August 2020 – Fourteen Lines

Eloquent of Still Replies

maxresdefault — La Ghirlendata by Dante Gabriel Rosetti

Lovesight

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 – 1882)

When do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
The worship of that Love through thee made known?
Or when in the dusk hours (we two alone,)
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?

O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,–
How then should sound upon Life’s darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death’s imperishable wing?

Gabriel Dante Rossetti may have been blessed with artistic ability from birth by his parents honoring Dante as his namesake. Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais and became the main inspiration for a second generation of artists like William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.

I like his paintings, ornate with color and complex shading. They are highly stylized, erotic and beautiful, with imagery filled with symbols and connections to myth, religion and art. His poetry leans like his painting to the romantic, but there are deeper shades of meaning than just sweet nothings he is whispering in your ear. At a time when hope is something that many of us are finding in short supply, his poem The One Hope is a good reminder that hope is something we can obtain merely for the focus on the word alone. As silly as it may sound, I can find hope in Hope.

The One Hope

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

When all desire at last and all regret
Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain,
What shall assuage the unforgotten pain
And teach the unforgetful to forget?
Shall Peace be still a sunk stream long unmet,—
Or may the soul at once in a green plain
Stoop through the spray of some sweet life-fountain
And cull the dew-drenched flowering amulet?

Ah! when the wan soul in that golden air
Between the scriptured petals softly blown
Peers breathless for the gift of grace unknown,
Ah! let none other written spell soe’er
But only the one Hope’s one name be there,—
Not less nor more, but even that word alone.

You Won’t Get A PostCard From Me

Excuses Minnesota Child Uses to Get Out of Swim Lessons While Going Through Her Fear-of-Water-and-Obsessed-with-Dying-Before-She’s-Ready Phase

by Ash Goedker

Last time you said there’s cabins north
nowhere near water or
heaven, or me –

Ever hear of the Boundary Waters
Lake of the Woods
Lake Winnibigoshish
Child Lake Lake Watch Me Do a Flip
You Can’t Make Me Lake
Lake Looks Like a Lady
Grave Lake Holy Name Lake
Ice Cracking Lake Big
Too Much Lake
Lake of Fire
Like My Back Door?

I’m still training
in the Lord’s Army,
and if I drown
out,

You won’t
get a postcard –

not from me.

I have been on vacation this week, camping 5 nights in a tent several places in Northern Minnesota, spending three of those nights on the shores of Lake Superior north of Grand Marais, Minnesota. Lake Superior is an inland fresh water sea, an ocean of fresh water, that is almost too mystical to imagine if you haven’t been there. It is different from the ocean in that the water is soft and clear and cold. Lake Superior is a rocky, largely undeveloped shore line that remains not disimilar to what it looked like one hundred years ago. My grandfather helped build the original highway from Duluth to the Canadian border in the 1920s. The boundary between Canada and the United States from Grand Portage to the Northwest Angle was the last portion of the boundary to be surveyed by both countries and wasn’t completed until the 1920’s as well. We camped 20 miles from the Canadian border right on the lakeshore on a portion of the Lake Superior Hiking Trail. We largely had the place to ourselves. We had brought our kayaks and kayaked on the lake during calm waters, finding rocks and shore line agates in the water, using the kayak to scout drift wood and find treasures.

There is nothing like a tent camping vacation. We back packed into a campsite for two days, reminding us how heavy even the most modest of conveniences and necessities are and the need to upgrade some of our equipment for future back country experiences. It was also a reminder of how little you really need on a vacation when the focus is on quiet and wilderness. I am blessed to have an adventurous partner who is not intimidated by biting insects, sleeping on the ground and uninvited leeches during our daily swims. It is a peaceful lifestyle to wake up in the morning, decide on what to do and go out into nature and experience it. Do you have a favorite camping destination? How do you like to camp?

Dear Friends

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Dear friends, reproach me not for what I do,
Nor counsel me, nor pity me; nor say
That I am wearing half my life away
For bubble-work that only fools pursue.
And if my bubbles be too small for you,
Blow bigger then your own: the games we play
To fill the frittered minutes of a day,
Good glasses are to read the spirit through.
And whoso reads may get him some shrewd skill;
And some improfitable scorn resign,
To praise the very thing that he deplores.
So, friends (dear friends), remember, if you will,
The shame I win for singing is all mine,
The gold I miss for dreaming is all yours.

