Yesterday I learned that Joy Harjo has been appointed as new US poet laureate, the first Native American to fill this role. If you are a regular reader you might remember that I linked to one of her deeply moving poems in an earlier blog this year, which I am attaching below.
For today, I’ll let her do the talking – or the singing as the case may be: the recitation of her poem towards the second half of the clip is literally through song.
I have no photographs of Oklahoma where Harjo is from. But I learned that the state generates more than a third of its energy with the help of wind turbines. So images of them, photographed in WA, have to stand in.
There is a bit of music by Muscogee/Creek Indians and a fascinating discussion about politics in this archival video – long though, only if you have time..
By now you might have noticed that this week’s blogging is dedicated to the beautiful things in my immediate vicinity – bugs, bees, bird, flowers, you name it. It was an attempt to remind myself that you do not have to travel far to find wonder – I had just declined an invitation to a wedding in an exotic location, my (now thwarted) lust for adventure severely at odds with my desire to reduce my carbon foot print, and to boycott a destination life-style, among other reasons.
I am not saying there is anything wrong with travel – it will always be one of my favorite things. I just want to be more conscious in what kind of travel I choose and for what reason.
Sunday’s chance encounter with the hummingbird (Kolibri) in these first two photographs, and the many more I found in my archives, was the best possible reassurance that I want for nothing in the beauty-and-awe department.
Hummingbirds are important pollinators; the fluttering of their wings moves loose pollen around until it finds its destination. Their bills are often covered with sticky pollen that gets transferred to the next flower when they move on to take another nectar sip somewhere else. And pollen even sticks to their heads when they move deep into a blossom, brushing again the anther. True friends of any garden.
Below is a poem by Pablo Neruda that paints with words the colors and the joy you feel when near these oscillating creatures.
Ode to the Hummingbird
The hummingbird in flight is a water-spark, an incandescent drip of American fire, the jungle’s flaming resume, a heavenly, precise rainbow: the hummingbird is an arc, a golden thread, a green bonfire!
Oh tiny living lightning, when you hover in the air, you are a body of pollen, a feather or hot coal, I ask you: What is your substance? Perhaps during the blind age of the Deluge, within fertility’s mud, when the rose crystallized in an anthracite fist, and metals matriculated each one in a secret gallery perhaps then from a wounded reptile some fragment rolled, a golden atom, the last cosmic scale, a drop of terrestrial fire took flight, suspending your splendor, your iridescent, swift sapphire.
You doze on a nut, fit into a diminutive blossom; you are an arrow, a pattern, a coat-of-arms, honey’s vibrato, pollen’s ray; you are so stouthearted– the falcon with his black plumage does not daunt you: you pirouette, a light within the light, air within the air. Wrapped in your wings, you penetrate the sheath of a quivering flower, not fearing that her nuptial honey may take off your head!
From scarlet to dusty gold, to yellow flames, to the rare ashen emerald, to the orange and black velvet of our girdle gilded by sunflowers, to the sketch like amber thorns, your Epiphany, little supreme being, you are a miracle, shimmering from torrid California to Patagonia’s whistling, bitter wind. You are a sun-seed, plumed fire, a miniature flag in flight, a petal of silenced nations, a syllable of buried blood, a feather of an ancient heart, submerged
The osprey, or more specifically the western osprey (Pandion haliaetus) has many names. It is also known as sea hawk, river hawk, and fish hawk — and is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey with a cosmopolitan range. I don’t remember all the details, but some early scientist screwed up his Greek mythology memory bits when naming the bird. Savigny, the ornithologists, remembered something about a Greek king named Pandion and a bird. Never mind that it was his daughters and their awful husband who were turned into birds…. here, I looked it up. You’re welcome.
At least I know the common name – in contrast to one of my favorite poets of all time, Billy Collins….but then again he makes a poem out of it that, just like yesterday’s, so very much values connectivity. Naming. Knowing. Taking in.
The poem I really wanted to think about today, though, is the next one – hey, it’s Friday, you have all weekend to read a double dose.
Here is the bio blip from the poet’s website:
HAI-DANG PHAN is the author of Reenactments: Poems and Translations (Sarabande, 2019). His writing has been recognized by fellowships and scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the American Literary Translators Association, and has appeared in Lana Turner, New England Review, The New Yorker, Poetry, and Best American Poetry 2016. Born in Vietnam, he grew up in Wisconsin and currently lives in Iowa City.
