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Poetry

Shift in Perceptions

Over the last 2 weeks or so I have occasionally photographed the buds that were sprouting on the pear tree in front of my window. Growing at record speed they finally opened into the most luminous blossoms when the weather turned warm this weekend. Photographs today are in order of dates taken.

When searching for an appropriate poem to go with the images, I came across the words below, by a poet who, I admit, I’d never heard of. Before you yell at me how I dare to offer something that contains an offensive term for the deaf and hard of hearing community in the title, bear with me. The words used have a rhetorical purpose – they activate commonly held negative stereotypes before the poem forces us to completely shift perceptions.

Deaf-Mute in the Pear Tree

BY P. K. PAGE (1916 – 2010)

His clumsy body is a golden fruit
pendulous in the pear tree

Blunt fingers among the multitudinous buds

Adriatic blue the sky above and through
the forking twigs

Sun ruddying tree’s trunk, his trunk
his massive head thick-nobbed with burnished curls
tight-clenched in bud

(Painting by Generalíc. Primitive.)

I watch him prune with silent secateurs

Boots in the crotch of branches shift their weight
heavily as oxen in a stall

Hear small inarticulate mews from his locked mouth
a kitten in a box

Pear clippings fall
                            soundlessly on the ground
Spring finches sing
                            soundlessly in the leaves

A stone. A stone in ears and on his tongue

Through palm and fingertip he knows the tree’s
quick springtime pulse

Smells in its sap the sweet incipient pears

Pale sunlight’s choppy water glistens on
his mutely snipping blades

and flags and scraps of blue
above him make regatta of the day

But when he sees his wife’s foreshortened shape
sudden and silent in the grass below
uptilt its face to him

then air is kisses, kisses

stone dissolves

his locked throat finds a little door

and through it feathered joy
flies screaming like a jay

From The Glass Air: Selected Poems.– 1985

Deaf and dumb used to be one of the earliest of all the negative associations with those who cannot hear or use spoken language. It was coined by Aristotles, who believed that the absence of hearing implied the absence of learning, leaving the person unable to reason, thus dumb. The phrase was later intended to describe not hearing and not speaking, eventually changed to deaf mute, with identical definition – much to the justified ire of the deaf and hard of hearing community who points out how many ways of communication their members have, including their very own language. The horrid associations for those who live with deafness as being not quite right can be found across cultures and religions – an informative source for historical tidbits can be accessed here, famous rabbis and Martin Luther among the more rabid lunatics when it came to stigmatizing the other.

The poet obviously moves from the introduction in the title to further negative descriptions of the man in the pear tree. His body is slightly misshapen, his fingers stubby, his head massive, his utterances the mewing of a kitten and his movement of the slowness of oxen in the barn – suggesting some chromosomal mishap, if not proximity to animals more than humans.

But then something shifts. He does delicate work with the secateurs, and even though a stone clogs his ears and weighs down his tongue, he has other modes of perceptions, highly sensitive. He feels spring’s life pulse through the tree with his touch, he smells the future in whiffs of sap, and he sees a world of sunlight and blue sky translated into summery panoramas, freely sailing off.

The joy is multiplied when his wife on the ground tilts her face at him, and his love for her enables an articulated response, pure happiness. He is loving and beloved, the healthiest, most human state of all. How many readers can remember a time at all where we screamed with joy at the closeness of a loved one? What is wrong with US?

There remains one riddle: (Painting by Generalíc. Primitive.) What does that line seek in the poem?

Ivan Generalic was Page’s contemporary, a Croatian farmer and autodidactic painter, among the most famous in the European Primitivist movements. Page was a painter herself, and I wondered if she was drawn to one or another of his paintings that would deliver the template for the imagery. All I could find was a couple underneath a pear tree. Maybe the poetic imagination described what unfolded before that reunion.

Or, alternatively, she is using the coinage of primitivism to have us look at something that is not primitive at all. Generalic’s work was suffused with critical political commentary of farmers’ and workers’ lots, superstitions in rural areas, the burdens of religion and so much more. The analogy of taking a second look behind what is perceived as primitive at first glance, and correcting our assumptions, is a tempting interpretation of the poem as well.