Before Some Great Unutterable Thought

As if the Sea Should Part

by Emily Dickinson

As if the Sea should part
And show a further Sea —
And that — a further — and the Three
But a presumption be —

Of Periods of Seas —
Unvisited of Shores —
Themselves the Verge of Seas to be —
Eternity — is Those —

I aspire to be dubbed an idler. It sounds like a knighthood for sonnet writers. The Beneficent Society of Idlers strikes a nice cord, maybe with a large pennant on a red velvet cord for worthy recipients. Great unutterable thoughts that somehow are still uttered is what makes poetry a glue that connects people across time and place. Dickinson is the master of the unutterable and letting unutterances exist between the words and yet be completely understood despite each of our understandings different.

Poetry is not a user manual. It is not meant to be literal or complete. The best of it it is a glimpse into another’s inner life, hopes, dreams and miseries. And if the Sea should part and understanding is lying gleaming in the sand, don’t rush in too quick to pick it up. Let the Sea return to equilibrium and let it soak for a bit. And then dive down again to revel in your discoveries, holding your breath with excitement.

They Dub Thee Idler

by Henry Timrod (1828 – 1867)

They dub thee idler, smiling sneeringly,

And why? because, forsooth, so many moons,

Here dwelling voiceless by the voiceful sea,

Thou hast not set thy thoughts to paltry tunes

In song or sonnet. Them these golden noons

Oppress not with their beauty; they could prate,

Even while a prophet read the solemn runes

On which is hanging some imperial fate.

How know they, these good gossips, what to thee

The ocean and its wanderers may have brought?

How know they, in their busy vacancy,

With what far aim thy spirit may be fraught?

Or that thou dost not bow thee silently

Before some great unutterable thought?

Dreaming As The Summer Dies

A Boat Beneath A Sunny Sky

By Lewis Carroll

A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July —

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear —

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream —
Lingering in the golden gleam —
Life, what is it but a dream?

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known under his pen name Lewis Carroll, authored some of the most complicated and inventive poems and stories in the last 200 years. Both Jabberwocky and The Hunting Of The Snark are unfairly in my mind categorized as nonsensical poems or pigeon holed as “children’s” literature. Yet, I have met more than one grown adult who knew only one poem by memory and that poem was Jabberwocky and could recite it brilliantly after a couple of beers.

What about Carroll’s imagination continues to connect with generation after generation of readers? I believe it’s because his “nonsensical” literature actually makes more sense than some of our real life experiences. Danger and unfairness abounds in Alice in Wonderland but in the end she returns safe and sound to her sister’s side to share her adventure. Carroll turns the world upside down and topsy-turvy not as a parody but because that is how life can feel for many of us. Crafting all of his writing as “children’s” stories is the real brilliance of his subversive literature, allowing readers of all ages to identify with the humor and inventiveness while letting each of us decide how it connects to our imaginations. If you haven’t read Jabberwocky recently, here is a link.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42916/jabberwocky

Carroll’s ability to make up words is a gift limited to very few writers. I have only attempted it a couple of times in my own writing and nothing as bold or timeless as Carroll’s additions to the English language. The tradition of using made up words is a hallmark of poets that goes back to oral traditions by story tellers from the beginning of time. Maybe all new words start out as nonsense. And only become respected members of dialogue as time passes. Do you or your family have a made up word that fits perfectly in your vocabulary? Is it alive and well and have you immortalized it in a poem?

The Voice Of The Lobster

by Lewis Carroll

”Tis the voice of the Lobster: I heard him declare
‘You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.’
As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose
Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.
When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark:
But, when the tide rises and sharks are around,
His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.’

‘I passed by his garden, and marked, with one eye,
How the Owl and the Panter were sharing a pie:
The Panther took pie-crust, and gravy, and meat,
While the Old had the dish as its share of the treat.
When the pie was all finished, the Owl, as a boon,
Was kindly permitted to pocket the spoon:
While the Panther received knife and fork with a growl,
And concluded the banquet by [eating the owl.]

Yes. You Will Be Saved

Wild is The Wind

(Excerpt)

by Carl Phillips

About what’s past, Hold on when you can, I used to say,

And when you can’t, let go, as if memory were one of those

mechanical bulls, easily dismountable, should the ride

turn rough. I lived, in those days, at the forest’s edge —

metaphorically, so it can sometimes seem now, though

the forest was real, as my life beside it was. I spent

much of my time listening to the sounds of random, un-

knowable things dropping or being dropped from, variously,

a middling height or a great one until, by winter, it was

just the snow falling, each time like a new, unnecessary

taxonomy or syntax for how to parse what’s plain, snow

from which the occasional lost hunter would emerge

every few or so seasons, and — just once — a runaway child

whom I gave some money to and told no one about….

