Someone Else's Knowledge

Knowledge of a Grandfather

Look before you leap
Or you may just drown
I must have laughed
Headed to prom
Pure abuse

Work hard
You will eventually succeed
Two quarters jingled in my pocket
Left on the washer machine
Enough to buy a cigarette
And a sip of Boones

Trust the government
Believe in the troops
Angry vets
Old men without lives
I knew neither

Love with your heart
And believe in God
Weekly catechism
Confession
Sin removal
I felt better

What was I thinking?
A grey haired fellow knows
Nothing
Something
Everything



The things I will probably never do

I will buy a book at the local book store
and never open the cover

I will plant a vegetable garden
and forget to turn on the water

I will pack my husband’s clothes for vacation
and probably forget to take him

I will sing to the words of Blind Melon
and not even know the words

Perhaps I will apply for a job or two
and not really want to be hired

One day I will wake up from this madness
and realize I am normal

That I am not one of those people who scratch
their name on a bathroom stall

I don’t need to change my identity so that I can
spray paint on the side of a truck or building

I am real, confused, an angel fluttering
searching for direction

Jim Harrison

First and foremost, it is nice to be back…back to a place that I can attempt to grasp and understand. Where the water is merely acting as water on one level, or a tear being shed from a child’s eye on another. Or a key ring hanging from a belt loop is just that, yet it can also represent the circle or bond of life. There is no need to romanticize ideas when the reality of the matter is that he will probably not be taking his grandchildren to Disneyland in a camper and that is the beauty of the situation.
Jim Harrison is refreshing. Who can’t appreciate a man that gives personal advice throughout his poetry. “Dance with yourself with all your heart and soul, and occasionally others, but don’t eat all the berries birds eat or you’ll die.” This to me seems like words to live by. And better yet, “kiss yourself in the mirror but don’t fall in love with photos of ladies in magazines.” Harrison continues this matter-of-fact tone throughout. His choice of words conveys the tone that everything he says we already know and he is just simply reminding us to take the time to notice.
Harrison speaks of love from experience, loss from tragedy, experience through travels, and children through questioning; incorporating these ideas into the very heart of his poetry.
The dead are not meant to go,
but to trail off so that one can
see them on a distant hillock,
across the river, in dreams
from which one awakens nearly healed:
don’t worry, it’s fine to be dead,
they say; we were a little early
but could not help ourselves.
Everyone dies as the child they were,
(Sullivan Poem)
Although, at times I am perplexed by his ideas I can honestly say his poetry is beautiful, inviting, and inspirational.
Jim Harrison’s poetry is stimulating, provocative, and unfailingly interesting to read. Throughout, he shows himself to be wonderfully imaginative. Through a deep engagement with language and meaning he takes each poem in many different directions. He writes in a multitude of poetic forms and techniques that leave the reader engaged and questioning his approach. For instance, the varying lengths causes me to question the importance of individual poems and why he choose to expand a poem over thirty pages in comparison to his five line Kobun. I appreciate how some of his poems follow the conventions of prose narratives.
One poem that completely puzzles me is “New Love”. I really like this poem although I question how much I truly understand. First, it is interesting to note the body parts that Harrison takes the time to list. On first glance it appears to me that all of these parts are extremely bony and the least “loved” or mentioned parts. Then he throws in the idea of risqué photos of the tender inside of the elbow. The language is lovely but what is he trying to do? What is he suggesting when he talks about relearning the future “as we learned to walk, as a baby grabs its toes, tilts backward, rocking”? And how exactly do we get to the moon after we have dealt with all of this death? Maybe I have too many questions to bring this poem up, but I really like it.
Did I mention that I understand what is going on? Can I take that statement back and rephrase it as such…I understand words and phrases, but not necessarily the entire poem. I appreciate Harrison’s style and use of imagery that never fails to amaze me. Any individual that can invoke the image of a dripping faucet intertwined with the sigh of a cat and cells that are deprived of oxygen is worth reading again. Wouldn’t you say?

