Last week, I bought my yearly stash of marshmallow peeps. Some of our grandchildren were coming for dinner, and Easter baskets require peeps. I need peeps. Not so much to eat on Easter, though I always manage to stuff one or two into my mouth before turning in. No. Like many seasoned fans, I peel back the cellophane, stick the open package in an obscure corner of the pantry, and forget they are there. It’s a senior moment that serves me well when, months later (usually when I’m rummaging for cornstarch), I run into the somewhat hardened, now perfectly chewy specimens. What a pleasure to crunch into the transformed concoction that time and neglect have curated!
My relationship with poetry is similar. Throughout my life, I've been hooked. I’ve written poems off and on since childhood, taught poetry to high schoolers for decades, and continue to read poems for pleasure and enlightenment—just not always. Poems are good for condensing life-crystallizing moments. Poems seduce. They transport. They stir and invite looking at life through a different lens. The great William Stafford says poetry is like a very faint star [that] if you look straight at... you can’t see. Instead, you have to look a little to one side.
Life is like that sometimes; everything blurs. And like a distant star, hope feels faint as in a deep, dark sky. Divisions of all sorts, natural disasters, wars, health scares, social and relational challenges - these many conflicts, along with cultural cynicisms, cause anxiety and threaten. When I look straight at these stark issues it’s easy to get caught in black and white thinking. Poems invite me to shift and deepen into ways of looking that clarify and save. Like my marshmallow peeps, though, I have to remember where I’ve stashed them on my shelves.
I always know where I’ve put Martha Collins’ poetry. She actually founded the Creative Writing Program at UMass-Boston when my sister, Lauren, was there, and amazingly, luckily, she had her as a teacher. In the beginning of her poem, The Catastrophe of Rainbows, Collins captures the woeful nature of life when she laments that [w]e are killed all day long...Ice tightens its grip... the edge of threat divides the sky. It’s a poem worth reading. I love the way Collins’ poetic lines validate struggle and offer redemption. Here are some excerpts:
You lost the way…Now you’ve come back. You can go on: picture a road ahead and there’s the figure of yourself. . .Carve your name on a white stone and begin to play again. . .This is the changing form of things: things are both themselves and what we make of them in this evening light.
In the midst of a funky-blue mood, I can always rely on this poem to lift my heart.
William Stafford’s poems are similarly consoling and worth celebrating. Here is one of my favorites. My high school students always loved it, but I think it speaks to us at any age.
For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid
There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot--air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That's the world, and we all live there.
Fear constantly shades and informs our ordinary lives. Here, Stafford elevates my understanding, and I love how his consolation engenders strength.
At times poems grow my capacity for compassion. Here's one I wrote that made me feel closer to a stranger.
She Watches Sun Spin Water into Silk
On bright days and fine
the woman in her black kerchief
sits alone
by the side of the river.
She squints at boats
and smiles at dirty doves
who peck at the crusts
she throws
as she gums the soft white middles.
When you sit down beside her
she will mutter,
but quick pinch the lavender
she pockets to hide the smell
of her cabbage soup and hens.
A putty-faced woman
the birds flap
near her eyes
and alongside of the smile
that's tracked claw feet
all over her face.
Though the children call her Baba Ya Ga,
her name is Maria
and she lives
with her brother
in a room behind his kitchen.
In 1979, the poet Richard Hugo wrote in The Triggering Town: I've seen the world tell us with wars and bad politics and odd court decisions that our lives don't matter…When we are told in dozens of insidious ways that our lives don't matter, we may be forced to insist, often too loudly, that they do. He goes on to champion creative writers as those who harness the revulsion of life's limitations by momentarily filling blank sheets of paper with what supports awareness of ourselves and each other. In this poem, I try to attune myself to what he calls fond, sad, and immediate.
Suds
The table witnessed
the spill of the tea
The extra pat of butter.
The jam he smeared all over
the overdone toast.
There were no flowers.
The flowers wouldn't be there.
All the grotesque bunches
had been layered sideways
crowded in piles like fish.
The purple-veined ones.
He had hated purple the most
And now dishes.
Days of dishes litter the counters.
He might stand
Look out into their empty yard.
Fill up the sink with soapy water.
Scrub the dried remains,
Watch every last thing
wash down.
Grh) for donating space on this Monday post.
And at last from Jack Pine Savage
Special Thanks to Ginny Graham aka teapoetry for donating space for
The Limerick Contest Winners:
Votes weren’t all that counted in determining the winners. The definition of a worthy limerick (below) also measured performance.
Here are the criteria that make the lion’s share of what makes a limerick a limerick:
- Creativity
- Cliches not allowed
- Light-heartedness a plus
- More than a few yuks
- Modest requirements
- Rhymes, if you please, but optional
- Standard rhyme pattern: AABBA – also amenable to variation
- Syllable count by line is something like 9-9-6-6-9
- Leeway to play around
- Humor – Fun – Dangerous at cocktail parties, if such things still exist.
For sheer limerick entry volume, we have a tie for our honorable mention. The prize must be claimed by both winners simultaneously. And the prize goes tooooo . . . drum roll . . . Ginny Graham and Anonymous who each contributed a brisk basketful of their limericks. The prize is afternoon Devonshire tea at the cabin residence of Woe and Jack Pine Savage. Ms. Graham needs to coordinate with Anonymous to set a date and time to claim their prize. As tradition would have it, Ginny and A.may each bring a guest to the event. Here are some of their winning entries.
Anonymous
Der vonce vas a poet from Virginny
Her vit it vas big, no not mini.
Tho she's not Norvegian
Her vords flow artesian,
Dis is da teapoet skinny.
Ginny Graham
There once was a girl from Japan
who flirted all day with her fan.
At night, so it’s told,
her lithe body she sold
and a very brisk business began.
And we have another tie for the big prize that just got bigger: The bigger prize goes to the brothers Hruby – David and Antonin. It should be known that David (WAKWIR) has been a contributor to the WA several times, and Antonin regularly helps their mom, Kim Hruba, with her posts. Thanks guys!
Since we have a trifecta of winners in the H&H&H clan, the prize is breakfast for the whole family at The Fickle Pickle on a day of their choosing. This is courtesy of Jack Pine Savage and another favorite Almanac contributor and much beloved husband of JPS, familiarly known as Woe. And no, the Hruba/Hruby clan members are not invited to bring one guest each. JPS, after all, sets the contest rules.
- David Hruby, aka WAKWIR
There once was a boy named Troy
Who loved to play with his toys
And once they break
Pa's cash he takes
And gets away with his ploy.
Antonin Hruby w/ mom's help
Who didn't do anything but play on the 'puter
Then one day
He gave it away
And realized the world was much beaut'er.
Joe McDonnell– receives two special mentions, one for its subject, dear to JPS’ heart – a creature of the canine kind. That would be the “dog from Nantucket,” not the “bucket”
There once was a dog from Nantucket
Who carried his tail in a bucket
Of this he got sick
Gave the bucket a kick
And his tail twixt his legs he then tucked it
And the other special mention for Joe M that led off the other half of 1 April’s post featuring “bawdy nawdy” limericks. Here is Joe’s contribution.
You call for a limerick bawdy
O Catherine you are very nawdy
To compose such a rhyme
Will take extra time
I must start with a very hot toddy
That’s it! The contest’s winners, their limericks, their prizes, and their fame. And with this final contribution, Jack Pine Savage walks with her trusty companions – including all of you – into the sunset, over the hill, into emeritus status of the evergreen Wannaskan Almanac.
Much gratitude to the stalwart readers who stayed with me on this journey. I’ll see ya ‘round Wannaska-land! JPS
Thank you for the gift of bringing us close to everyday moments… the gratitude to see others in their ordinary extraordinary selves. The world presses in and your poetry asks us to stop and see the precious gift of others and honor their lives.
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