Tag: poem

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 6/RUN

5.5 miles
franklin loop
25 degrees

Brr. It’s cold today, with a cold wind. Wore my winter layers: long sleeved green shirt, black running tights, purple jacket, black winter cap, gray buff, black gloves. The 12 mph wind felt stronger, especially when I was running into it. My favorite part of the run: the river. Running east over the franklin bridge, it was blue with a wide strip of sparkling silver. Later, running west over the lake street bridge, it was a deep shiny bronze. When I reached the 36th street parking lot, I walked over to the bluff and admired the silver water glittering through the trees.

Heard a woodpecker, its loud knock echoing through the gorge. Also heard some honking geese. Saw the white flash of plane then the broad wingspan of a flying goose.

Smelled cigarette smoke as I passed by a parks worker in a bright orange vest.

Got a side stitch on the east side. Tried to run though it for a few minutes, then stopped near the railroad trestle to walk.

Parts of this run were difficult. At first, my back, then my left hamstring were a little sore. Later, feeling the wind in my face, a thought flashed: can I really keep running for another 2.5 miles? But most of it felt good, and I’m glad I went out there to be with the river and the birds and the bare ground. And, Mr. Morning! who I was able to good morning! for the first time in at least a month.

the mannequins return!

Last night I got the idea that I wanted to turn my mannequin poem (about the mannequins at the state fair) into a strange, uncanny prose poem and submit to a great literary journal I just discovered, Hex. Before I went out for my run, I was working on it and hoping to think about it while I ran. I probably did have a thought or two, but I don’t remember — too busy trying to stay relaxed and notice the river.

Before the run, I was thinking about the mannequins as delightful Crones, including one with Tammy Faye eyes who presides over an uncanny valley of other past-their-prime mannequins and vanquishes an army of J-Lo looking mannequins that arrive one fateful summer.

I looked up “crone” on the poetry foundation site and found some wonderful lines that I won’t use, but that I’d like to remember:

And when she laughs she makes a sound like things
That children are afraid of on the stairs.
(from Crone/ George O’Neil)

These lines remind me of a favorite memory from when RJP was a little girl — maybe 6 or 7? We were at a local coffee roastery. An old man who worked there was at the roaster and when RJP asked him what he was doing he replied, roasting little girls. I laughed and loved that he said that (it didn’t scare RJP).

And here’s a poem I found last week, part of a series on curse poems, that inspires me:

Misty Eyed Woman At The Carnival Tells Me I’m April’s Fool/ Lemmy Ya’akova

you will live long! it will not always feel like living.
if you put your hands on top of your need
you will remember what it is you are about to do.
this is completely normal behaviour.
these are your mad works, you must protect
your madness! all of it, yes you heard me, is forgivable!
it may or may not be who you want to be,
it is who you are in that moment.
one day the heron will arrive all long legged & blue—
you will know why it chose the water.

april 4/RUN

5.6 miles
hidden falls loop (short)
35 degrees

The first time running the Hidden Falls loop since nov 7th. Windy, overcast, brisk. Off and on, it started to snow sharp pellets. Very glad I brought my buff to cover my ears. The river looked bronze again today, metallic brown with a soft shine. Had a rare sighting of Santa Claus — the tall runner with the longish white beard. Encountered several other runners, including one coming from behind, running much faster than me. I could feel, in my own steps, how much faster his cadence was. Passed the pine tree that fell in last weekend’s snowstorm and had been blocking the trail. Not anymore; someone had moved it off to the side. Heading east over the ford bridge, I heard some gushing water. I stopped to check it out — a cascade seeping out of the limestone! Running above the gorge on east river parkway, I glanced down at the gorge and saw trees with a white floor. Will it melt by next week? Near hidden falls, the wind picked up. I could hear it rushing through the pine trees.

Listened to the wind, my breathing, cars, and fragments of conversation as I ran to hidden falls. Put in “Summer 2014” playlist on the way back.