Feeding of the Soul

Myth: is it merely a dream or is it simply our legacy? We have looked to mythological stories for answers to our heritage and our existence since the beginning of time. These stories tell us who we are and who we will become, but why must we always come back? According to Thomas Moore in Care of the Soul: A Guide For Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life “The great malady of the twentieth century, implicated in all of our troubles and affecting us individually and socially, is ‘loss of soul.’ When soul is neglected, it doesn’t just go away; it appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence, and loss of meaning…we have lost our wisdom about the soul, even our interest in it… [We] must draw on…past wisdom, taking into account how we live now, to show that by caring for the soul we can find relief from out distress and discover deep satisfaction and pleasure” (xi). Moore continues, “the ultimate cure, as many ancient and modern psychologies of depth have asserted, comes from love…the cure…is love” (14). Therefore, it should be no surprise as to why we search in the depths of myth to give us answers and meaning to our specific era.
To serve this appetite for love, a plethora of mythological stories are being displaced into our modern day society exemplifying the very notion of being “in love with love”. According to Frye, “in every age [people] tend [] to project [their] ideals in some form of romance” (186); which, satisfies our need to “cure” the soul. Mythological stories serve as “a sort of …stage on which to place contemporary characters or [events]” (Eco 68) allowing us the opportunity to fulfill this craving. Therefore, it should come as no surprise as to why we take the mythological story of Eros and Psyche and directly displace it in Cinderella and further supplant it in the story of Bridget Jones Diary.

Is This What Nature Is All About?

Walking Sunflower

Every day
corruption
left for interpretation

Smell of orange
perhaps
sunrays

Chilled
shifting
night overcomes

Grab a hold
you are about to be taken
on a bumpy ride

Deception
let your imagination do the walking
or talking
or creating

Hidden
hunger
yearning

Release the emotion
don’t run
sunflowers are inviting

Come home
Dear or Deer
I am waiting

Let go…
it is only a field
of burning bushes


Life

Birth gave you hope of a brand new day.
You didn’t quite understand what you would be expected to do
as mother, teacher and wife.

Applauds filled the room for the sweet baby girl. Precious sweet baby.
But what applauds did you get? You were overlooked as you helplessly
coddled this new life form.

You are no more a mother, teacher, or wife than the rushing rain
pounding the window pane. Or the west wind that brings with it a
lawn of tumble weeds.

All night you wonder.

Perfection. Close to the delicate petal of an untouched orchid
or the sweet smell of lilacs in full bloom.
A little slice of heaven.

What Am I Going To Do???

I am attempting to make sense of everything that is going on in my muddled head. How am I going to take the myth of Eros and Psyche and show how it has been displaced in the story of Cinderella and Bridget Jones Diary. Hmm? This is what I am thinking.

First, I want to look at the significance of the story itself and how it fits into the Mythos of Romance. (Frye)

Then I want to examine what happens to the story as it begins to become displaced directly in Cinderella.

Thirdly, what happens to the myth when it is taken one step further in Bridget Jones Diary. I will examine how Bridget Jones fits into Frye's Mythos of Irony

This is what I am exploring:
a. The relationship to these three stories is that all of the woman are "in love with love"
b. How are the symbols and elements replaced along the way?
c. I am going to argue that the mother figure is replaced with Bridget herself. Idea of the all encompassing female character of contemporary society. Bridget creates her own three tasks keeping her away from the "right" man.
d. I am also going to argue that Bridget Jones is told ironically because we live in an ironic world and not a romantic one.
e. In Hillman I am going to look at the shadow figure and how it relates to the interchangable characters in Bridget.

What happens to the original myth as it is displaced from a romantic story to an ironic one.

What is Contemporary

Contemporary poetry…what does that exactly mean? I am not even sure I could give you a working definition of contemporary and how it applies to literature/poetry. I know it deals with what is currently happening and everything that is going on at the time. But when is the cut-off? When is something no longer contemporary or current? When does it become “old” or outdated? Hmmm?

