October 27, 2010

God Map project for Theology 1. The quotes are sections of poems from Whitman, Thomas, Plath, Schultz, Ferlinghetti, Hopkins, Hass, and one or two others. All poetry that has affected the way I see God and myself.

August 13, 2010

Lawrence Ferlinghetti - A Coney Island of the Mind

Ferlinghetti was recommended to me by a friend and after reading a few of his poems, I wonder how I've never heard of him. Coney Island has been translated into several languages and sold over a million copies, which is unheard of for poets. Granted, it took 50 something years to pull it off, but it's still an accomplishment.

The book is split up into 3 sections, each quite different:

1. A Coney Island of the Mind. This is the one I'll talk about the most
2. Oral Messages. These are meant to spoken out loud and accompanied by jazz.
3. Poems from Pictures of the Gone World

In Coney Island, Ferlinghetti is at his best. It brims with a sexuality almost adolescent, undiscovered. His characters, never named, and barely described, are drawn to this vision of sex that is juvenile and full of wonder, but contained within: broken promises and unrelenting disappointment.

All of his poems have numbers, no titles, and 2 is significant for its description of Ferlinghetti's dystopic sexuality.

The poem takes place at the sea, with sailors bound for American shores in an ancient Athenian ship. They sail with purpose of destination, making for the promise of "demi-democracy," a play on words (frequent in this poem), probably referring to demi-god. They are beset with temptations and obstacles, as if they plow through a sea meant to obstruct their journey. Most tellingly, they pass near "patriotic maidens" who "ran along the shores/wailing after us/and while we lashed ourselves to masts/and stopt our ears with chewing gum."

If you ever read the Odyssey, you'll remember that Odysseus passes within sight of the island of the Sirens and commands his men to lash him to the mast while they stop up their ears and ignore his cries for release. If heard, the Siren song is irresistible and it lures men to seek them, driving their ships on the rocks and drowning. Odysseus, while lashed to his mast, cries desperately to be released so he may go to them, but his sailors don't hear him or the Siren's song and sail on, avoiding destruction.

What you see in this poem is the clash of the ancient and modern world, the old and the young. There is chaos to it. Cows are flying through the air "chanting Athenian anthems," discus throwers are reading Walden and "heliocopters from Helios" are "dropping free railway tickets." Random stuff. But sailing through it all, this ship bears on, reaching American shores where they "looked at each other/with a mild surprise/silent upon a peak/in Darien." Darien, I believe, refers to an affluent town in Connecticut, close to New York. Otherwise, I don't know the significance of it.

The end of the poem is quite anti climatic. "Mild surprise" and silence are hardly the reactions you would expect from sailors who have labored to reach these shores. The poem builds in intensity, rising in pitch but it drops suddenly, chopping the emotion away like suddenly waking from a dream. What is even more curious is Darien has no mountains. The elevation is nearly sea level. Ferlinghetti, intentionally or not, has drawn a perfect picture of the sexuality he describes, even, laments.

In many of the poems in Coney Island, sexuality is coupled with loss, sadness and even devastation. The end of 24 says, "still we laugh/and still we run/and still we throw ourselves/upon love's boats/but it is deeper/and much later/than we think/and all goes down/and our lovebuoys fail us/And we drink and drown." For Ferlinghetti, sex leaves us only with a broken promise. What it promises, is hard to describe, yet we all know. Transcendence. Happiness. Love. If you remember your youth, you remember the wonder of the opposite sex, of their bodies, of the pleasure you could feel. In Coney Island, wonder is what draws us to sex, the rocks we dash our lives upon, our broken-hearted despair, the sea we drown in.

With these broken promises is a lost innocence. In 26, he describes a "sensual phosphorescence/my youth delighted in" but which is "like a land of dreams...thru which desire/looks and cries." Ferlinghetti longs for a return to the sexual wonder of his youth, yet describes sex as an ultimately depressing pursuit. But still, against all reason, he longs and returns to the rocks.

After reading Coney Island I felt both a sadness and a certainty that Ferlinghetti speaks the truth. We have lost more than our innocence, but also our hope. We never long for sex alone. It represents more than the longing of our bodies but the longing of our souls to connect and love and hold. Sex fails us as certainly as we seek to have it.