Music from Croatia, across a century.

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Dreams (3)

I thought we’d exit the week with a different variety of dreams: the daylight version, not nocturnal ones.

Dreams

Langston Hughes – 1902-1967

Hold fast to dreams 
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Holding on to our visions, hopes and aspirations for what could be is important. Goals help to resist the multitudinous influences that try to deprive people of hope in order to keep them in “their place,” an antidote to stasis and death. This is as much the case in 2021 as it was when Langston Hughes first published the poem in 1922. It is of course particularly true for those who are the victims of ingrained racism, but also true for other populations – women, people living with disabilities, people outside of binary gender categories, to name just a few – that threaten the power status and comfort zones of those at the top of the societal ladder.

The function of these diurnal dreams is to motivate resistance and action, to acknowledge one’s own right to a just future.

What is the function of nocturnal dreams? There is, wouldn’t you know it, no consensus on the answer to that question. And more suggestions than I care to count, varying across cultures and eras. For the curious, here are a few of the models that you find discussed in the psych literature.

The Freudian model of dreams revealing latent content of your emotional landscape, or the Jungian one relating them to gateways to archetypal knowledge are no longer receiving much attention. These days researchers focus on the role of dreams in processing information and consolidating memory, in reflecting emotions, and contributing to creative problem solving. Some researchers are also pursuing the idea that dreams help to prepare and protect us from dangerous situations in waking life. All of this is open to debate with lots of scientific disagreement.

Here is what we do know for certain: dreams are reported by the dreamer – as with all self-reports, it is hard to discern what was actually dreamt and what is interpreted through the understanding of the dreamer. That said, dreams often seem to reflect what is prominent in the waking thoughts of the dreamer, things they deal with in their present life. A typical example: Chinese and German students report most frequent dreams around stressors of education, Canadians, on the other hand, do not.

General themes emerge, though, across cultures: fear of violence or running away, fear of falling, fear of public embarrassment are prevalent.

During dreaming the amygdala is active, the brain site associated with emotions. This is particularly true for people living with PTSD, anxiety or depressive disorders, which are reflected in their frequency of anxious dreams. The visual cortex is active as well, not surprising given the visual nature of dreams. On the other hand, the prefrontal cortex, responsible for pursuing goals, structuring our thoughts, inhibiting impulses, is less active during dream states, which explains the jumbled, incoherent nature of dreams.

Then how do we solve problems in dreams as so much famous anecdotal evidence suggests? It is likely than random combinations in dreams offer solutions because they allow us to veer away from the path we pursued that got us stuck in the first place. For all the reported “AHA!” moments in dreams there are probably millions that didn’t lead to anything because of their indecipherable jumbling.

Photographs today, a rare exception, are by the brilliant Margaret Bourke-White, whose dreams as photojournalist were put on hold by early onset Parkinson Disease which she fought tooth and nail for 18 years. The images are a good reminder of the relevance of Hughes’ poem.

And here is a bonus. Hughes’ poetry read aloud by himself.

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Dreams (2)

“Years ago, a poet friend showed me a photo of her cat, taken on the spur of the moment, with a cigarette in her furry chops. The cat was walking across a thick springy lawn. If I hadn’t trusted my friend, I would have shrugged and said, ‘I don’t believe it for one second—get me another beer, please.’ This poem of mine is all about the unbelievable, which visits me in dreams, with the help of godsend Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska.”
—Gary Soto

Two days ago I shared Szymborska’s 1996 poem In Praise of Dreams. It was picked up last year, almost a quarter century later, by a poet of Mexican-American descent who grew up in the barrios of Fresno, CA, doing child labor in the fields and vineyards of California. When he was 5 years old, his father was killed in a work accident at the Sunmaid Raisin factory and the family faced extreme poverty.

Gary Soto has become a major voice for describing the experience and plight of Mexican American communities, both as a poet and a children’s author. His accomplishments as both author and educator have led to numerous awards, including a nomination for the Pulitzer prize.