A breakthrough in my orange poem! This morning I recorded myself reciting a draft of it, then listened to it right before I headed out the door for my run. Not quite finished, but getting closer. Working on word choice and what to title it. In terms of the title, I trying to use it to help with my indirect reference to the story of the butterfly. One option:

When I Can’t See the Orange Buoy on the Lake, I Imagine it’s the Missing Mountain and I’m the Monarch

Yesterday, one of my favorite poetry people, Heather Christle, posted a question about a poem: “If you had to pick 1-6 lines from David Berman’s “Self-Portrait at 28” to share with someone who knew nothing of his work in order to tantalize them into reading the poem in its entirety, what would they be?” Of course I read the whole thing and it was amazing! Can I pick only 1-6 lines out of so many wonderful ones? Nope, but I can pick 3 sets of 1-6 lines:

1

You see, there is a window by my desk 
I stare out when I’m stuck, 
though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write 
and I don’t know why I keep staring at it. 

2

I’m just letting the day be what it is: 
a place for a large number of things 
to gather and interact — 
not even a place but an occasion, 
a reality for real things. 

3

The hill out my window is still looking beautiful, 
suffused in a kind of gold national park light, 
and it seems to say, 
I’m sorry the world could not possibly 
use another poem about Orpheus 
but I’m available if you’re not working 
on a self-portrait or anything. 

Self-Portrait at 28/ David Berman

I know it’s a bad title 
but I’m giving it to myself as a gift 
on a day nearly canceled by sunlight 
when the entire hill is approaching 
the ideal of Virginia 
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly 
and I think “at least I have not woken up 
with a bloody knife in my hand” 
by then having absently wandered 
one hundred yards from the house 
while still seated in this chair 
with my eyes closed. 

It is a certain hill. 
The one I imagine when I hear the word “hill,” 
and if the apocalypse turns out 
to be a world-wide nervous breakdown, 
if our five billion minds collapse at once, 
well I’d call that a surprise ending 
and this hill would still be beautiful, 
a place I wouldn’t mind dying 
alone or with you. 

I am trying to get at something 
and I want to talk very plainly to you 
so that we are both comforted by the honesty. 

You see, there is a window by my desk 
I stare out when I’m stuck, 
though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write 
and I don’t know why I keep staring at it. 

My childhood hasn’t made good material either, 
mostly being a mulch of white minutes 
with a few stand out moments: 
popping tar bubbles on the driveway in the summer, 
a certain amount of pride at school 
everytime they called it “our sun,” 
and playing football when the only play 

was “go out long” are what stand out now. 
If squeezed for more information 
I can remember old clock radios 
with flipping metal numbers 
and an entree called Surf and Turf. 

As a way of getting in touch with my origins, 
every night I set the alarm clock 
for the time I was born, so that waking up 
becomes a historical reenactment 

and the first thing I do 
is take a reading of the day 
and try to flow with it, 
like when you’re riding a mechanical bull 
and you strain to learn the pattern quickly 
so you don’t inadvertently resist it. 

II.

I can’t remember being born 
and no one else can remember it either 
even the doctor who I met years later 
at a cocktail party. 

It’s one of the little disappointments 
that makes you think about getting away, 
going to Holly Springs or Coral Gables 
and taking a room on the square 
with a landlady whose hands are scored 
by disinfectant, telling the people you meet 
that you are from Alaska, and listen 
to what they have to say about Alaska 
until you have learned much more about Alaska 
than you ever will about Holly Springs or Coral Gables. 

Sometimes I’m buying a newspaper 
in a strange city and think 
“I am about to learn what it’s like to live here.” 
Oftentimes there’s a news item 
about the complaints of homeowners 
who live beside the airport 
and I realize that I read an article 
on this subject nearly once a year 
and always receive the same image: 

I am in bed late at night 
in my house near the airport 
listening to the jets fly overhead, 
a strange wife sleeping beside me. 
In my mind the bedroom is an amalgamation 
of various cold medicine commercial sets 
(there is always a box of tissue on the nightstand). 

I know these recurring news articles are clues, 
flaws in the design, though I haven’t figured out 
how to string them together yet. 
But I’m noticing that the same people 
are dying over and over again,
for instance, Minnie Pearl 
who died this year 
for the fourth time in four years. 

III.

Today is the first day of Lent 
and once again I’m not really sure what it is. 
How many more years will I let pass 
before I take the trouble to ask someone? 