Osprey
The Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey is of course an American multi-mission, tiltrotor military aircraft with both vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL), and short takeoff and landing. – Note, it is a military transport aircraft. I thought in this week where the saber rattling towards Iran was drowned out by the concerted din of the legal attacks on abortion, we might pause and think.
Two musical moments: Haydn’s description of an eagle soaring on his strong wings…
and, since my role this week was to catch the birds for you, a true war horse, or should it be war bird….Mozart and I wish you a delightful weekend!
I have never seen a dying bird. Plenty of dead ones, mind, but never one at the very moment. Small mercies, I used to believe. That was before today’s poem came across my way, opening my eyes to the connection a small act of compassion can establish.
Or perhaps simply an act of seeing. Linda Hogan, the poet I chose for today, a member of the Chikasaw nation, and a volunteer and consultant for wildlife rehabilitation and endangered species programs, reminds us: “Between the human and all the rest / lies only an eyelid.”
(And before you worry, all images today are birds so very much alive.)
Hogan, author of several poetry collections, has published essays for the Nature Conservancy and Sierra Club, her honors and awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Henry David Thoreau Prize for Nature Writing, a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas. Her fiction was listed for the Pulitzer.
If you want to give yourself a gift or simply a lasting distraction from the current abysmal news, check out her volume Rounding the Human Corners. Barbara Kingsolver said:“Linda Hogan’s vision is breathtaking.” Who am I to argue.
The Heron
Linda Hogan
Herons are most elegant, until they open their beak – out comes the screechiest croak. it always makes me laugh. Music, then, shall be something to make us at least smile, if not laugh. I am thinking of Ligeti –
When looking for a poem that would fit with today’s bird images, I came across, just like earlier this week, yet another accomplished Australian poet I had never heard of. The poem is not exactly matching my goal which was to describe birds hanging out on infrastructure rather than trees. But it alludes to the fact that we take some things as common, if not vulgar, and delight in the unfamiliar, when “the truth is that nothing with you is common at all.”
That resonates deeply with my own approach to birds; the passion is not all about imagery of freedom or escape in flight, but also about their tenacity and ability to adapt to and thrive in altered environments. The more common birds excel at this, masters of survival in a world of stone and steel.
Birds do adapt, most cleverly so, but they might need a helping hand when living in noisy traffic – song birds change their tunes so that they can be heard over the din, but that means the tune loses attractiveness to potential mates….
What about music? Funny you ask. Recent experiments have cleverly exposed common urban birds to music and tried to figure out their preferences. Musical taste seems to vary, with Metallica’s heavy metal attracting more finches than sparrows. However, Debussy ruled, with more birds coming to the feeders set up with Pandorabird than when it played than when it when it was silent. Debussy it shall be! The Preludes, to make my Wednesday morning. Hopefully your’s as well.
You'll rejoice at how many kinds of shit there are:
gosling shit (which J.