He is, true to his roots, also an ambassador of the United Farm Workers of America (UFWA), which means that during his visits to libraries and schools, he introduces kids to the legacy of the United Farm Workers organization. The UFWA is the largest organization of farm workers in the United States.



Here is his version of the dreamscape.

In Praise of Dreams

By Gary Soto 

after Wisława Szymborska

In my dreams,
I lasso a wild steer on the first try.

I chauffeur Picasso
To meet up with Dali—
None of us is happy about this summit.

After licking my fingertips,
I play guitar masterfully.

I use index cards to make sense
Of the universe.

I discover my childhood cat in the neighbor’s tree—
So that’s where you’ve been, you little rascal.

I beg the alligator, por favor,
To make a snap judgement,
Will it be my leg or my arm?

Picture me swimming with dolphins.
Picture me with these dolphins
Sitting in lawn chairs.

I’m full of gratitude—
The lightbulb comes on
When the refrigerator door is opened.

Yes, I’m the scientist who solved laryngitis—
Now all of us howl at our own pleasure.

I get to throw a trophy from a moving car.
When I park my car,
I’m awarded another trophy—
Someone above is giving me a second chance.

Going out on a limb here, figuring these words are not all about the unbelievable, but a reflection of lived experience. None of the omnipotence of its Polish counterpart – none of the rigid structure either, stanzas varying in length, statements diverting from the “I can do this or that” on multiple occasions, making it somehow more conversational.

Here is the longing of a kid, stuck scraping beets in the fields, to work with cowboys, a moot desire.

Here is the servant to the narcissistic master painter(s), not a genius himself, just a chauffeur, as would be likely.

Protecting roughed up fingertips to play guitar, not unbelievable.

Using index cards to make sense of the world – show me an English as a Second Language speaker, I’ll show you the cards.

Time travel back to childhood, not ancient Greece, remembering the cat.

No invincibility when facing harm – just hoping it’s going to be an arm or a leg, not and arm and a leg as the loan sharks would extract.

The dolphins? No clue. Yes, unbelievable, unless they are fat tourists at the Gulf of Mexico.

Now gratitude for a working fridge, a sentiment never expressed or even hinted at in the preceding poem by Szymborska. Acknowledgment of plain necessities.

Solving a medical condition, a feat enabling universal howling: the state of the world that causes grief remains untouched.

But there are second chances – and explicit reference to a power above rather than the mastery of one’s own fate.

Belief in that is up to the beholder.

These remind me so much more of real dreams, allow for feeling closer to the dreamer, convey a modesty and realism that make this poem speak to the heart, where the original one spoke to the head. Both have their role, of course. But even poems deserve their second chance!

On days like this I go for the humanity rather than intellect. No trophies needed.

Photographs today are from Chicano Park at the Barrio Logan in San Diego.

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Dreams (1)

Admittedly it’s not a random sample, but many of those who I talk to or correspond with these days relate how much they are inundated with bad dreams. Personally, I’ve had dates with full-blown nightmares way too often in the last year, but that could be explained by illness. The general increase in harsh nocturnal screenplays is surely related to the state of the world, the state of our lives in these strange times.

The poem I am introducing below struck me as all the more remarkable when read against this backdrop.

In Praise of Dreams

In my dreams
I paint like Vermeer van Delft.

I speak fluent Greek
and not only with the living.

I drive a car
which obeys me.

I am talented,
I write long, great poems.

I hear voices
no less than the major saints.

You would be amazed
at my virtuosity on the piano.

I float through the air as is proper,
that is, all by myself.

Falling from the roof
I can softly land on green grass.

I don’t find it hard
to breathe under water.

I can’t complain:
I’ve succeeded in discovering Atlantis.

I’m delighted that just before dying
I always manage to wake.

Right after the outbreak of war
I turn over on my favorite side.

I am but I need not
be a child of my time.

A few years ago
I saw two suns.

And the day before yesterday a penguin.
With the utmost clarity.