Aubade: Some Peaches, After Storm

by Carl Phillips – 1959-

So that each
is its own, now—each has fallen, blond stillness.
Closer, above them,
the damselflies pass as they would over water,
if the fruit were water,
or as bees would, if they weren’t
somewhere else, had the fruit found
already a point more steep
in rot, as soon it must, if
none shall lift it from the grass whose damp only
softens further those parts where flesh
goes soft.
There are those
whom no amount of patience looks likely
to improve ever, I always said, meaning
gift is random,
assigned here,
here withheld—almost always
correctly
as it’s turned out: how your hands clear
easily the wreckage;
how you stand—like a building for a time condemned,
then deemed historic. Yes. You
will be saved

And For Myself, No Quiet Find

Sonnet XXVII

by William Shakespeare

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:
For then my thoughts–from far where I abide–
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
Save that my soul’s imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

I have always had a hard time reading or hearing Shakespeare prior to starting this project. My mind doesn’t follow old English grammar and vocabulary easily. I get bogged down and frustrated following the plot and dialogue in the few Shakespeare plays I have seen live or movies made true to the old script I have watched. I am afraid that biased me fairly negatively towards his sonnets in the past. So it comes as a bit of a surprise that the longer Fourteen lines continues the easier it is for me to put myself inside Shakespeare’s sonnets. My enjoyment of his complicated and witty verse continues to grow.

My daily social distancing has not been particularly intellectual. I have retreated to the simple pleasures of popcorn, games and mindless TV. But the longer this goes on, the more restless my mind becomes and I can feel more serious pursuits starting to push towards the front of my mind as fall looms. Maybe my brain is starting to awaken again after sheltering in place for a bit.

I recently got my hair cut for the first time since January. My stylist asked me; “how was your quarantine?” For a moment my mind couldn’t wrap itself around the question, realizing how chipper he was when he said it. I could tell he was brimming with excitement to share his experience, which was refreshingly upbeat. I let him do all the talking. In the end I did what midwesterners do, I simply didn’t answer the question as sometimes silence is better than being gloomily honest.

I wonder what my brain would look like in an MRI section right now? Would it look elegant and complicated as in the video below? Or would it look like a big bowl of popcorn, simple and satisfying but not particularly motivating. What does your brain look like right now? What colors is it radiating based on the current palete of your mind.?

Sonnet CXIII (113)

By William Shakespeare

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind;
And that which governs me to go about
Doth part his function and is partly blind,
Seems seeing, but effectually is out;
For it no form delivers to the heart
Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch:
Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch;
For if it see the rud’st or gentlest sight,
The most sweet favour or deformed’st creature,
The mountain or the sea, the day or night,
The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.
Incapable of more, replete with you,
My most true mind thus maketh mine eye untrue.

We’ll Be Happy To-day

River Oaks Golf Course — Golfing In Minnesota on a perfect August Day

A Lay of the Links

(Excerpt)

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The palm and the leather come rarely together,
Gripping the driver’s haft,
And it’s good to feel the jar of the steel
And the spring of the hickory shaft.
Why trouble or seek for the praise of a clique?
A cleek here is common to all;
And the lie that might sting is a very small thing
When compared with the lie of the ball.

Come youth and come age, from the study or stage,
From Bar or from Bench—high and low!
A green you must use as a cure for the blues—
You drive them away as you go.
We’re outward bound on a long, long round,
And it’s time to be up and away:
If worry and sorrow come back with the morrow,
At least we’ll be happy to-day.

Saturday was one of those perfect August days in Minnesota that you need to take a deep breath, soak up the blue skies, savor the low humidity and comfortable temperatures and file it away for January when you might need it. I played 9 holes of golf with my sister, her partner and my father in honor of his 89th birthday this week. Golf is a timeless activity that no matter your strength or age on any given shot you can out play your partners. My father isn’t as limber as he used to be or as strong, but once he got warmed up he played right with us or out played us the last 5 holes. He and I always only play nine holes, to be honest its about all the time I can stay interested in the sport, but it is a lot of fun to watch my father play golf. No one has ever enjoyed the game more than him. My father was never a scratch golfer in terms of talent, but he has this innate ability to compete when it counts. More often than not, when he needs to make a good shot, or chip it close or sink a putt, just to show he can, he does. And the smile on his face is identical when he executes his game as when he was 40 years younger. On the 7th hole, a par three, everyone else was off the green and he hit it to within 5 feet. A beautiful thing.

