Right Arm of the Goddess (A Haibun)

in every museum you find a part of yourself yes memory but form too the shape of an eye the curve of a wrist something self even if especially if broken in fact no one recognizes perfection it is these intimate shards so like life in every museum something of you something of us something of love

such tenderness

right arm of the goddess

a child waves back

More Broken Things

One of my favorite poems: "you scorch us. " That's all that remains of a poem by Sappho. I actually prefer the translation in my Norton Anthology of Western Literature (volume I), "you burn me." (The "scorch" translation is by Philip Freeman in his new book, Searching for Sappho: The Lost Songs and World of the First Woman Poet; the "burn" translator I'll credit in a comment below, when I have a chance to get to my office and check the anthology.)


...you scorch us...


...you burn me...


Either way, is it not what every poem distills down to: an expression of desire, passion, longing, loss, a will to go on despite the pain inherent in living?



Today in the parking lot of my favorite restaurant, my husband and I saw a great blue heron, usually a magnificent bird that will have nothing to do with gravel parking lots. We quickly realized that this bird was injured; worse than a broken wing, a broken leg. I say worse, because the woman at the Avian Wildlife Center said there is little they can do to capture and help a bird that is still able to fly away.

And so, we are thinking once again about broken things, fragments of a poem, a useless leg on a wading bird, a heartache, a helplessness that gives us pause.

For you my lovely ones my thoughts
do not change

                       reads another Sappho fragment. And another:

their hearts grew cold
and they folded their wings



[Those last two fragments trans. Philip Freeman.]

Shards of Shards

Here's my first attempt at a "shard collage" inspired by the luminous Tiffany glass on display at the Corning Museum of Glass this summer in an exhibit called Tiffany's Mosaics. I learned, while making this collage, that I am seriously challenged when it comes to thinking in gem colors; my eye and hand go right for those earth tones. I will try at least a couple more of these little studies to see if I can expand my palette a little more toward blues and purples.

One display in the Tiffany exhibit was a tray of left-over shards of glass, remnants of mosaics or lamps or other larger works. Pieces about a couple inches long, of varying shapes: squarish, amoeba-esque, arrowhead-ish...random. I wanted to stare at it all day. I took several photos. The glass itself is a work of art, of course. Even broken, it is compelling, drawing you deeper and deeper into a world of color and elegance and possibility and shape and texture.

And here I'm going to repeat myself, going back to a subject I've covered in these blog posts: the beauty of broken things. Because it's all broken: our politics, our capacity for hope, our hearts, our education system (standardized = broken). Loss and fragmentation is the human condition. Entropy happens. And what do some people do when confronting loss and fragmentation? They make from it, art. They make from it, something new, something whole unto itself. They arrange the chaos into a moment of order.

Without visual artists, poets, dancers, musicians, playwrights, novelists...we'd have vanished long ago, our bones little more than shards pawed up by some passing creature. "Death is the mother of invention," wrote Wallace Stevens. That is a poet's world view. Onward we go.

Childish Things, Part 2 (Current Events in Haibun)

How we found refuge as children: a path in the woods; a stage; a box of paints; a baseball diamond; a guitar. Those precious moments with no adult voice ringing in our ears. Your refuge then is probably your refuge now.

In an act of extreme empathy, imagine a childhood deprived of refuge. Imagine the life of Junior, destined to be Junior even when he's in his thirties, forties.... Always in the shadow of Senior. Life a parade of bullies, so one better bully-up or else. A good defense is the only defense. No refuge but in being the one who throws the first punch (either literal or figurative). Money is no refuge. Hell has gold bathroom fixtures.

Strange to feel sorry for that chin-thrusting, lip-pouting, visage-sniveling mock prince. Who would change places with him? Who would trade even the memory of refuge for the reality of the craven?

even in summer
the bare branches
of childhood

Childish Things (in Haiku/Senryu)

These haiku were inspired by a day of too much news (ah, Junior, Junior, if only you could have found your own way) and a beautiful, intense, heartfelt conversation with friends over lunch, of families and how we survive them...


[first word]
still rattling around
the ribcage

***

each of us her own
[language hopelessly]
worst enemy

***

a child's [redacted]
so cold [shiver
of recognition]

Obscure Clarity

"Obscure" is a word often applied in a negative way to poetry. It is an interesting word, meaning in this context usually something akin to, "I cannot find a narrative that guides me through the poem," of, if not guides, at least offers signposts along the way that help identify a theme.

I wonder if this charge of obscurity can be leveled at the visual images of a collage, or if visual images go beyond how verbal images make meaning in a viewer's consciousness. Even a pattern of colors (think patchwork quilt) can suggest a story: sunset; rainbow; autumn.

Can one, then, look at a poem as a verbal collage, and extract meaning in that way? I don't even think I mean "understand the author's meaning" here; I mean that level of meaning that comes when a reader "completes" the poem by finding meaning therein. Haiku, tanka, and related short-form poetry certainly allows for this aspect of collage-like suggested meaning(s), impressionistic images that the reader is welcome to use to construct a narrative, however brief.

It is, for me, the most satisfying and wondrous reason for writing and for making collages: being able to suggest, being able to tell a secret story, revealing all in the space between words or the space between scraps...