What makes Ferlinghetti's poetry so beautiful is his honesty. In the Odyssey, the Siren's appealed not to Odysseus' physical longing, but his longing for truth. They sing to him,

"Come hither, as thou farest, renowned Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans; stay thy ship that thou mayest listen to the voice of us two. For never yet has any man rowed past this isle in his black ship until he has heard the sweet voice from our lips. Nay, he has joy of it, and goes his way a wiser man."

Ferlinghetti's poetry becomes its own island of the Sirens, the Coney Island of the Mind, calling us to the rocks, where we wreck our ship upon the rocks, "drink and drown."

August 5, 2010

15

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet is like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of day
performing entrechats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be

For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap

And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence

- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Rae Armantrout's Versed reminds me more of Pascal's Pensees then it does any poetry I know (of course, there are so many different types of poetry, who is to say what is and isn't?). Her poetry is punctuated by endings and beginnings. Pauses in the actual framework. They are sharp intercisions into the poem, chopping it up into bits, making it both devourable and tough. Some pieces I understand, some I don't. The ones I do sometimes feel connected to the rest, but rather they often feel more like a puzzle. Figuring out one piece does not make the poem understood as a whole.

It is not that Armantrout's poetry is bad, rather it seems academic, like Derrida's philosophy or Freud's psychology. I wonder if it is meant for me.

This causes me to linger between irritation and intrigue. I'm drawn in by the puzzle, by the need to struggle out the meaning. But I'm also repulsed by the incoherence. The rambling memories and thoughts, the lack of a true center from which the poem orients itself.

The problem is I'm not getting a whole poem to relate to. I'm getting pieces, and maybe that is the poem, the pieces, but it makes for a disconcerting, almost anxiety-induced read. I check the poems I like almost half heartedly, uncertain whether I like them or just part of them. And then often the ones I like I have no explanation for why. I am picking and choosing what I keep and reject but what makes that choosing hard is the lack of a coherent poem to choose. I want something packaged and whole and Armantrout offers nothing of the kind. And when I am both drawn in and repulsed, it messes with my interior world. Armantrout says it well in Help:

A space
"inside"

can't bear
to be un-

interrupted

I mark it:

"I" "I" "I"

You can see Armantrout's poetry is disconcerting in its structure and words. Even the break between "un-" and "interrupted" is meant to be daunting.

The disconcerting nature of Armantrout's poetry is not only what it produces, but what it reveals. It doesn't create incoherence as much as it reveals it.

Armantrout's poetry is as fragmented as we are. And when I read it, my true state surfaces. It is similar to sitting quietly in a chair and not doing, saying or thinking anything. I dare you to try it. Within 5 minutes you will be uncomfortable. Within 10, anxiety or depression or anger may surface and you will want something to do. I can barely make it to 15.

When I push away all the activity and business that keeps my mind occupied, I find myself alarmingly unstable. I am not as whole as I thought. Armantrout calls this "space 'inside:'"

"I" "I" "I"

There isn't one "I," there are several. Maybe these represent the id, ego and superego. Whatever they are, they are fragmented and divided. Like her poetry. Like myself.

What is disconcerting about her poetry is what is disconcerting about myself. Not at all the parts work together, not all the parts make sense. I've discovered this in therapy, in practicum at Mars Hill, in silence, in poetry, in reflection.... I am not whole. There isn't a well put together anything. The question for me is then, What do I do with what I discover?

As I was reading Armantrout's poetry I realized I was rejecting and accepting poems similar to the way I reject and accept myself. I throw out the unpleasant parts and leave what is best and presentable. But what I am really left with is even more fragmented than before. Because just as Armantrout's poetry is incomplete without the breaks, pauses, and confusion, so am I without my own.

It would be nice if life were like Walt Whitman's Song of Myself, but it is more like the chaos and disconnect of Versed, where Armantrout's poetry lacks a center to revolve around as we are eternally searching for one in ourselves.

July 16, 2010

My Dog

His large black body lies on his bed across the room,
under the French doors, where he used to sleep, watching me.
The vet said to cover him with a blanket, but I can't.

Two hours ago he moaned loudly and let go of his life.
My wife dreamed of his death in Paris but didn't tell me.
I drove home from the airport imagining him at the door,

tail wagging. He introduced me to my wife in a dog run,
stood proudly beside me at our wedding, handsome
in a red bow tie. He faced wherever I was, sat staring out

the window if I was away. If you haven't loved a dog
you'll find it hard to believe he knew it was time to die
but wanted to wait two weeks for me to come home.