Golf is either is in your blood or it isn’t. I refuse to take it seriously or dedicate the time and practice to become good at it. But I like to play once a month and I enjoy my inconsistency. On yesterday’s round I hit one of the worst iron shots I have hit in years; a complete mishit, wrong direction, just terrible from 85 yards from the flag. I was off sitting green side left in the rough, short sided with a bunker in the way between me and pin. I followed that terrible shot with one of the best iron shots I have hit in years and lobed it over perfectly two feet from the pin. There are lots of ways to make par. Golf is a game that you will never completely figure out. If you have no interest or consider it frivolous, consider this; golf is a game, no matter your skill level, in which your enjoyment is inversely proportional to your ability to accept your failings.

It’s hard for me to compute that I have a father who is 89, only because what that translates into the age I must be. One of the amazing things about my father is his unique ability to think differently than everyone else. Not only would he think of the cow, in the parable below, he might even consider a goat or a sheep too. Happy Birthday Dad. And many more happy days ahead sinking putts on gorgeous August days. But come what may, at least we were happy to-day!

A Parable

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The cheese-mites asked how the cheese got there,
And warmly debated the matter;
The Orthodox said that it came from the air,
And the Heretics said from the platter.
They argued it long and they argued it strong,
And I hear they are arguing now;
But of all the choice spirits who lived in the cheese,
Not one of them thought of a cow.

Nothing To Cover Her

1-Miller-Williams — Miller Williams (1930 – 2015)

Going Deaf

by Miller Williams

No matter how she tilts her head to hear
she sees the irritation in their eyes.
She knows how they can read a small rejection,
a little judgment, in every What did you say?
So now she doesn’t say What? or Come again?
She lets the syllables settle, hoping they form
some sort of shape that she might recognize.
When they don’t, she smiles with everyone else,
and then whoever was talking turns to her
and says, “Break wooden coffee, don’t you know?”
She pulls all she can focus into the face
to know if she ought to nod or shake her head.
In that long space her brain talks to itself.
The person may turn away as an act of mercy,
leaving her there in a room full of understanding
with nothing to cover her, neither sound nor silence .

I have noticed that one of the by-products of wearing masks during the pandemic is how hard it is to understand other people speaking and other people difficulty in understanding me. I hear, “What did you say?” all the time, either coming out of my mouth or someone else’s. I don’t think masks garble the words, it’s hearing is based in part on our reading lips and expression and body language to a greater extent then I understood before. Communication is way more than auditory. Masks mask emotions, they prevent us from seeing irony and the wry smile, they make it harder to follow interactions on every level. In short they are a barrier to efficient and effective communication. Research on infants suggests one of the ways babies learn about human interaction is by intensely studying faces. We learn at a young age how communication is shared non-verbally through the most minute of expressions on our faces. So is it any wonder we are all feeling a little lost and bewildered among a faceless crowd of strangers these days in masks?

Maybe we are all experiencing a touch of prosopagnosia, the rare medical condition in which people are unable to distinguish between different people’s faces, where everyone looks the same. Is that why the world feels a little more harsh these days? Our individuality is being absorbed by a collective mass disinterest in the world around us as we each try and manage our way through this confusing mix of trying to self isolate and remain human.

Maybe its time we all learned a bit of sign language? What if we collectively entered the world of the deaf and experience their reality for a little while? It would be a safer alternative to speaking, reducing a bit of talking of simple expressions would likely reduce droplets in the air and possibly risk of transmission when in close proximity to strangers. I am not making light of the deaf, but suggesting that empathy is the thing that is in shortest supply right now and maybe if we experienced another’s permanent reality temporarily it would recenter us as a society that we have a shared purpose in looking out for one another. Would it be so awful if we all learned ASL for hello, goodbye, please, thank you, could you help me and a few other key words and phrases? It would force us to slow down, look up at each other, pay attention and acknowledge each other safely. And by doing so maybe retrace our steps back to a world where we were not fearful of the stranger next to us in line.

Raymond Luczak is a deaf writer, poet, playwright, renaissance man who lives in Minneapolis. The video below is him, reciting his brilliant poem in a beautiful expression of how to communicate beyond speech.

Instructions to Hearing Persons Desiring a Deaf Man

by Raymond Luczak

His eyebrows cast shadows everywhere.
You are a difficult language to speak.

His long beard is thick with distrust.
You are another curiosity seeker.

His hands are not cheap trinkets.
Entire lives have been wasted on you.

His face is an inscrutable promise.
You are nothing but paper and ink.

His body is more than a secret language.
Tourists are rarely fluent in it.

His eyes will flicker with a bright fire
when you purge your passport of sound.

Let your hands be your new passport,
for he will then stamp it with approval.

A deaf man is always a foreign country.
He remains forever a language to learn.