– Wislawa Szymborska

So is this poem from View with a Grain of Sand (1996) a description of a person who comes into her own in her nightly dreams? More than that, really – is it a boast that she excels, displays mastery, is in full control over life and death and obviously dreams, can decide when and where to focus attention, to partake, to belong?

But for a few stanzas, everything starts with “I” – the narcissistic focus of an imagined parallel life? Or the determination to have some agency in dreams, when deprived of it in real life? Is it an invitation to focus on the positive, as exaggerated as can be, to set lofty goals instead of enduring what’s on offer here and now?

The poet is a real magician in how she draws us in – starting with a painter’s name that triggers something visual, just like in a dream, perhaps a painting that most people have a vague memory of – didn’t the girl with the pearl earring or something related pop up just now? Progressing to some auditory bits (speaking Greek, hearing Saints,) with a side dish of time travel, just like in dreams that move so fluently between the past and present, the worldly and the otherworldly realms. She’s in control – of cars, of flying, of outcomes – no broken bones from falls, no drowning episodes, no futile pursuits – hey, there’s Atlantis after all! She’s no less than a master in everything she touches, from visual art, to music, to writing, and you would be amazed – calling in the recognition that’s deserved by addressing us directly. The prevalence of falling in dreams is acknowledged, a stanza that does not begin with “I”, though it, as well, ends up with dreamt invincibility.

So what happens in the end? A clear memory of a real dream which contains nothing of the professed wizardry, but instead simply two suns. A double dose of light to illuminate the futility of wishful thinking? A symbol for another universe, one where the gap between reality and wishful thinking can be bridged?

A penguin dream, the other day. Getting cold feet, waddling on thin ice? Or the ability to perceive possibilities, strange creatures, with clarity, even if they exist as far removed from us as they currently do? Your guess is as good as mine.

The whole thing requires some serious thinking. Turns out that’s just the thing that will defeat bad dreams.

I am not just saying that. Scientific data are truly reassuring: we can influence our dreams with thinking, even post-traumatic nightmares. Here is a good, easily read introduction to the findings and methods.) Go ahead, practice!

Sweet dreams.

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First Signs of Spring

Spring is officially on the calendar and sure enough, the first messengers, trilliums, are popping up left and right in the woods. These wondrous little sentinels from the Lily family grow from rhysomes, have three furled leaves, a short stalk and, in these parts, mostly white flowers.

Before the flowers unfold, the shoots are easily overlooked, and I worry when Hundchen does his exuberant run in the woods that things get trampled – just like the damage done to the wildflowers by the tree cutter in Frost’s poem below.

Frost’s protagonist goes to the woods to collect birch boughs for a trellis for his peas.

As much as he is in favor of utilizing what nature has to offer, he also cares about the damage done – the axed stumps are bleeding and the wildflowers might be crushed by all the debris on top of them – go, clean up the mess! In fact, it might be too late for the trilliums, having been “crooked” by man’s arboreal harvest. I assume that means sort of crushed.

Somehow, though, nature seems to prevail. That last line reminds of the inevitability of growth, even if damage awaits. They just push through, next after next.

That certainly seems to be the case in the woods here, still bruised from the recent storms, windfall wherever you look. The little stars dot the landscape – affirmation of resilience, or nature doing its thing, unperturbed, you choose.

Pea Brush 

Robert Frost – 1874-1963

I walked down alone Sunday after church
   To the place where John has been cutting trees
To see for myself about the birch
   He said I could have to bush my peas.

The sun in the new-cut narrow gap
   Was hot enough for the first of May,
And stifling hot with the odor of sap
   From stumps still bleeding their life away.

The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill
   Wherever the ground was low and wet,
The minute they heard my step went still
   To watch me and see what I came to get.

Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!—
   All fresh and sound from the recent axe.
Time someone came with cart and pair
   And got them off the wild flower’s backs.

They might be good for garden things
   To curl a little finger round,
The same as you seize cat’s-cradle strings,
   And lift themselves up off the ground.

Small good to anything growing wild,
   They were crooking many a trillium
That had budded before the boughs were piled
   And since it was coming up had to come.
 