It reminds me of this morning 
when you were getting ready for work. 
I was sitting by the space heater, 
numbly watching you dress, 
and when you asked why I never wear a robe 
I had so many good reasons 
I didn’t know where to begin. 

If you were cool in high school 
you didn’t ask too many questions. 
You could tell who’d been to last night’s 
big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallways. 
You didn’t have to ask 
and that’s what cool was: 
the ability to deduce, 
to know without asking. 
And the pressure to simulate coolness 
means not asking when you don’t know, 
which is why kids grow ever more stupid. 

A yearbook’s endpages, filled with promises 
to stay in touch, stand as proof of the uselessness 
of a teenager’s promise. Not like I’m dying 
for a letter from the class stoner 
ten years on but… 

Do you remember the way the girls 
would call out “love you!” 
conveniently leaving out the “I” 
as if they didn’t want to commit 
to their own declaration. 

I agree that the “I” is a pretty heavy concept 
and hope you won’t get uncomfortable 
if I should go into some deeper stuff here. 

IV.

There are things I’ve given up on 
like recording funny answering-machine messages. 
It’s part of growing older 
and the human race as a group 
has matured along the same lines. 
It seems our comedy dates the quickest. 
If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare’s jokes 
I hope you won’t be insulted 
if I say you’re trying too hard. 
Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live 
seem slow-witted and obvious now. 

It’s just that our advances are irrepressible. 
Nowadays little kids can’t even set up lemonade stands. 
It makes people too self-conscious about the past, 
though try explaining that to a kid. 

I’m not saying it should be this way. 

All this new technology 
will eventually give us new feelings 
that will never completely displace the old ones, 
leaving everyone feeling quite nervous 
and split in two. 

We will travel to Mars 
even as folks on Earth 
are still ripping open potato chip 
bags with their teeth. 
Why? I don’t have the time or intelligence 
to make all the connections, 
like my friend Gordon 
(this is a true story) 
who, having grown up in Braintree, Massachusetts, 
had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree 
until I brought it up. 
He’d never broken the name down to its parts. 
By then it was too late. 
He had moved to Coral Gables. 

V.

The hill out my window is still looking beautiful, 
suffused in a kind of gold national park light, 
and it seems to say, 
I’m sorry the world could not possibly 
use another poem about Orpheus 
but I’m available if you’re not working 
on a self-portrait or anything. 

I’m watching my dog have nightmares, 
twitching and whining on the office floor, 
and I try to imagine what beast 
has cornered him in the meadow 
where his dreams are set. 

I’m just letting the day be what it is: 
a place for a large number of things 
to gather and interact — 
not even a place but an occasion, 
a reality for real things. 

Friends warned me not to get too psychedelic 
or religious with this piece: 
“they won’t accept it if it’s too psychedelic 
or religious,” but these are valid topics 
and I’m the one with the dog twitching on the floor, 
possibly dreaming of me, 
that part of me that would beat a dog 
for no good reason, 
no reason that a dog could see. 

I am trying to get at something so simple 
that I have to talk plainly 
so the words don’t disfigure it, 
and if it turns out that what I say is untrue, 
then at least let it be harmless 
like a leaky boat in the reeds 
that is bothering no one. 

VI.

I can’t trust the accuracy of my own memories, 
many of them having blended with sentimental 
telephone and margarine commercials, 
plainly ruined by Madison Avenue, 
though no one seems to call the advertising world 
“Madison Avenue” anymore. Have they moved? 
I need an update on this. 

But first I have some business to take care of. 

I walked out to the hill behind our house 
which looks positively Alaskan today, 
and it would be easier to explain this 
if I had a picture to show you, 
but I was with our young dog 
and he was running through the tall grass 
like running through the tall grass 
is all of life together, 
until a bird calls or he finds a beer can 
and that thing fills all the space in his head. 

You see, 
his mind can only hold one thought at a time 
and when he finally hears me call his name 
he looks up and cocks his head. 
For a single moment 
my voice is everything: 

Self-portrait at 28.