When I think of contemporary poetry I think of Billy Collins. We live in a society that believes the best approach to things is to lay it all out on the line. With all of the “isms” there really isn’t time to beat around the bush concerning your thoughts and feelings. There is no reason to dabble in falsified beauty when reality can create the beauty for us. This is how I see contemporary poetry.

Of course there are the poets (surrealists) who do not give the answer up front. They in turn give you some obscure idea and let you create the image. Although Billy Collins is quite different from these poets they do take on a similar approach. They take the idea of nature and realistic events/people and tell their story in as close of a depiction as possible.

Contemporary poetry doesn’t seem to romanticize ideas. Maybe that is why our current society is so messed up. We have forgotten about love…

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints!---I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!---and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
(Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

And replaced it with Roy.
Roy could move a lot of sheep.
He moved them off the mountain
with his arms outstretched
at forty degree angles.
Roy never spoke.
He wore navy corduroys.
This annoyed some of the guys.
He walked like a foster child
stepping carefully
and sometime robotically.
The sheep respected this.
They kept their mouths shut
for once, and flowed down, down,
in a tight and docile band
over the uneven terrain,
because of Roy.
(Michael Earl Craig)

With this being said I personally think contemporary poetry is real. It can be touched and experienced-it is accessible. It can be heard and enjoyed. It is healing yet not sappy. It is obscure yet imaginative. It is our reality…the messed up junk of contemporary society.

Now looking at the poets for this week.

Mary Oliver, (I could not find the “Black Vietnam Vet”) represents her subject intertwined with nature. I am not quite sure how you discuss poetry with nature. I am sure there is some proper way.

If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

For hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
(“The Morning Poem” by Mary Oliver)

This poem struck me as fascinating. She connects the subject’s imagination to a winding trail with endless possibilities. All of her poems did this exact thing. Whether the subject is being related to wild geese or the earth it takes on the physical characteristics of nature.

Sylvia Platt takes on an entirely different approach to nature. Similar to Oliver her characters do become one with nature but in a very different way. They become nature in its darkest possible way.
I shall never get you put together entirely, Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cacklesProceed from your great lips.It's worse than a barnyard.
She makes no attempt to beautify the image but keeps it very real and visual; leaving no true need for interpretation. It is what it is.

I crawl like an ant in mourningOver the weedy acres of your brow

Everything is Clear...

This weekend as I was sitting with Emma outside she asked me "mama, why is it raining?" I went on to give her this lengthy explanation of scientific hoopla. Deep down I had no idea why it was raining when the sun was out and the sky was blue. Why does this happen? If anyone knows please tell me. Anyways, she was completely satisfied with my answer and went on with playing in the sand box. This is when it hit me...it is obvious that she did not understand what I was telling her but she was OK with that. She wasn't about to waste quality playing time trying to understand everything I had just told her. And the bottom line was she wasn't bothered. She had more important things to do. It is amazing what children can teach us.

A Dream is Merely an Onion

Dreams provide a valuable glimpse into the "unconscious." The classical psychoanalytic belief portrays the dream as consisting of two parts: The "manifest" dream and the "latent" dream. The "manifest" dream consists of what the dream appears to be about, the surface meaning. The "latent" dream is the "deeper," more disguised, meaning of the dream. A dream is thought of as an onion, with the "latent" dream consisting of multiple levels of meaning, usually having at the core, relevance to one's primary psychodynamic conflicts, emanating from early childhood.

Being

Oblivious, that could be one way to describe the couple sitting in the front seat. Did they realize they had passengers? And for that matter, children. Talking about their upcoming vacation. It must have been the cloud of smoke that separated the individuals. Or age? No connection. No conversation. Two totally different worlds trapped inside the capsule. Destined to go somewhere. Possibly together, but probably not. Flowers line the drive. Names forgotten. Left to dissolve. Memories of love. Happiness. Life. Outstretched eyes scan the scene. Searching for answers. What does this all mean? Life after death? Or death after life? Two worlds separated by blooming orchids and singing doves.