Here is some music that captures the sparseness of the woods and the still cool light in March, reflected off the white petals of the Trillium.

Photographs mostly from archives, a few from this week, 4 legged creature included.

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Squirrels on Ice

Kissed by privilege. Not only do I live in a place surrounded by old-growth trees, but from my bed I look directly onto a balcony that has become a cafeteria for all kinds of creatures during the cold months. The crows visit, as do the thrush and the nuthatches, the juncos and the towhees, some sparrows and the occasional shy chickadee. And then there are the squirrels, scrambling up the side of the house.

We had put seeds and nuts out onto the railing before the snow hit. The squirrels lost no time to dig them all up and either eat them right there or abscond with them to refill empty caches. It brought nature as close to me as possible, a source of considerable joy and distraction. Photographing with my small digital camera – I am not allowed to lift or hold the large one until the incisions are healed – through the window yielded some fun images.

It also made me think about the double-edged sword of the fragmentation of boundaries between human and animal territory with our human incursions into nature’s spaces. On the one hand, you gain so much knowledge if you can observe and research animal behavior of populations close to you. On the other hand, we all know how pandemics are generated if territorial lines are crossed. I feel like Cassandra just mentioning the fact that 7 Russians were the first humans found to be infected with the H5N8 bird flu last week.

Let’s start the week on a more optimistic footing, though. Here are two amazing things about squirrels.

They have not only the capability to listen for and identify predators’ calls, like owls and hawks, predators that could become dangerous to them. They also eavesdrop on the general bird population around them. If other birds continue to chatter unperturbed, the squirrels relax.

“Eavesdropping on alarm calls or eavesdropping on chatter is a cheap and easy way to supplement the information they have access to. Because it’s free. It’s produced by other individuals in the environment. It’s publicly available to any organism that has the cognitive ability to recognize and interpret that information.”

Nifty, but nothing in comparison to what other squirrels’ brains have to offer in the fight against human disease, Alzheimers in particular. Recent research of the brain of arctic ground squirrels revealed some facts that no one ever anticipated.

These critters, at home in Siberia, Alaska and Canada, burrow about a meter under the tundra surface to hibernate for 7 months. During that process, their body temperature plummets, below the freezing point of water!, and their brains stop producing a lot of neural activity. Structurally their neurons shrink and the connections between neurons shrivel away. Think of it as if a tree crown sheds all of its twigs and branches, just leaving a few big limbs intact.

But here comes the amazing part.  When the squirrels wake up, they grow back, within only two hours, not just all the synapses lost during hibernation— their brain cells now boast many more links than those of an active squirrel in the spring or summertime. A day later, their brains prune many of these ties, probably recognizing them as superfluous, and so end up in exactly the state before they started hibernation. The details of this process can be found here. The implications for brain plasticity and potential application to brains that have lost a lot of their dendritic connections (dementias) are now explored by scientists around the world.

Maybe my own synapses start firing again, one of these days, emerging from this semi-hibernating interlude. And I will walk in nature again. Which reminds me of one of my favorite poems about walking while stewarding nature’s cycles or mythology, your pick. It was written by former Oregon Poet Laureate Paulann Petersen. The story of Demeter and Persephone really focusses on the eternal cycle of sowing, growth, harvest, withering and dying back, questions as to the nature of human life and death, including the possibility of resurrection from Hades. A mother, Goddess of the harvest, Demeter, carries her tears with her grains, missing her abducted daughter. The pomegranate seeds, mentioned late in the poem, hold life but also the banishment to the underworld, if you remember Persephone’s fate. A temporary excursion into the realm of the dead, just like squirrels in hibernation….

Music by Stravinsky, I’m indulging in the incomparable German version with Fritz Wunderlich.

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About sums it up

————————

Like being able to pick up blogging again.

Folks, bear with me. I am coming up from under water, recovery from lung surgery is harder than I had – wildly optimistic – expected. So it might be stop and go for the next couple of months. Or it might be possible to put something interesting and coherent in front of your eyes three times a week, for starters. I’ll give it a try, if only to feel connected to the outside world from which I am de facto quarantined.