I'll spread his ashes at the beach where we walked nearly
every day for twelve years, this gentle creature following me
the mile and a half to the breakers and then back to our car.

Philip Schultz


A sad, but beautiful poem.

July 8, 2010

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

- T.S. Eliot

June 7, 2010

Thoughts on poetry.

I've loved poetry since discovering Walt Whitman freshman year of my undergrad. Since then, I've branched out a bit and have slowly made my way into more modern works.

My favorite poets are all dead. Walt Whitman died in 1892, Gerard Manley Hopkins died a few years before, Dylan Thomas in 1953, and Sylvia Plath ten years later.

But I decided to try out some poetry from people who are still alive. I figure the best place to start is with the Pulitzer Prize winners.

One of my goals for this year is to have read (or at least bought) all of the last ten years of Pulitzer Prize winners for poetry. And fiction, too, of which I have already read two: the 2000 and 2008 winners.

Last week I bought the 2010 Poetry winner from Powell's in Portland: Versed by Rae Armantrout. I haven't read much of Versed yet but what I have glanced through is exceedingly weird and sporadic.

One of the blurbs for Versed says her poetry is "like a string of prize chess moves..." and is a "poetics that not only centres its position in its uncertainty but insists that uncertainty remain at the centre of any position."

Earlier this year I picked up my first book of essays from Wendell Berry, titled Standing by Words. He has a more traditional view of poetry, one which I think Armantrout's eschews. Berry believes poetry should flow around a narrative but another blurb for Versed says Armantrout "has always aimed at knowing life by isolating it from narrative." For Berry, this makes poetry personal and musing but the musing doesn't touch on the deeper things of the soul or the philosophies of life. According to him, poetry is about truth. And he isn't talking about truth as a rigid, "This is right. This is wrong" sort of category, but rather the truth that revolves around a story. It's personal but explores what binds us all together. Of the virtues and ethics of a life lived well.

I think Berry would say poetry that centers itself in uncertainty cannot show us truth, which defeats its central purpose. He isn't saying poetry that explores the personal is useless (it can be very useful for the person who composes it) but rather that it can teach us little or nothing.

Whitman's poetry nearly always has a character, a flow, a connection from one life to the next. His 60 page poem, Song of Myself, is in many places pages and pages of descriptions of the people he meets and what it reveals about his identity and the world he enters.

The 2009 winner for poetry was W.S. Merwin's The Shadow of Sirius. It too is more modern than Whitman or Thomas, but has an energy in the words that stretch and bend and reach for truth and revelation. He is seeking, not merely brooding. This seems to be the difference between Armantrout and Merwin so far.

But something else Berry believes is that real poetry isn't easy reading.

Whitman has a simplicity to his words that lays lightly over the thick reality of love, sexuality and identity. Merwin uses words like "light" and "dark" to explore memories and what they say about death and eternity. Thomas creates puzzles, using words like "worm" and "maggot" to explore the themes of time, death, resurrection and purpose. All of these are complex, demanding you to sit quietly and take a closer look.

Armantrout's poetry, while erratic, probably has a purpose to it, if I will sit quietly and let it speak to me, I may discover what it is.

Berry has a fantastic quote here that depicts well why I love poetry:

"There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought." This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings."

Poetry is work, in a way a novel can never be. I wonder if where it blocks it does not also invite? Extending an invitation to life and uncertainty and as Berry calls it, our own "real work."

May 10, 2010

Note

Remember how the naked soul
comes to language and at once knows
loss and distance and believing

then for a time it will not run
with its old freedom
like a light innocent of measure
but will hearken to how
one story becomes another
and will try to tell where
they have emerged from
and where they are heading
as though they were its own legend
running before the words and beyond them
naked and never looking back

through the noise of questions

-W.S. Merwin

A poem from his collection, The Shadow of Sirius, which won a Pulitzer.

April 12, 2010

"One of the uses of poetry is to reveal and articulate and make and preserve the necessary connections between the domestic and the wild. It is one of the ways we may, with hope of return, get out of our minds (our own and other people's) into the world of creatures, forms and powers that we did not make."

- Wendell Berry in Poetry and Place, an essay from Standing By Words, page 193.