All she wanted…

She doesn’t ask for much.
Good-morning would be nice.
Or a cup of dark coffee
with a splash of cream.

A steaming hot shower.
A massage
by an exfoliating loofah.
Removing dead secrets.

The morning news tells the same tale.
Chance of sun
or rain
or snow
but most definently wind.

Did you know
that your head weighs the same as a bowling ball?
No wonder she grows tired.
Tired before her day even begins.

Someone,
anyone
would be nice.

She is not picky.

All American Girl.
Business woman by day.
Exotic dancer by night.
Who knew?

Hidden behind a mask
of painted red toe nails
and uncertainties

She doesn’t want much.
A cup of tea would be nice.
Good-night would be even better.

Eating in Your Dream

Food in a dream seems like a no brainer- the dreamer went to bed hungry. Who was I fooling when I thought it could be so easy. I am going to attempt to highlight the important details from Hillman, although I can make absolutely no sense of it all.

What is truly important to understand is the sacrificial atmosphere that transforms eating into a ritual for the psyche. Hades is the hidden host at the life banquet. These feasts open the way into the fellowship with the "dead person". These are usually family influences from the past. By sitting at the table with them we are feeding them and they are feeding us. This goes along with the idea that the psyche needs to be fed.

So what we eat is not food but images. When we drink a huge glass of orange juice we are actually taking in the sun and rebirth. A cup of tea represents the ritual for starting a new day. It all has to do with the psychic need to nourish images and has little to do with hunger.

Get it...Got it...

Sandra Alcosser

As I read Sandra Alcosser I had a difficult time enjoying her graphically hatred poetry. It is evident throughout that she has some form of built up anger towards men and their presence. I am going to take a leap here, but after talking to Melanie maybe I am not far off, but I think at one point she was raped as a child. Maybe by Artie…I am not exactly sure but the reference to her lover’s body “like water snakes, his sweat the odor of crawfish, boiled” (Pole Boat at Honey Island). She also makes reference to a farmer demonstrating how worms make love or in all reality was it two people?

Some days he’d rub two pegs together
Until they made a greasy hum
like rain, the sound of moles
gnawing the dirt’s grain, the song
soils sing before a quake,
and the red bodies would hang
above the ground in a kind of confusion
or ecstasy. They would writhe.

Her sexual reference is apparent throughout all of her poems. At times, in a disturbing way which leads me to believe that something detrimental happened to her. Possibly by the white-toothed Artie…although, why would she make it so obvious, we all no that is not the “way” of a poet. What is your interpretation of Artie? Am I the only corrupt mind in the room?

Artie
Among the claw-foot sofas, under the looming
mahogany of my grandparents’ living room,
the hoodlum and I played with flames-

while Grandmother slept under chicken feathers
and Grandfather snore in his separate bedroom
above my head. Strop, strop

Grandpa’s razor would bite its black strap.
His bumping hammer could flatten fenders.
Thank god he was deaf and drunk.

Smart ass punk, that’s what people called Artie,
weasel trash, this gypsy who rubbed against me
grating his pink lips into my braces.

Mrs. Molenda’s grandson came from the West Side
to clean her pigeon cages, and he became the rebel boy
of Dixie Highway for girls whose daddies owned

the gas station, the Dairy Queen, the bait and tackle.
Artie had the whites teeth and his dark Hungarian skin sheened
where I reached to stroke behind his waist and earlobes.

I was fourteen and months later found myself on hands and knees
scrubbing linoleum for the first time above a tavern on the West Side
hanging limp café curtains with hopeful rickrack snowballs,

for my friend Laurie, a shy, cracked-tooth towhead
who had the body of a boy, and for Artie and their baby-
who’d curl on their beaten mohair sofa cooing just like us.