Williams said something
was as green as), fish shit (the generality), trout
shit, rainbow trout shit (for the nice), mullet shit,
sand dab shit, casual sloth shit, elephant shit
(awesome as process or payload), wildebeest shit,
horse shit (a favorite), caterpillar shit (so many dark
kinds, neatly pelleted as mint seed), baby rhinoceros
shit, splashy jaybird shit, mockingbird shit
(dive-bombed with the aim of song), robin shit that
oozes white down lawnchairs or down roots under roosts,
chicken shit and chicken mite shit, pelican shit, gannet
shit (wholesome guano), fly shit (periodic), cockatoo
shit, dog shit (past catalog or assimilation),
cricket shit, elk (high plains) shit, and
tiny scribbled little shrew shit, whale shit (what
a sight, deep assumption), mandril shit (blazing
blast off), weasel shit (wiles' waste), gazelle shit,
magpie shit (total protein), tiger shit (too acid
to contemplate), moral eel and manta ray shit, eerie
shark shit, earthworm shit (a soilure), crab shit,
wolf shit upon the germicidal ice, snake shit, giraffe
shit that accelerates, secretary bird shit, turtle
shit suspension invites, remora shit slightly in
advance of the shark shit, hornet shit (difficult to
assess), camel shit that slaps the ghastly dry
siliceous, frog shit, beetle shit, bat shit (the
marmoreal), contemptible cat shit, penguin shit,
hermit crab shit, prairie hen shit, cougar shit, eagle
shit (high totem stuff), buffalo shit (hardly less
lofty), otter shit, beaver shit (from the animal of
alluvial dreams)—a vast ordure is a broken down
cloaca—macaw shit, alligator shit (that floats the Nile
along), louse shit, macaque, koala, and coati shit,
antelope shit, chuck-will's-widow shit, alpaca shit
(very high stuff), gooney bird shit, chigger shit, bull
shit (the classic), caribou shit, rasbora, python, and
razorbill shit, scorpion shit, man shit, laswing
fly larva shit, chipmunk shit, other-worldly wallaby
shit, gopher shit (or broke), platypus shit, aardvark
shit, spider shit, kangaroo and peccary shit, guanaco
shit, dolphin shit, aphid shit, baboon shit (that leopards
induce), albatross shit, red-headed woodpecker (nine
inches long) shit, tern shit, hedgehog shit, panda shit,
seahorse shit, and the shit of the wasteful gallinule.
And here is another gosling, this time playing the Color Etudes by Phillip Ramey, gosling green comes to mind….
When dandelions star the fields Another alien singer, I, Nursed upon England’s flowery wealds, Seeking no tithe of treasured yields, dropp sudden from a summer sky To where the spangled clearing spills Its gold about your timbered hills.
A mite in splendid motley clad, I mark the field, I know the hour When choicest morsels may be had; When blooms are gay, when days are glad, And thistledown wafts in a shower To dance and drift and disappear, I, who was not, am with you here.
I cling beside the thistle head, I dance about your cattle’s feet, I revel in the banquet spread By many a blazing yellow bed, And feast until I am replete; Then seek the house roof’s topmost tile To linger yet a little while.
No ingrate I, no niggard churl Tho’ what I take you well may spare Ere azure skies have grown to pearl, With many a grace-note, many a skirl, I pay gold coin for golden fare, And profer an abundant fee In long sweet bursts of melody.
“There’s a lot of courage out here,” were the words of Kaia Sand, executive director of Street Roots, when introducing 11 women and men last night who have lived, fought, and survived homelessness, ready to present their poetry to a full house.
Kaia Sand
There could not have been a more fitting title for the poetry presentation either: Making the Invisible Visible was what happened during each and every reading, words opened windows into worlds often unknown to those of us protected from living on the streets.
Aileen McPherson
Brandon Morgrove
Bronwyn Carver
There’s a lot to learn out there. At least for those of us who pacify their conscience by buying Street Roots on a regular basis, supporting the entrepreneurs, members of the local homeless community, who sell the weekly street newspaper published in Portland, OR. Vendors receive 75 cents for every $1 paper they sell. For that they stand day on ends on cold street corners, in all weather, facing who knows how many people who avert their eyes for everyone who glances at them, or engages in quick conversation while buying the paper.
Char GarciaDaniel CoxKerry Anderson
What stays invisible is the talent and perceptiveness of those trying to connect. What stays hidden is our own timidity to face misery that contrasts with our privilege. Off we rush, having paid a token buck.
There’s an incredible amount of creative power out there. Last night’s poems covered a wide range of topics, lengths and forms, and skill levels that demanded, at their heights, publication in its perfection. My belief that poetry should, if possible, be presented orally to unfold its full power, was confirmed again. The merging of words, describing lived experience, and the face, voice and gestural expressiveness of the experiencer made a whole, doubling the impact. Some of the poetry was polished, some written that very day, some describing personal experiences that make you wonder how they can be survived, some lovely paeans to a world we all inhabit, and others a call to political action to fight for economic and social justice.
Lori LemattaLeo Rhodes
There was a lot of palpable emotion out there, on all sides, presenters and audience alike. It veered from sadness to anger to joy, from disbelief to curiosity to relief that we share aspects of the world, when the poems covered experiences we are all familiar with. Tears and laughter were openly displayed helping to forge a sense of community in a group of people from backgrounds all over the map. I sat next to a woman who turned out to be one of the leaders of the poetry workshops organized by Street Roots. Her display of encouraging words, gestures, sounds and smiles added one more emotion to the mix: my jealousy of never having had writing teachers of such humanity.