Containment Is The Key To Breaking Through

Camera Obscura

by Austin MacRae

How best to hold a Master’s mastered light
that flickers deep in pearl, a milklit face?
His paintings stun: complex perspectives right,
well-framed, with every fold and thread in place.
Over and over, within this structured space,
he nails the tough proportions, deftly blocks
the naked eye’s distortions with such grace
of form that every stricture clicks and locks.
Like him, I shoot life through a dovetailed box,
a darkened room. Containment is the key
to breaking through. I watch what it unlocks
inside the mirror’s polished glass, and see
if like the great, meticulous Vermeer,
a blooming world pours through my pinhole, clear.

Camera obscura is the optical phenomenon that occurs when an image at the other side of a screen is projected through a small hole and appears as reversed and inverted on a surface opposite the opening. This discovery led to the development of photography. It is also an apt metaphor for how the world feels six months into the pandemic. I still see the world around me, but it appears smaller and flipped upside down. There is a wall between me and that world and much less light is shining in.

Yesterday, the young woman at the Trader Joe’s checkout jumped away from me as I approached her register and with fright in her voice commanded I stand exactly on the watermelon on the floor in front of the growing fortress-like plexi-glass barrier that separated us. I warily complied exactly as commanded, all pleasantries of human interaction obliterated by caution and safety, no smiles exchanged through our face masks, her eyes continuously downcast, a bit too intensely ringing up my modest purchase, never once looking at me, tangible her fear of being in the same space that I am in. I get it. I am not sure how I would handle a cashier job these days. I too would probably suffer from moments of the ebbie-jeebies that I was observing. It’s not that I had violated her six foot barrier, it was that it felt like she wanted a 30 foot barrier in that moment. I made a half-hearted attempt at fake pleasantries but it seemed to make the mood even more somber. It wasn’t her fault. In the end it made me feel like shopping at Trader Joe’s was my mistake. My local Cub Food let’s me check out all on own, maintaining this false notion we have that our social isolation is intact. It’s depressing that when I venture out for my one interaction with the world in a day and the world jumps back from me in alarm, runs away from me in fear, even if that destination has the best gluten-free bagels in town.

I long to get out of this box of COVID-19, end the cues in lines in front of everywhere I go, this social distancing which is another way of feeling social ostracism. I long to remove the masks and cut a giant hole in the universe and walk back into the world as I formerly knew it. Go to a baseball game, sit surrounded by strangers and drink a beer. I know it can’t be done, that world may never exist again. I fear that the future will be so completely foreign to the world that I had grown accustomed that everything will feel upside down forever and I will be the one much smaller than before, inverted. I feel myself moving along this new foreign, unpaved path, looking for hope, looking for ways to make my world big again, even if these days its only in the pages of a book or in the line of a poem, where an adventure may still await.

The Camera Obscura

by John Addington Symonds

Inside the skull the wakeful brain,
Attuned at birth to joy and pain,
Dwells for a lifetime; even as one
Who in a closed tower sees the sun
Cast faint-hued shadows, dim or clear,
Upon the darkened disc: now near,
Now far, they flit; while he, within,
Surveys the world he may not win:
Whate’er he sees, he notes; for nought
Escapes the net of living thought;
And what he notes, he tells again
To last and build the brains of men.
Shades are we; and of shades we weave
A trifling pleasant make-believe;
Then pass into the shadowy night,
Where formless shades blindfold the light

Try As We May

Sonnet

by James Schuyler

August, tasting of ripe grapes and afternoon sleep,
sharpening, like the smell of boxwood, the grass blades
that yellow an uncut hill a heavier green
while the trees lean in folds and the rose of Sharon blooms
and blooms at each twig and branch tip like a toy tree,
setting a sleepy cat on an after-lunch table
among uncleared plates, white-and-black like the coolness
of the oilcloth in warm shade: withhold from these days
the rain that made the succulence of which you reek
in haze that hides the furthest view and seems like smoke
seeking, before it is time, the ripening leaves
bronze in your pollen-dusty air that films the sky
and, as the light fades, burns blue, that the hot moon may,
bathing its light in water, find its white coolness.

Poem

by James Schuyler

I do not always understand what you say.
Once, when you said, across, you meant along.
What is, is by its nature, on display.

Words’ meanings count, aside from what they weigh:
poetry, like music, is not just song.
I do not always understand what you say.

You would hate, when with me, to meet by day
What at night you met and did not think wrong.
What is, is by its nature, on display.

I sense a heaviness in your light play,
a wish to stand out, admired, from the throng.
I do not always understand what you say.

I am as shy as you. Try as we may,
only by practice will our talks prolong.
What is, is by its nature, on display.

We talk together in a common way.
Art, like death, is brief: life and friendship long.
I do not always understand what you say.
What is, is by its nature, on display.