Earlier this week, the heavy, wet snow caused a a big section of it (which is a big tree) to fall. Here’s what I wrote about it on Monday:

Woke up this morning, walked downstairs, opened the blinds. Hello huge tree branch sprawled across the side yard! Sometime during the night as it snowed a branch from my neighbor’s tree fell. It starts in their yard and ends by the edge of my house. Luckily, no damage. I wonder how long it will be before it’s removed?

RUN! log entry from 6 march 2023

How long will it be? It’s still there. Yesterday Scott and I talked about whether or not we should do anything about it. We decided we’ll wait until it’s warmer. It’s not blocking anything, or causing any damage, and it is their responsibility. I wouldn’t mind clearing off some of the branches, but the biggest part of the fallen tree looks heavy and will be difficult to remove. Of course, this fallen tree isn’t a big deal, but it’s difficult to ignore when it’s right outside my window, always there, reminding me that something will need to done about it at some point, and that I’m incapable of talking with my neighbors about it.

a mini-project on Schuyler

Yesterday I decided to print out James Schuyler’s lllooonnnnggg poem, Hymn to Life. 10 pages 1.1 spaced in 13 pt Helvetica-Neue. It just fits on my desk, under the glass. My plan is to spend some time with a different page each day (or each time I read it and write about it) and pick out bits that stand out for me.

James Schuyler, Hymn to Life, Page 2

Today I worked on page 2, which begins with As the seasons turning, and ends with bigger gravestones than the lesser fry. Why did I begin with page 2 and not page 1? Maybe it was because I’ve read the first page many times, but rarely beyond it — I was too daunted by the number of lines left to read. And because I discussed the first page a little yesterday.

tree, that dominates this yard, thick-waisted, tall/ And crook branched. Its bark scales off like that which we forget:/ Pain, an introduction at a party, what precisely/ happened umpteen Years or days or hours ago. This line reminds me of a bit of Schuyler’s diary that I read yesterday:

March 5 — in this case from 1971:

“As beautiful a morning as ever was, as though the two days wind had blown something away and left — not spring, by any means: a kind of russet flash in this swept clean clarity.  The plane tree looks as though it’s shedding its flakes and scabs of bark in the interest of a new nakedness, its upper trunk like a sinewy throat. 


Putting these two fragments together complicates and deepens my understanding of that which we forget. When I initially read the poem, I was thinking more about the regret of forgetting someone’s name, or what happened in the past. Also — just last week, RJP had a check-up at the dentist. After she was safely done, I told her about how painful one of my cleanings had been and how I wished I could have recorded that pain I felt because I hadn’t flossed enough and play it back for myself every time I didn’t want to floss! Now reading the lines in Schuyler’s diary about shedding bark and becoming something new, I’m thinking about why I sometimes want to forget, to let go of old memories and experiences, to become something new. So, some things we want to forget — like me and the problem of the tree — and some things we want to remember — like the voices and gestures of someone we love, the pain of a bad cleaning. Both are true, and the tree bark can be about forgetting as welcomed or feared.

And that same blue jay returns, or perhaps/ It is another. All jays are one to me. This makes me think of bird as form, which is how I often understand birds because of my inability to see their fine details. Although, as I learn more of their songs, I can distinguish between some types. Just this past fall I finally realized that what I thought was an irritating crow call is actually the screech of a blue jay, and that the tin-whistle song that I always here is a blue jay too. I’m also thinking about the rare occasion when I wonder about the life span of the creatures I encounter — squirrels, birds, butterflies, bees. I looked up blue jay: 7 years, on average, but as old as 27. I’ve lived in my current house for 8 years, so I might be encountering the same bird each year.

But not the sun which seems at/ Each rising new, as though in the night it enacted death and rebirth I don’t imagine the sun in this way. Is this because I hardly ever sit and watch it set? I should. What would it feel like to imagine that the sun is performing death every night, being reborn every morning? How could that shift my perspective on everything?

a future which is just more Daily life. I love daily life — the mundane, sometimes made magical, but often small and quiet and repeated. I find comfort in the patterns, find meaning in the accumulation of day after day.

It/Is spring. It is also still really winter. Not a day when you say,/“What a beautiful spring day.” A day like twilight or evening when/You think, “I meant to watch the sun set.”

I meant to watch the sun set. This line comes after the flowers blooming, daily life, and a bit about his cat is always getting into fights. A fun surprise to realize, just now as I read this again, that Schuyler was setting me up for regret about not seeing a sun set! And now, noticing how I wrote sunset and he wrote sun set, I’m thinking about the difference between the two, one as a noun, the other a verb, and how believing in the sun setting as opposed to the sunset is much more fun, and open, and makes imagining that the sun could be doing something like performing death every night much more possible. Verbs are the best!

march 9/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
32 degrees / light snow
99% clear path!

Hooray for slightly warmer weather and finally having a clear trail. This winter has been especially bad for icy, treacherous paths. Today there was some wind and snowflakes flying like daggers in my face, but there was also sizzling in the trees (from dead leaves shaking in the wind), a gushing waterfall, and a flowing creek. I don’t remember looking down at the river even once, but I do remember listening for the sewer pipe at 42nd (more gushing water) and glancing down at the sledding hill at the park (empty of sledders but not of snow). I thought about how this felt like a late winter, early spring snow: not likely to last. I appreciated how the new flakes covered the old ugly gray snow that’s been accumulating since december. Yesterday I noticed it too, while walking and thought it looked like powdered sugar on a cake with a cracked crust.