Miles Garner
Peter SalzmannRob Thaxton
There’s a lot of community engagement out there. The event was organized by one of the artists currently showing at Gallery 114 who hosted the gathering, David Slader, and introduced as well by a Board member of the Pearl District Neighborhood Organization, Stan Penkin. A terrific review of InkBodySkinPaint+Fire, Slader’s work and that of his friend Owen Carey, a renowned Portland photographer who I admire, can be found here: https://www.orartswatch.org/tattoo-you-art-in-the-flesh/#more-72865
David Slader
Stan Penkin
Owen Carey (a soulmate when it comes to being an omnivore of photographic subjects)
You have a few more days to catch the exhibition, it’s worth it, if only for the whimsey of small plastic cows strategically placed across the room…long story.
You also have a few more days to make up your mind how to help an organization like Street Roots, but then get to it! Here are some options to show support: http://streetroots.org/support
Another possibility is to get engaged in their newest advocacy project, a plan to improve the ways we respond to problems unfolding on the street. It is a big endeavor and could use all hands on deck. Attached below is an outlining of the problems and proposed solutions and a TV interview that describes the project in a few minutes.
Let me close with a poem of one of last night’s presenters, Brandon Morgrove.
Photographs of the presenters, via iPhone, since there’s a lot of ineptitude out therewhen your’s truly once again packs a camera with an empty battery…. I also couldn’t figure out for the life of me why the names and the images did not want to center. Oh well. The title photograph was grabbed from the Street Roots social media site, they will forgive me!
And just like that, it snowed again. Covering the Hellebores, the bamboo, the whole of the backyard. I am very fond of Hellebores, also known as Christmas or Lenten Roses, their origins explained by lots of different folk tales.
A different take on them can be found in Darwin’s writings. No, not that Darwin, but his grandfather (as well as Francis Galton’s), Erasmus. Erasmus Darwin was an English physician, one of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, a natural philosopher, physiologist, abolitionist, inventor and poet in the late 1700s. He was beyond fascinated with the newly revealed research and subsequent taxonomy of plants devised by Linnaeus.
Darwin wrote The Loves of the Plants, a long – eternally long – poem, which was a popular rendering of Linnaeus’ works, as well as the Economy of Vegetation, and together the two were published as The Botanic Garden.
Finally a way to talk about sex! Even if in the disguise of the propagation amongst plants. So many poetic possibilities!
Here is the bit about Hellebores:
And here are some of his explanatory notes:
Clearly he anticipated natural selection in ways to be explored and confirmed by his grandson 60 years later. And the colors now vary, from white, to pink, to the deepest of purples. Which is not true for snowdrops, which have stayed in their wintry camouflage forever.
I’m throwing some other garden sights in for good measure. It’s all too beautiful!
Sparrows seem to be a popular topic for poetry. From Catullus to Keats, Bill Collins to Charles Bukowski they appear as various symbols – with the added twist of many of these poets citing each other.
My choice for today, though, is a writer I introduced some time before – Paul Laurence Dunbar who was one of the first black poets to rise to national fame in the late 1800s. You’ll remember him from “When the caged bird sings….”
I was reminded this morning that the poem’s message to heed what is important is anything but trite or outdated. Ady Barkan, Yale Law School graduate and a fighter for social justice at the Center for Popular Democracy, is in hospital. I have followed his work for some time, unaware until recently that he is dying from ALS and writing basically with eye movement commands these days. In his early 30s, a few years older than my own sons and already a father.
The message this morning was personal compared to his usual politics: “If you have your health, I urge you to cherish it every day. Say thanks for it, and never take it for granted. Make the best use you can of your brief time on this earth. Do today what will make you proud tomorrow, proud on your deathbed.”
I find myself uttering it often, to myself and others, oh, think of what’s really important, carpe diem, etc. Writing about it today because I MEAN IT, and want to honor people who’ve been in environments of Jim Crow or on their deathbed having the strength to remind us all. Even we, perhaps privileged mortals all, can make significant choices. And we should.