This poem makes me think that her virginity was taken by this boy at the age of fourteen. It seems like the stereotypical teenage thing…boy comes to town sleeps with one girl and runs off with her best-friend. Huh?
Anyways, I could go on and on about her sexual reference but truly what is the point, it doesn’t help me to make sense of her poems.

One poem that I did like was “In the Jittering World” (20). I chose a short stanza to share with you. It doesn’t get much better than this…

In a world jittering with possibility,
how did I come to this sour basement
in a Southern city to grade rhetoric,
water dripping all day down drainpipes,
and at night for recreation,
to nurse a lizard? I love his sticky toe pads,
the way he rests
between death and life, leaf-veined, reflective.
Carefully he picks across the blue carpet, as if
it were a globe laid flat.
Perhaps we both are lost in our landscape,
woman and chameleon always changing to save our skin.

The Knowledge of a Child

Everyone Can Learn from My Daughter

Patience

It is a Sunday morning, not out of the ordinary, and my daughter Emma has decided that she would like to help me clean. Our house is very warm, so she wears only her panties and a loose camisole. I envy her for her cleaning attire. We begin the cleaning process in her bathroom. As I begin to spray the shower with cleaning product she insists that “I do self.” So, I let her even though I know I will have to add more cleaning product.
Our attention is then shifted to the bathroom sink that is covered in dried soap suds from the previous hand wash. Once again she sprays cleaning product and begins to wipe the inside of the sink with her wadded up piece of paper towel. I try to help her but she insists that “I do self.” So, I let her even though I know I will have to re-clean the sink.
She then heads to the toilet. I watch as she dumps toilet bowl cleaner into the bowl and all over the seat. At this point I become insistent on helping her. Once again she insists that “I do self.” I take a deep breath and with a stern voice I ask to help her. She lightly rubs my arm and says “mama, it’s ok, I do self.”


Forgiveness

It seems like some days I spend the majority of my time chasing after Emma. Unfortunately, it is not in a playful way and it ends with a few swats on the bottom or multiple times in the time-out chair. It usually comes from her doing things that I repeatedly ask her not to do. But sometimes it just comes from my lack of patience with her constant need to make a mess or get into things.
Sometimes I wonder what I must sound like to a two-year old. “Emma, don’t do that,” or “Emma, why are you making a mess.” I know I am interrupting multiple moments of growth and exploration as I stand over her and point my finger at all of the things that I think she is doing wrong.
Today, like the past five days, I attempted to stop her from climbing out of the rungs in the fence. “Emma if you climb through that fence one more time, you are spending the rest of the day inside.” She stretched her leg and contorted her body in order to fit through the rungs. She turned and looked at me knowing and understanding exactly what was going to happen.
I grabbed her by the arm and swatted her butt as I marched her to time-out. Her big blue eyes filled with tears as she pushed her red hair out of her view. She reached for my hand and pulled me down to her level. Her tiny arms wrapped around my neck as she whispered between sobs, “mama, hugs.”

It’s OK to Cry
Emma is almost two and a half, which is quite different from two and very different from three, and she cries daily. She cries when she gets hurt, when she is sad, tired, frustrated, doesn’t get her way, and sometimes just because she feels like it. I appreciate the fact that she can just let loose at the drop of a dime. It really doesn’t matter the occasion, where we may happen to be, or who we are presently around- if she feels like crying she does just that.
She has taken to the liking of self expression. She now realizes that there are many different forms of crying and each will bring a different reaction from the poor patron who must encounter the yelp. There is the loud cry of agony when she drops the book on her big toe or the soft whimper when her head is ready to hit the pillow. We must not forget the scream intermingled with the word “no” when she is not getting her way or the sniffling as she tugs at my pant leg wanting to be held. There is also the one that drops her to her knees as she pounds her fists into the ground in pure distress releasing the day’s bottled up energy.
Although all of these cries have become our daily rituals, the cry I truly appreciate the most is the one she does just because she can. It is amazing that at two and a half she understands how to manipulate her emotions in such a way that she can produce tears just because she feels like it. Nothing physically, or emotionally that I am aware of, has to occur for big crocodile tears to stream down her cheeks as she lets out a repetitious grunt from deep in her chest. It is a dramatic combination of a yelp and a whimper and usually lasts less than thirty seconds. But for as long as it does last, it demonstrates her power to control the emotions that we all yearn to release as adults.