March 25, 2010

Weave in, My Hardy Life

Weave in, weave in, my hardy life,
Weave yet a soldier strong and full for great campaigns to
come,
Weave in red blood, weave sinews in like ropes, the senses,
sight weave in,
Weave lasting sure, weave day and night the weft, the warp,
incessant weave, tire not,
(We know not what the use O life, nor know the aim, the
end, nor really aught we know,
But know the work, the need goes on and shall go on, the
death-envelop'd march of peace as well as war goes on,)
For great campaigns of peace the same the wiry threads to
weave,
We know not why or what, yet weave, forever weave.

Walt Whitman

March 24, 2010

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Nov 7, 2009

I have too many books. Looking at the list of books read, I realized I am partway through half as many. I pick up and read 50 or 60 pages into a book then set it down for another. I'm more in love with the idea of books than I am with books themselves.

I found this 1960s edition of an Iris Murdoch book, The Nice and the Good. One of my friends back home loves Murdoch. His ambition is to read all of her books and he's invited me to read a few too.

When I first bought it, along with 2 other books, I restlessly picked up one after the other, flipping through pages, looking at the covers, and enjoying the smell of an old book.

In my messenger bag I always carry a copy of Dylan Thomas' Selected Poems, with Whitman poems printed on computer paper for a thick bookmark. When I read poetry its usually at home so I rarely ever bring it out in public, but its a comfort to know its there.

This morning I am thinking of all the books I want to read. There is a series called The Church and Postmodern Culture that has two new additions; The Book Thief by Markus Zusak; The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon; Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad; Rome and Jerusalem by Martin Goodman; The new Donald Miller book....something from David Sedaris...

Every so often I get like this. Where it becomes impossible to read and all I can do is pick up books and flip through pages. I am so excited for the possibility of reading, it makes reading itself impossible.

I will never be able to read every book I desire. There are too many even now and more are being written. But I love books. The way they smell and feel, page after turned page. Amazon's electronic book, Kindle, holds absolutely no appeal to me. Books aren't for consuming information but consuming stories and the life inside them...

Every book I read makes me a better man.

August 28, 2009

I've been looking for a local coffee shop this last week. I still have a few more to check out, but Green Bean has been my favorite so far. Some Mars Hill students host a poetry slam there occasionally on Saturday nights called FreeForm (I think).












In our search of the local thrift stores for furniture, I found a panther. It's a dark hue of goldish...something, with the cat crouched menacingly on a fake rock. The elbows (?) of the cats legs are meant to hold a square of glass for a table but the glass didn't come with it. Cost me ten bucks. And now it is the first thing you see when you walk into our house.

We wondered what to call it at first. Cheetah, Cougar, Lion, etc. Cougar sounded too much like a woman thing so we settled on Panther. Johnny got some keys made for our house with a panther on them and a swirl of red fire around his black body.

Skip ahead to August 29th...

We (me, Dan and Johnny) just returned from FreeForm. We walked into the small, crowded coffee shop and sat in the front row, the last available seats. People came up to read poetry, sing a song or tap dance. Mostly they read poetry. And mostly it was good. Like, some of it was really good. Publishable.

One student from Louisiana read a poem about her study abroad program. It was about Spain, the culture and loneliness. Another guy read several poems, almost plainly but with meaning. One guy in a "To Write Love on Her Arms" t-shirt played a banjo and sang about God and home.

The main "act", I guess, was Sara...something. Last name sounds like sassafras. She read 4 or 5 poems of her own, two with math in them. She reminded me of my mom. Shortish, hair cut to the length of her neck, in dark colored clothing. Confident air of success about her. And aggressive.

Partway through her reading, she asked if everyone was ok to go on.

"You guys ready to go on?"

I, sitting in the front row, shrugged my shoulders and said, "Meh."

Her eyes dropped like an elevator and stared at me. "What the fuck?"

I laughed quietly (and a bit awkwardly).

"This guy in the front row just shrugged his shoulders and said 'meh'," she announced.

I could hear laughter in the crowd and feel my face getting red but I wasn't very embarrassed. I kept thinking of my mom and how she can be aggressive sometimes but I love her for it anyway cause its part of her personality.

The red rose in my cheeks and I could see her eyes. Noticing it.

"Now his cheeks are getting red."

I raised my hands in the air in a gesture of defeat. "I am sufficiently embarrassed," I admitted, laughing. She continued to read the rest of her poems, watching me from time to time.

One of the last read two poems about the earth and Michael Jackson. She looked like a tomboy. Recognizably a girl, but hair either cut short or hidden in the top of her hat and long black polo.