On the second half of my run, I recited the poem I memorized last night, Listen by Didi Jackson. Not in my head this time, but out loud. Quietly, but more than a whisper. The poem was easy to speak as I moved. Maybe I should road test all of the poems I write? If it’s not easy to recite while moving, it needs to be revised! It can’t be too easy, though.

my body doing strange things

Yesterday after my run, I had something strange and unsettling happen. All of a sudden, without warning, my ears plugged up, my head felt full or stuffed up or about to explode, and I could feel the vibrations of sounds. Everything felt (not just sounded) loud. So loud! Not painful, just uncomfortable. And there was constant noise. Sometimes it sounded like a dryer with something thump thump thumping in it. Sometimes it sounded like I was standing next to the engine of a plane. And sometimes it sounded like the inside of a seashell. My ear often gets plugged up, but never like this. It lasted the rest of the day and until I went to bed (around 12:30 am). I woke up today, and it was gone.

What happened? My best guess is that it was an intense episode of tinnitus, possibly brought on by something that happened Tuesday night during band rehearsal. Whoever was playing timpani decided to hit the drum as hard as they could. BOOM! The noise was so loud it made me jump in my chair.

Before my run, I revisited a poem I first posted on this blog on feb 16, 2019: Hymn to Life by James Schuyler. Wow, is this poem long! Too long for me and my failing vision. But so good. Here is a passage I’d like to remember (and maybe use someday):

The turning of the globe is not so real to us   
As the seasons turning and the days that rise out of early gray   
—The world is all cut-outs then—and slip or step steadily down   
The slopes of our lives where the emotions and needs sprout.

Hymn to Life/ James Schuyler

I especially like the idea of early gray as a time when the world is all cut-outs. That’s my world a lot of the time. Flat, not quite real, only forms, cut-outs.

An idea: I think I’ll print out this poem and put it under the glass on my desk to read and reread all month! I haven’t read much James Schuyler, but what I have, I like. Linda Pastan talks about him somewhere (in an interview? a poem — I’ll look it up later) and I can see his influence in this poem. Not too long ago, I found out about his diary and I’ve wanted to get it. It’s out-of-print, with only expensive, used copies available, at least where I’m looking.

update on the previous paragraph:
First, I did print it out and am slowly making my way through it.
Second, Linda Pastan talks about William Stafford, not James Schuyler. Maybe I was thinking about this discussion (A Day Like Any Other: A Discussion of James Schuyler’s “February”)of Schuyler that I listened to at the same time I was reading Pastan?

In case I decide to study Schuyler some more, here’s something to read: Some James Schuyler Resources

dec 14/BIKERUN

bike: 18 minutes
bike stand, basement
run: 5k
treadmill, basement

Because I’m feeling extra sore at the end of the year and because it’s icy and cold (feels like 5) outside, I biked and ran in the basement this morning. While I biked, I watched more of Netflix’s Prom. Still not sure if I like it, but it’s good to watch while biking. A nice distraction. Near the end of my biking, I stopped the movie, pulled out my phone, and recorded myself reciting an excerpt of “Halos.” Several mistakes, but not too bad. I love this poem with its myopic me and soul ubiquitous like water and the idea that “to the dead, we’re the ghosts.”

Reciting Halos/ Biking, heart rate 120 bpm

While running I listened to a spotify playlist that included some Harry Styles, Janelle Monae, Demi Lovato, and ended with Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the U.S.A.” Wow, that last song. Not too bad to run to, with its slow steady beat, but those lyrics. Yikes. That was a particularly bad phase for Cyrus–so much troubling cultural appropriation. Wore my new berry red shoes and felt fast and free–even though my app claimed I was running slow. Pretty sure that my speed on the treadmill is always faster than it says. I ran for a little over 30 minutes–that’s a lot for me on the treadmill.

Today the electoral college votes. Foolishly I had assumed that that would be it, all of the doubt and unsubstantiated claims about the election will end. But then I reviewed how all of this works and realized that we still have the potential shit show of January 6th, when Congress can chose to debate the results. Of course, it couldn’t be resolved in 2020–2020 must continue to (mostly) suck.

Here’s a poem I’ve been meaning to post for some time now; I wanted to wait until it was winter, or at least felt like winter: cold, with snow on the ground. It’s from December 1972.

In Wiry Winter/ James Schuyler

The shadow of a bird
upon the yard upun
a house: it’s gone.
Through a pane a
beam like a warm hand
laid upon an arm.
A thin shell, trans-
parent, blue: the
atmosphere in which
to swim. Burr. A
cold plunge. The bird
is back. All the same,
to swim, plunging
upward, arms as wings,
into calm cold. Warm
within the act,
threading air, a
shadow on the yard.
Or floating, gliding,
a shadow on the roofs
and drives, in action
warm, the shadow cold
but brief. To swim
in air. No, Not in
this wiry winter air.
A beam comes in the
glass, a hand to
warm an arm. A hand
upon the glass
finds it a kind
of ice. The Shadow
of a bird less cold.
Window, miraculous
contrivance, sun
hot wires in
meshed cold.
The bird goes
quick as a wish
to swim up
and cast, like
it, a shadow
on the years.