The Dark Side of The Moon

Driving down the road
I notice a bump.
Is it a boulder?
Or a pot hole?
Or did I run over the next door neighbors orange tabby cat?
Or does it matter?
I have four-wheel drive and mud tires.
Bump.
I smell manure.
Did you step in it?
Or is it coming from your mouth?
You stinky slob.


Button down shirt
made of flannel
covers the bleeding heart
that is healing from last night’s wound.
You twisted and turned
until blood shot you in the eye and
forced you to regurgitate all the words
you had just said.
Poor,
Stupid,
You.



I sip the merlot
and smile,
as if I give a shit
about all of these people
who peruse my house.
They gorge themselves,
in chocolate, wine, and cheese
rubbing their stomachs.
What a disgusting breed.

Valentine's Day

As I search for information on cupid, I am enlightened with tidbits on Valentine's Day...

The holiday probably derives from the ancient Roman feast of Lupercalis (February 15), also called the Lupercalia. In an annual rite of fertility, eligible young men and women would be paired as couples through a town lottery. Briefly clad or naked men would then run through the town carrying the skins of newly sacrificed goats dipped in blood. The women of the town would present themselves to be gently slapped by the strips and marked by the blood to improve their chances of conceiving in the coming year.

"Valentine’s Day," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2007http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

There is Nothing Quite Like It.

Melanie, I think you are on to something here...

Sparagmos refers to an ancient Dionysian ritual in which a living animal--or sometimes even a human being--would be sacrificed by being dismembered, by the tearing apart of limbs from ones body. Sparagmos was frequently followed by omophagia (the eating of the raw flesh of the one dismembered).

Regurgitation is the controlled flow of stomach contents back into the esophagus and mouth.
Regurgitation is used by a number of species to feed their young. This is typically in circumstances where the young is at a fixed location and a parent must forage or hunt for food, especially under circumstances where the carriage of small prey would be subject to robbing by other predators or the whole prey is larger than can be carried to a den or nest. Some birds species also occasionally regurgitate pellets of indigestible matter such as bones and feathers.

In my understanding it appears that both are a form of feeding; they both are very ritualistic and feed the soul and mind its necessary "nutrients". That's all I got.

One of Many Attempts to Understand

In his magnum opus, Re-Visioning Psychology, Hillman writes of "soul":

"By soul I mean, first of all, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself. This perspective is reflective; it mediates events and makes differences between ourselves and everything that happens. Between us and events, between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment -- and soul-making means differentiating this middle ground.
It is as if consciousness rests upon a self-sustaining and imagining substrate -- an inner place or deeper person or ongoing presence -- that is simply there even when all our subjectivity, ego, and consciousness go into eclipse. Soul appears as a factor independent of the events in which we are immersed. Though I cannot identify soul with anything else, I also can never grasp it apart from other things, perhaps because it is like a reflection in a flowing mirror, or like the moon which mediates only borrowed light. But just this peculiar and paradoxical intervening variable gives on the sense of having or being soul. However intangible and indefinable it is, soul carries highest importance in hierarchies of human values, frequently being identified with the principle of life and even of divinity.
In another attempt upon the idea of soul I suggest that the word refers to that unknown component which makes meaning possible, turns events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern. These four qualifications I had already put forth some years ago. I had begun to use the term freely, usually interchangeably with psyche (from Greek) and anima (from Latin). Now I am adding three necessary modifications. First, soul refers to the deepening of events into experiences; second, the significance of soul makes possible, whether in love or in religious concern, derives from its special relation with death. And third, by soul I mean the imaginative possibility in our natures, the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream, image, fantasy -- that mode which recognizes all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical."