"My first poem will be read in the voice of the earth." She threw up her hands. "Because she's tired of our shit."

I nearly lost it. I couldn't BELIEVE she was reading a poem in the "voice of the earth". She had good things to say, I'm sure but it felt forced. A bunch of hyper-environmental agenda stuff.

The last she read was about Michael Jackson. A couple people kept calling out, "Michael Jackson!" and I didn't know what they were talking about until she stood to read the poem. Again, forced. Something about his childhood and how we didn't understand him. Yeah...

Quite a day. I'll post pictures of the house soon. Especially the panther.

June 6, 2009

Roman Poets

I read of the Romans

and their world felt dark.

The cruelest ruled.

Poets lived under protection

   of kings, lords, and monasteries.

No warriors there.

Our world, lit by bulbs

and drawn forward by

   achievement, science and psychology

      is no less dark and perhaps more.

Poetry (of the right kind),

its own cruelty.

And war in our hearts,

instead of our hands.

Our world suffers.

We have too few poets,

and we miss

the cleanse of war. 

Barry Westbrook

May 9, 2009

Excerpts from Song of the Open Road

AFOOT and light-hearted I take to the open road, 
Healthy, free, the world before me, 
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune, 
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, 
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms, 
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient, 
I do not want the constellations any nearer, 
I know they are very well where they are, 
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens, 
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever 
I go, 
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them, 
I am fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.)

......

You air that serves me with breath to speak! 
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them 
shape! 
You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers! 
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides! 
I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to 
me.

.......

The earth expanding right hand and left hand, 
The picture alive, every part in its best light, 
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is 
not wanted, 
The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of 
the road.

O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me? 
Do you say Venture not-if you leave me you are lost? 
Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied, 
adhere to me?

O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love 
you, 
You express me better than I can express myself, 
You shall be more to me than my poem.

I think heroic deeds were all conceiv'd in the open air, and all 
free poems also, 
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles, 
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever 
beholds me shall like me, 
I think whoever I see must be happy.

From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, 
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute, 
Listening to others, considering well what they say, 
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, 
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that 
would hold me.

I inhale great draughts of space, 
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are 
mine.

I am larger, better than I thought, 
I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me, 
can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me 
I would do the same to you, 
I will recruit for myself and you as I go, 
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go, 
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them, 
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me, 
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.

.......

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons, 
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

.......

Now I re-examine philosophies and religions, 
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the 
spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.

Here is realization, 
Here is a man tallied-he realizes here what he has in him, 
The past, the future, majesty, love-if they are vacant of you, you 
are vacant of them.

Only the kernel of every object nourishes; 
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me? 
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?

.......

Allons! whoever you are come travel with me! 
Traveling with me you find what never tires.

The earth never tires, 
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude 
and incomprehensible at first, 
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd, 
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can 
tell.

.......

To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for 
traveling souls.

All parts away for the progress of souls, 
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments-all that was or is 
apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and 
corners before the procession of souls along the grand roads 
of the universe.

Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads 
of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and 
sustenance.

Forever alive, forever forward, 
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, 
dissatisfied, 
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men, 
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go, 
But I know that they go toward the best - toward something great.

Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth! 
You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though 
you built it, or though it has been built for you.

Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen! 
It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it

.......

Allons! through struggles and wars! 
The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.

Have the past struggles succeeded? 
What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature? 
Now understand me well - it is provided in the essence of things that 
from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth 
something to make a greater struggle necessary.

My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion, 
He going with me must go well arm'd, 
He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies, 
desertions.

15 
Allons! the road is before us! 
It is safe - I have tried it - my own feet have tried it well - be not 
detain'd! 
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the 
shelf unopen'd! 
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn'd! 
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher! 
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the 
court, and the judge expound the law.

Comrade, I give you my hand! 
I give you my love more precious than money, 
I give you myself before preaching or law; 
Will you give me yourself. will you come travel with me? 
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

Walt Whitman

May 3, 2009

The Sweltering

I'm exhausted from questions
I'm tired of talk

I miss how I felt when I was a kid
The world, and myself, were accepted
and watched through simple eyes
I wasn't afraid of people
or the future
I wasn't ashamed

I miss innocence and simple thoughts
I didn't wonder about money
or health
or love
or hope
I lived

I wonder, always wondering
Always questioning
will there be war?
will the economy recover?
what will happen to the environment?

will I have a wife and family?
am I a good man?
will I make a difference?

I miss when I didn't have so many questions
Too many, with too few answers,
and hope will falter
left with only anger
like pounding against concrete walls


My amateur attempt at poetry.

Note: I'm not being emo. I hate emo kids. I just think questions can carry a heavy weight at times.

April 23, 2009

What is prayer...

Tears are prayer
Pain is prayer
Laughter is prayer
Love is prayer
Hugs are prayer
Kisses are prayer
Smiles are prayer

I make the mistake of thinking prayer is only that time I make requests but it isn't. Romans 8:26 says there are prayers which aren't utterable words but "groanings". The spirit intercedes through these groanings. We groan when we feel pain or loss but we also groan when we feel beauty and pleasure, like when you eat a delicious steak and your eyes roll up into your head and you mutter things.

I see prayer as poetry. A way of expressing beauty in our world. When I eat that delicious steak, I may not have words for how tender and juicy it is but you can tell what I'm feeling by the ecstasy on my face.

There is a mission statement posted on my wall and I recently shortened it to something more manageable than a paragraph. It is simply this:

See life as poetry

I believe if I see myself and the world around me as a poem God is composing, I will be filled with the same hope, beauty and transcendence I feel when I read Whitman or Thomas. For me, prayer is a part of that poetry...maybe even is the poetry itself.

In the statements at the top, replace "prayer" with "poetry". It translates because each are speaking of a beauty within and beyond our world.

How do you see life?

What are other ways we pray?

April 19, 2009

Excerpt from Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

A word then, (for I will conquer it)
The word final, superior to all,
Subtle, sent up - what is it? - I listen;
Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you
sea-waves?
Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands?

Whereto answering, the sea,
Delaying not, hurrying not,
Whisper'd me through the night, and very plainly before
daybreak,
Lisp'd to me the low and delicious word death,
And again death, death, death, death,
Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my
arous'd child's heart,
But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet,
Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly
all over,
Death, death, death, death, death.

Which I do not forget,
But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother,
That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok's gray
beach,
With the thousand responsive songs at random,
My own songs awaked from that hour,
And with them the key, the word up from the waves,
The word of the sweetest song and all songs,
That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet,
(Or like some old crone rocking the cradle, swathed in sweet
garments, bending aside)
The sea whisper'd me.

- Walt Whitman

Absolutely beautiful poetry. Couldn't ask for anything better at the moment

April 16, 2009

Happiness.

I have two images when I think of happiness:

Starbucks: drinking coffee, listening to quiet music (Jon Foreman, Andrew Bird, Hans Zimmer, Sigur Ros) and reading poetry from Dylan Thomas or Walt Whitman. Perhaps studying theology or philosophy.

Backpacking: on the trail, sun shining, resting with my back to a rock, looking to the sky and enjoying the absence of artificial noise. Just me, God and solitude.

For the few of you who read my blog: what do you think of when you think of happiness?

April 12, 2009

Thinking of Easter today I , of course, remember the resurrection of Christ. But I also remember resurrection as the seal of the promise of Christ for us to be resurrected too.

I read Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright recently and he talked about this future resurrection of our bodies. The book really did open my eyes to hope. The title wasn't misleading. Wright wrote in his book that this future hope is our present hope. Because as God will remake us, he will remake heaven and earth, bringing us a New Jerusalem. What shook me about Wright's book is his belief all we do now is not wasted. Every tiny gift, every single act of kindness we will see again. God builds it into this future kingdom.

There are a few verses about us reigning with God, being co-rulers in the new world God will make. Is now making. To learn that everything I do is important to the work now and later has filled my mind with wonder and hope.

I thought of it this morning reading at Starbucks. I read Walt Whitman's poem I Dreamed in a Dream, which compares to Revelation 21's prophecy of the New Jerusalem. I also read Dylan Thomas' poem I Dreamed My Genesis, which is all about this future resurrection. I'll include here the last two stanzas of that work:

And power was contagious in my birth, second
Rise of the skeleton and
Rerobing of the naked ghost. Manhood
Spat up from the resuffered pain.

I dreamed my genesis in sweat of death, fallen
Twice in the feeding sea, grown
Stale of Adam's brine, until vision
Of new man strength, I seek the sun.

Easter is a reminder of the promise and a renewal of hope. Not the sort of hope you wait for, but the active inspiration of God. The energetic response to his call.