Photomontages are from the series Tied to the Moon (2019.)

Music is another one of those bonuses that make up for Armageddon: Grieg’s Lyrical Pieces I and II. (There are 66 in all – but these are favorite selections.)

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Trekvogels

The poem about migratory birds below was written at the end of World War II by one of the more prolific Flemish poets, Hubert van Herreweghen. Tricky translation – in the original the very last sentence really conveys that you should learn to love life or what is left of it. There was, with winter approaching, probably longing to follow the birds, away from the fields of Flanders, to a a warmer South, leaving the violence, the losses and serious hunger of those years behind.

MIGRATING BIRDS

The summer that has cheated us; 
the gloomy lesson autumn brings. 
Beneath the slow, high cumulus, 
I see a black bird fly across,
heading south with beating wings. 

The magical flight of the wild geese 
and cranes with their clamouring cries 
over the land like a golden fleece. 
Winter brings shadows, dark without cease, 
until a new journey fills up the skies. 

Vulnerable heart and senses in pain, 
There is no home, in east or west, 
where, landed, you’re not restless again. 
You must learn to love life, that’s plain, 
Or, anyway, to love the rest.

By Hubert van Herreweghen, translated by Paul Vincent

From: Verzamelde gedichten
Publisher: Orion, Bruges, 1977

I picked it as a bridge to one of my favorite clips of all time, my go-to when I need peacefulness.

I photographed the migratory swans, geese and cranes this week on their journey in the opposite direction – going North to meet longer days, more light, the delights of mating and nesting season. No longing to follow them – in love with my home, that does exist here in the West, and loving life as always, no need to learn that. Magical flights, though, indeed.

Swans

Joys to be had then, this week. Attached to change, in nature and elsewhere. Grateful for the respite.

Geese soaring

TREKVOGELS

De zomer die ons heeft bedrogen; 
o weemoed die de herfst ons leert. 
Onder de wolken, trage en hoge, 
een zwarte vogel voor mijn ogen 
die naar het zuiden keert. 

Magische vlucht der wilde ganzen 
en kraanvogels met luid gekrijs 
over het land vol gouden glansen. 
Dan valt de schaduw die de ganse 
winter verduistert tot de nieuwe reis. 

Ontvankelijk hart, kwetsbare zinnen, 
er is geen honk in oost of west 
of gij zijt rusteloos, er binnen. 
Leert toch het leven te beminnen 
of wat er van het leven rest.

Music today comes from a vision of migratory destinations for swans. As you can imagine the whole cycle of Cantus Arcticus is a favorite of mine.

And these are about 1000 snow geese on a stop-over, that white strip on the horizon.

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You read her here first!

22-year old poet Amanda Gorman was chosen to read at the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. I am linking back to my post from 2019, below, where I had introduced her while writing about reasons for optimism. The poem I chose, “In This Place (An American Lyric),” was her work for the 2017 inauguration of U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith. It celebrated poetry as a tool in the service of and fight for democracy.

Reasons for Optimism

Apparently Jill Biden recommended her for this week’s inaugural reading. The poet lives in L.A., hence today’s choice of photographs.

As reported in the Baltimore Sun: “She is calling her inaugural poem “The Hill We Climb” while otherwise declining to preview any lines. Gorman says she was not given specific instructions on what to write, but was encouraged to emphasize unity and hope over “denigrating anyone” or declaring “ding, dong, the witch is dead” over the departure of President Donald Trump.”

Now, personally, I wouldn’t mind hearing ding, dong the witch is dead on Wednesday. Except that would be a lie – let us not, ever, forget that we are dealing not with a singular witch but a coven, which is going to have its tentacles in our political and social fabric for a long time. Or was that the Kraken? Getting my metaphors mixed here, which is why you’ll never hear anything written by yours truly at any inauguration of any kind or anybody.

Better that way. I am sure the powerhouse that is Amanda Gorman will move us all with her words, the words of a generation that has to live with the consequences of the disastrous policies of the last 30 years – yes, I mean it – longest.