Weather update: As I sit at my desk watching a frantic squirrel run by and the reflection of branches swaying in the wind on the glass top of my desk, I’m struck by the strange weather. Hail, then sun, then thunder, then quiet. This cycle has happened a few times already.

april 3/WALKYARD WORK

walk: 40 minutes
neighborhood with Scott and Delia
40 degrees

Feeling springier every day. Scott and I discussed how this last snow on Friday moved the twin cities up to the 3rd snowiest winter in history. Too much snow. It’s melting fast. Will everything be green by the end of next week, when we’re supposed to have a stretch of 50s and 60s? As we walked through the neighborhood, we looked at the colors of all of the houses; we’re getting our house repainted next month and trying to decide on which dark gray and whether to have a raspberry red, parakeet green, or copper harbor orange door. Mostly, I can’t really see the color on the door, but I’m fine with any of these three. It would seem fitting, though, to paint the door orange since I’m so obsessed with the color. And, copper harbor orange — where I was born in the UP!

Speaking of orange, I’m still working on my orange poem. Such a struggle. Not quite able to find the way in yet. For inspiration, I decided to search for orange songs, settled on Frank Ocean’s channel ORANGE. Will it help or distract?

Also trying to take a different approach to this poem. In my notes and on this log a few days ago, I wrote I orbit the orange. In terms of open water swimming, this is literally true. I loop around the orange buoys all summer — or 5-6 times a week, more than 100 loops. It is also true as a metaphor: in trying to write about the color orange, I circle around it again and again, wanting to make sense of what orange means to me, searching for ways to be able to see it or to sense it or to find a way around or through it when seeing it is not possible. This orbiting also provides one definition for poetry, which I also wrote about last week:

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. 

log entry from march 31, 2023

Later, I wrote in my notes a possible title for an orange poem, Orange, an ars poetica. Orange as more than a color, but a method, the void that my words are trying to encircle. Not white space or blank space on a page, but orange space, orange breaths, an orange too full to rhyme or offer back an echo. A source, a center, the place where I practice learning to be without seeing or to see in new ways.

I want to channel the orange, conjure it into existence, inhabit its invisible space, learn to see it new ways.

Think citrus fruit leaves in late fall turmeric
Think cheese puffs Planters cheese balls extra sharp cheddar cheese
Think candied slices from the Sears candy counter sherbet Betty Crocker au gratin potatoes
Think surprise pumpkins growing in the back yard candy corn pumpkins before a swim meet
Think construction cones road closed signs for races spray paint around cracks in the asphalt
Think almost red 1974 VW bugs
Think buoys butterflies missing mountains
Think orange orange orange orange orange

yard work: 30 minutes
backyard
43 degrees

After all the discussion about yard work (Schuyler) and everyday chores (Ammons), I decided to document my yard work today. While Scott tried to figure out a way to straighten are tall trees (arborvitae) which are leaning too far to stage left (if you’re looking from inside the house and out the window), I was on poop patrol. In past winters, I’ve tried to stay on top of this relentless task, watching where Delia pooped and digging it out of the snow. Not this year. Did I ever pick it up? I don’t think so. As a result, the yard is filled with poop, and because everything is thawing now, it’s soggy, gooey poop. Gross, I guess. It doesn’t really bother me. I filled up entire Target plastic bag with poop, then decided I might wait until it all dries out a bit more. At one point, in awe of the amount of poop on the ground, I called out to Scott without thinking, Holy shit! Literally.

I looked through a few more A. R. Ammons poems this morning, but they were all so long. Garbage should be arriving in the mail today, so I’ll wait for that to study him more. Instead, here’s a great poem by Gary Snyder from is collection Riprap, which I’ve been thinking of buying for a few years now.

Thin Ice/ Gary Synder

Walking in February
A warm day after a long freeze
On an old logging road
Below Sumas Mountain
Cut a walking stick of alder,
Looked down through clouds
On wet fields of the Nooksack—
And stepped on the ice
Of a frozen pool across the road.
It creaked
The white air under
Sprang away, long cracks
Shot out in the black,
My cleated mountain boots
Slipped on the hard slick
—like thin ice—the sudden
Feel of an old phrase made real—
Instant of frozen leaf,
Icewater, and staff in hand.
“Like walking on thin ice—”
I yelled back to a friend,
It broke and I dropped
Eight inches in

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!