What's Going on in Their Head, These Surrealist Poets...

It’s been awhile since I’ve ridden a bike.
When men are idle they’ll hold a hand to their face.

Although I can honestly say I can only remotely grasp short phrases, or sometimes only words, within surrealist poetry it’s these few words that leave me questioning and wording. What the hell is going on??? Is it truly “normal” to refer to a bike, a beaver, and REO Speedwagon within 3 lines of a poem? Probably not, to the ordinary eye, but to the surrealist it seems the “odder” the poem or art piece the better. So as a reader, what do we do with Craig and other surrealist poets?
The part that gets me the most is the awkward twists that occur just about the time I am sucked into an idea. For instance in the poem April:
A scraping sound,
Like someone writing his name
in big letters
in the gravel with a Wiffle bat.

It’s the sound of my shoes
skidding over the ground
as I’m dragged by my armpits
in short bursts
from the Buick into the woods.

It all makes me think of
the shadow of a waterfall,
a description of a church,
the absence of metaphor.

These are my last thoughts
is what I’m thinking,
my cardigan ruined,
the Buick almost out of view.

This first section creates an image in my head of a mother dragging her naughty little boy out of church. He is dragging his heals because he knows what will come when he gets home. The mom bypasses the car and heads straight to the forest. Here we go---let the ride begin. In a few words, a vivid image is created of a shadow in a waterfall. Then Craig throws in a little twist with the absence of metaphor. So if metaphor is absence what does this do to the poem? Is everything he is saying literal? Is the character truly being dragged by his armpits into the woods? What does this all mean? Since the boy thinks these are his last thoughts, does he think he is being dragged to his death? Now that I am actually talking about the poem it appears to be the stereo-typical death or kidnapping of a child. At least, the portions that you hear on the news. As the poem continues…
She had said she wanted to hitch-hike
across the country wearing
a pair of cut-offs and a taco hat.

She had cupped my neck with her hand
and whispered this into my ear.

Now it appears to be an older character that is with his lover. What leads me to believe this is the way she cupped his neck with her hands and whispered in his ear. This seems to be very sensual. Although, I may be wrong. It just seems the way she wanted to hitch-hike in her cut-off shorts reminds me of a young couple going on an adventure across the country. Huh…
So why the shift and uncertainty? Of course it is intentional but it makes me crazy. I just want to understand.

Surrealist Poetry

I crave your mouth... by Pablo Neruda
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
Like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Call and Answer by Robert Bly
Tell me why it is we don’t lift our voices these days
And cry over what is happening. Have you noticed
The plans are made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?

I say to myself: “Go on, cry. What’s the sense
Of being an adult and having no voice? Cry out!
See who will answer! This is Call and Answer!”

We will have to call especially loud to reach
Our angels, who are hard of hearing; they are hiding
In the jugs of silence filled during our wars.

Have we agreed to so many wars that we can’t
Escape from silence? If we don’t lift our voices, we allow
Others (who are ourselves) to rob the house.

How come we’ve listened to the great criers—Neruda,
Akhmatova, Thoreau, Frederick Douglass—and now
We’re silent as sparrows in the little bushes?

Some masters say our life lasts only seven days.
Where are we in the week? Is it Thursday yet?
Hurry, cry now! Soon Sunday night will come.

Surrealism[1] is a cultural, social and political movement asserting that liberation of the human mind, and subsequent liberation of the individual and society, can be achieved by exercising the imaginative faculties of the "unconscious mind" to the attainment of a dream-like state different from, or ultimately "truer" than, everyday reality. Surrealists believe that this more truthful reality can bring about personal, cultural, and social revolution, and a life of freedom, poetry, and uninhibited sexuality.

-Wikipedia

" Dreams – A microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul."
- Erich Fromm