I was thrilled when I heard the news, just at the moment when I finished reading Anand Giridharadas’ short piece in the.Ink proclaiming hope and optimism.

“And I see then that this is both a very dark time and, potentially, a very bright time. It’s important to hold these truths together.

When I look down at the ground of the present right now, I feel depressed. If I lift my head to the horizon, I see a different picture.

This is not the chaos of the beginning of something. This is the chaos of the end of something.”

……

“We are living through a revolt against the future. The future will prevail.”

AMEN!

Poetry matters, but so do books from 2020 about politics, by Black women writers. MLK would have approved – Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King!

Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America, by Stacey Abrams

Reclaiming Her Time: The Power of Maxine Waters, by Helena Andrews-Dyer and R. Eric Thomas

Say It Louder!: Black Voters, White Narratives, and Saving Our Democracy, by Tiffany D. Cross

The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart, by Alicia Garza

Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All, by Martha S. Jones

Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot, by Mikki Kendall

The End of White Politics: How to Heal Our Liberal Divide, by Zerlina Maxwell

Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, by Ijeoma Oluo

This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey From Refugee to Congresswoman,by Ilhan Omar

No, You Shut Up: Speaking Truth to Power and Reclaiming America, by Symone D. Sanders

For short reviews of each, go here.

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Language remembered

“”Silence is the real crime against humanity.” – Nadezha Mandelstam

Two nights ago there was a lot of wind and rain. I do not remember that a storm was announced, but by the next morning trees and branches were all over the place, ripped out of the earth or from their trunks. I had to remind myself that nature is served by an occasional house cleaning, rather than thinking, man, it all comes crashing down.

And since language was on my mind, given this week’s focus, I was saddened by another kind of crash: apparently so many Native American Elders are felled by Covid-19, some the sole bearers of languages at the brink of extinction, that a true cultural crisis unfolds. The few who remember the languages, gone.

I decided that we need some real cheer to counterbalance the ominous thoughts. Something that reminds us that even in the middle of catastrophe or the ramp leading up to it, there are glimpses of hope. And courage. And love!

What better than a love poem written by Osip Mandelstam (1891- 1938) for his wife Nadezha, before Stalin managed to finish him off by sending him to a Siberian Labor Camp for his outspoken criticism of totalitarianism?

Nadezha Mandelstam (1899 – 1980) was an unusually strong person, who escaped Stalin’s henchmen by luck and led a quasi-nomadic existence for many years, crashing with friends, doing odds-and-ends jobs, learning her husband’s poems by heart so that they would be preserved, and smuggling copies of them out of the country. She was said to have had a Homeric memory that allowed her to memorize both original poems and some of their variants. Later she pushed for publication of his collected works, both in the West and later in Russia. Her own memoirs, Hope against Hope and Hope Abandoned (both finished in 1970) are a worthwhile read if you can stomach eyewitness testimony of the Stalinist purges.

Note the crack in the ground with the roots trying to lift up

She remembered his language, ensuring survival of some of Russia’s most important poetry of the 20th century. He was ripped from her side because of his relentless willingness to open his mouth. And yet she insisted: “Silence is the real crime against humanity.”

Let’s hear it for love.

This

This is what I most want 
unpursued, alone 
to reach beyond the light 
that I am furthest from. 

And for you to shine there- 
no other happiness- 
and learn, from starlight, 
what its fire might suggest. 

A star burns as a star, 
light becomes light, 
because our murmuring 
strengthens us, and warms the night. 

And I want to say to you 
my little one, whispering, 
I can only lift you towards the light 
by means of this babbling.

By Osip Mandelstam

Anyone “babbling” to me like this – I promise eternal devotion……

Music is by one of their contemporaries, Scriabin, in a smooth if theatrical rendition of his Fantasy #2. And here is Horowitz, with a different take on a different piece.

And since you’ve followed me through a week with long and complicated topics, here is a bonus bit of cheerful language (and genuine loving sentiment) from a few days ago:

If that doesn’t cheer you, what will?

My boot print in the mud

Pileated woodpecker

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