Author: bripike

Tuesday Musings

I’m going to be on a panel this Friday with two other folks from LAS. I have to talk about astronomy and poetry as this panel is spin off of our bigger project here at school, The Year of Galileo. I’ve been playing around with topics for the last few weeks, but yesterday I finally had a breakthrough, which is good because I have to talk for about 15 minutes or so. I’m going to lead off talking a little about Galileo as a poet (he wrote a few poems in an obscure Italian form and also a few sonnets) and use a riddle that he starts with at the beginning of his poem “Enigma.” The riddle is about a comet, so I figure it segues nicely into Stanley Kunitz’s poem “Halley’s Comet” and then we’ll move in “Bright Star by” John Keats. I have a small Whitman poem if we have time, but I also have “I Remember Galileo” by Gerald Stern, so I think I’m covered in terms of material.

I’m going to put a brief power point presentation together and ask for audience participation. Here’s hoping it goes off well, or that I can at least take up my 15 minutes.
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I sent a few more submissions out this week, but my eight week class is coming to a close, so the next week is going to be a bit chaotic. Thankfully, once that class is over, my schedule improves significantly.

We’re conducting the inspection on the house we’re looking to purchase today, so here’s hoping that goes smoothly. This whole process has been a bit of a roller coaster, and I will continue to keep quiet about it (blogwise) until we close on October 30th.
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Autumn

The music of the autumn wind sings low,
Down by the ruins of the painted hills,
Where death lies flaming with a marvellous glow,
Upon the ash of rose and daffodils.
But I can find no melancholoy here
To see the naked rocks and thinning trees;
Earth strips to grapple with the winter year—
I see her gnarled hills plan for victories!

I love the earth who goes to battle now,
To struggle with the wintry whipping storm
ANd brings the glorious spring out from the night,
I see earth’s muscles bared, her battle brow,
And am not sad, but feel her marvelous charm
As splendidly she plunges in the fight.

Edwin Curran

The Sirens

I never knew the road
From which the whole earth didn’t call away,
With wild birds rounding the hill crowns,
Haling out of the heart and old dismay,
Or the shore somewhere pounding its slow code,
Or low-lighted towns
Seeming to tell me, stay.

Lands I have never seen
And shall not see, loves I will not forget,
All I have missed, or slighted, or foregone
Call to me now. And weaken me. And yet
I would not walk a road without a scene.
I listen going on,
The richer for regret.

Richard Wilbur

Saturday Musings

Butternut squash from our CSA.


Acorn squash from our CSA.


Fall flowers.

Swedish apple pie. The recipe was my aunts’ and it is delicious.

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Last night we went to the Indie Handicraft Exchange at the Harrison Arts Center. There are booths for local vendors to display and sell their crafts. There are also a lot of studios where local artists have their original artwork for sale and display.


We purchased three different items. Pictures are listed below.

Fun pushpins for my office by Becca White.

This beautiful journal is made by Binding Bee.

This little pillow is made by Bebito.

We also entered a raffle and won this cool, modern clock.

This clock is by Uncommon.

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The second reading in our speaker series at school is taking place today. Today’s program features South Carolina Poet Laureate Marjory Wentworth. Here is a poem of hers that appeared in Nimrod.

Nocturne 2006

1
Owls call from the hollows.
This is the sound of the moon.
Light shattering like glass
across the night. Sky
filled with ghosts. They have
traveled far. This room holds
their voices like a box
of cracked bones. I remember
how to write my name
in a swirl of Arabic.
It is a secret. Sound,
like the sound of my name
in the halls where I walked
through moonlight, stepping
over soldiers facing Mecca.
The faces of the tortured are
familiar. Beneath hoods, a voice
I recognize. A muscled thigh, feet
in shackles, buttocks and kneecaps.
Skin smelling of sweat and urine.

2.
A man is named for a prophet.
He calls for him in the darkness.
Naked and cold in a cage,
his middle name is God.

Majory Wentworth

Thursday (A Precious 30 minutes to Update…) Musings






These are photos from Eagle Creek Park and Anderson Orchard. We went to both places last weekend and it was great. I love fall.

This week is proving to be just as busy as last week. I’m sure there is something I’m supposed to be doing right now besides updating my blog, but I think my brain is starting to give in to all the information I’m trying to cram in to it.

Here are a few poems that are collecting dust on my desk:

Wild Peaches

When the world turns completely upside down
You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore
Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore;
We’ll live among the wild peach trees, miles from town.
You’ll never wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown
Homespun, dyed butternut’s dark gold color.
Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,
We’ll swim in milk and honey till we drown.

The winter will be short, the summer long,
The autumn amber hued, sunny and hot,
Tasting of cider and scuppernog;
All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all.

Elinor Wylie

Devotion: Hawk

I know spring by the hawk pinning down songbirds
in my neighbor’s yard,
the little Ophelias crying in their blown-away silks
that the sky
has lied, a hedge has lied.
Then the pool
of chaos — the hawk in clench and drill and
thresh.
How quickly the song goes out of them. The
aftermath, soft,
circular. A labyrinth in ruins
I let the wind blow through
for days.
And then the rain, its soaking drench. Sun.
On the back porch slab the arterial runs of worms
dried
to a beaten silver even the stars might envy.
The trails a Silk Road crawled
body and spice
to the far cities, moist domains. And so now I stand
and the moon hangs as bold
as talon.
The black teeth whisper — narrow seeds — as the column
fills. The dead are not my worry,
slave to song.
Finch: come back. Cardinal, wren.
That one bird on that one branch
like Coltrane
on a cylinder of smack.
From high in the stacks of the power plant
where it nests,
the hawk banks
the pollen-heroined air of the neighborhood, sifts for
sparrow, muscle and throat.
Dennis Hinrichsen

Tuesday (Autumnal Equinox) Musings

According to the calendar, this morning marks the end of summer. I wrote a poem this morning that’s tentatively titled “Autumnal Equinox,” so it seems appropriate to send summer on its way. Fall is my favorite season and I’m always glad when the air cools and I start seeing apples and pumpkins popping up all over the place.

Fall in Connecticut

Leaves fall from the trees
but words multiply on people.
Small red fruits prepare
to stay under the snow and stay red.
The wild games of children
have been domesticated.
On the wall, pictures of winners and losers,
you can’t tell them apart.
They rhythmical strokes of the swimmers
have gone back into the stopwatches.
On the deserted shore, folded beach chairs
chained to each other, the slaves of summer.
The suntanned lifeguard will grow pale inside his house
like a prophet of wrath in peacetime.

Yehuda Amichai

Sunday Musings








Yesterday was Greekfest at Holy Trinity Greek Church and it was awesome. I would also like to note that these pictures were taken with the camera on my Blackberry, which isn’t too bad considering it’s a phone.
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I received another positive rejection from Boulevard today, so I’ll be sending to them again when their reading period starts up in October. The goal is finish up submission packets Tuesday morning and get those in the mail for round one.

We also went to the library book sale this afternoon. It was excellent although I’d like to go Saturday next time, so it isn’t so picked over. I picked up a Best American Short Stories 2006 and Spoon River Anthology. I also picked up a horror collection (in honor of Halloween coming up.) I love B horror movies and zombies and all that good stuff, so that was my “fun” purchase.

Thursday (Zora) Musings

I wrote a poem about Zora Neal Hurston this morning. Their Eyes Were Watching God is one of my favorite books of all time, and while I was on vacation, I picked up a few postcards of author’s I liked from this little bookstore in Manteo. This is one of the first of my “writing” mornings where I did not come to school with an idea for a poem already in mind, so I was looking around my office and I started thinking about Ms. Hurtson and her book and there was my poem.

Our new dean came into my office a few weeks ago and remarked over the picture of Hurston on my wall. She and I had a brief conversation about the famous scene (recreated below) and how students often missed the obvious sexual implications:

She stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of visiting bees, the gold of the sun amd the panting break of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the rtee from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid.

It is beautiful writing and the book is full of moments like this.
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I am taking six students to Stratford Ontario (along with another staff member) for the Shakespeare Festival. We’re leaving October 23rd and returning October 25th. The interest in the trip is tremendous so far, and I’m looking forward to experiencing this great opportunity with some of our students. Therefore it seems appropriate that this sonnet came across my path the other day:

Sonnet 15

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful time;
But you sha;; shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
No Mars his sword not war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
‘Gainst death and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

William Shakespeare

Tuesday (Perfect those Poems. It’s Submission Time…) Musings

And so it begins. The fall semester is in full swing and because I have yet to be completely buried by grading, I’m getting round one of the fall poetry submissions underway. This morning I updated my handy little spread sheet. Yes, it is color coded. Yes, I am slightly anal retentive. Yes, I have an irrational fear of accidentally offending some poetry editor somewhere if I do not keep vigil over my submissions. Yes, I know that despite all this prep, I will be politely rejected. A lot.

Fun, isn’t it?

There are a handful of places that encouraged me to send to them again, so I started with those then moved on to recommendations from fellow poets and mentors. The first round includes 22 journals, only three of which use electronic submission manager type software. I know that electronic journals are growing in popularity, but it appears that snail mail is holding on strong. I’m partial to it myself. I have no rational reason for feeling that way though.

Friday (If I Could Meet Miss. Bishop…) Musings

Those of you who keep up with daily publications better than I do already know that the July/August issue of Poetry included a “Poets We’ve Known” section at the end of the magazine. I really enjoyed reading about Robert Creely, John Ashberry, and Miroslav through the stories of their friends. My favorite of course was Katha Pollitt’s reminisces of Elizabeth Bishop. It is foolish for me to say this, but I’m going to anyway, I think we could have been friends. This little glance into Bishop’s life made me admire her even more, especially when Pollitt talks about her as teacher and compares her to Bernard Malamud, who was at Harvard at the same time:

“…he saw himself, I think, as I kind of talent scout from God. Maybe he was–but I had friends who took years to recover from one of his verdicts. Bishop had the opposite approach: she seemed to enjoy teaching, and was clearly amused by her students, a typical combination of the bow tied and tie-dyed–young fogies and hippies–but I don’t think it was a calling, part of her identity. She wasn’t concerned to make final judgments or peer into our depths.”

I like this because I feel much the same about my students. While I do think that teaching is a large part of my identity, I’m not really interested in judging my students. This could be because I teach a lot of introductory level courses, but destroying their will to write isn’t what I signed up for.

But Pollitt’s account also makes me envious and I agree when she calls herself foolish for not accepting Bishop’s invitation for a visit to New Haven. While many critics have accused Bishop’s poetry of being cold and detached at times, Pollitt’s story shows just how much she was willing to extend to her students. As Pollitt mentions in the opening, she was one of the few professors who took a class to her home.
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This is a neat article about incorporating flowers into cocktails. They’re very romantic and they look like something I could write a poem about. See pictures below: