Tuesday Poem | The Peninsula by Seamus Heaney

  

Images captured this weekend whilst driving out on our peninsula. No explanation needed re; why I felt prompted to post Seamus Heaney's poem again. . .  

              The Peninsula

               When you have nothing more to say, just drive
               For a day all around the peninsula.
               The sky is tall as over a runway,
               The land without marks, so you will not arrive

               But pass through, though always skirting landfall.
               At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill,
               The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable
               And you're in the dark again. Now recall

               The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log.
               That rock where breakers shredded into rags,
               The leggy birds stilted on their own legs,
               Islands riding themselves out into the fog.

               And drive back home, still with nothing to say
               Except that now you will uncode all landscapes
               By this: things founded clean on their own shapes,
               Water and ground in their extremity. 


               Seamus Heaney 
                      from his collection Door Into The Dark

This week's editor on the Tuesday Poem hub is TP curator, Mary McCallum 

with Digging in the garden after dark (written - it just so happens - for the late and much loved Seamus Heaney)

by Pat White

                              this morning the blade bites clean

                              through soil turning up, on the way
                              worms, spiders and a surfeit of others
                              at work in the everlasting dark

                              the news is it is your turn to spend
                              some time with them, nothing is ended
                              changing places perhaps, . . . 

For this and other Tuesday Poem offerings, please click on the quill.

Tuesday Poem | The World Below the Brine by Walt Whitman

                     The world below the brine, 
                     Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves, 
                     Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick 
                     tangle openings, and pink turf, 
                     Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the 
                     play of light through the water, 
                     Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes, 
                     and the aliment of the swimmers, 
                     Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling 
                     close to the bottom, The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting 
                     with his flukes, 
                     The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy 
                     sea-leopard, and the sting-ray, 
                     Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths, 
                     breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do, 
                     The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed 
                     by beings like us who walk this sphere, 
                     The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres. 

                     Walt Whitman (1819 - 1902) 

This week's editor on the Tuesday Poem hub is Lesotho-born, Paris-based poet Rethabile Masilo

with A Poem for the Innocents

by Geoffrey Philp 

                                                             "A killing moon peeks through leaves

                                                             of trumpet trees in full bloom

                                                             for Lent, their barks crisscrossed

                                                             by wild strokes of a machete

                                                             when my son tried to help me weed

                                                             our garden, overrun with dandelions. . . " 

To read on, please click on the quill. 

SYRIA

What can any one of us say re; the way things are unfolding in the Middle East right now? I have no words to articulate the shock and sorrow I feel at President Obama's decision to intervene with a military strike against Syria. 

Before he left, Seamus Heaney gave us this poem 'The Cure at Troy'. 

_/\_

                               THE CURE AT TROY

                               Human beings suffer,
                               they torture one another,
                               they get hurt and get hard.
                               No poem or play or song
                               can fully right a wrong
                               inflicted or endured.

                               The innocent in gaols
                               beat on their bars together.
                               A hunger-striker's father
                               stands in the graveyard dumb.
                               The police widow in veils
                               faints at the funeral home.

                               History says, Don't hope
                               on this side of the grave.
                               But then, once in a lifetime
                               the longed for tidal wave
                               of justice can rise up,
                               and hope and history rhyme.

                               So hope for a great sea-change
                               on the far side of revenge.
                               Believe that a further shore
                               is reachable from here.
                               Believe in miracles
                               and cures and healing wells.

                               Call the miracle self-healing:
                               The utter self-revealing
                               double-take of feeling.
                               If there's fire on the mountain
                               Or lightning and storm
                               And a god speaks from the sky

                               That means someone is hearing
                               the outcry and the birth-cry
                               of new life at its term.

                               Seamus Heaney

This morning Planet Waves host Eric Francis posted the following article on his website - Eight Arguments Against Going to War in Syria by Stephen Zunes -

http://planetwaves.net/news/human-rights/seven-arguments-against-going-to-war-insyria/

TUESDAY POEM | Limits of Spectacle Lake by T. Clear

                        LIMITS OF SPECTACLE LAKE

                        — in memory, Walter James Clear, 1918–1966 

                               When the sun had slipped behind the hills
                               I said, let’s go back. Forget this business
                               of lures and lines and casting so far
                               the eye could hardly follow the thread
                               out to snag a rainbow’s lip. Afraid
                               we’d lose our way and soon our boat
                               would spin and sink. There we’d sit
                               eye to eye with a million fish.

                               When I was eight I caught my limit.
                               But not before my father turned the boat
                               to shore and let out one last line for luck.
                               I held that rod for all the hope left
                               reeling in the depths. I pulled
                               trout from tangled, churning light
                               slipping underhand.

                               I don’t know who was more the spectacle—
                               the lake, me, or my father guiding the pole
                               between my unbelieving hands. Somehow
                               he trusted in the end of all filtering light.
                               When he died the next winter,
                               I remembered six fish
                               laid out on a plank.

                               Eye to eye with the dead, in the wake
                               of the boat, I learned the limits,
                               the last ripple of life in a dying fish.

                               T.Clear

Somehow. . . 

I met T. Clear online some three or more years ago. 'T' stands for Therese; she prefers to be called 'T'. Last year we met - hooray - in person, in Seattle. I'd arrived at her Brandon Street home a little ahead of her and was waiting on the curb when she returned from her day's work at Melinda's glass studio. We took one glance at each other, laughed wholeheartedly and fell immediately into conversation - not a smidge of 'first-time-meeting' awkwardness. After dropping our various bits of paraphernalia inside the house we headed for the woods T so often writes about on her blog - http://premium-t.blogspot.co.nz/  (a place she seems to visit in all weathers and at any time of day or night!). I imagine by now she'd be capable of walking those forest tracks blind-folded, guided by the sound of her footfall on moss, lichen and tree root, the owls' call or the faint scuffle indicating the presence of eagles as they rummage in their ramshackle eyrie atop their chosen alder. A living-sculpture-of-a-tree in an unexpected clearing, this gnarly-barked giant is not only home to a pair of these majestic birds but also custodian to a diligently-tended, knot-shaped altar of unusual offerings. 

I'm sure I have several of you to thank for my online introduction to T (thank you!). Much-loved poets Theodore Roethke and Seamus Heaney surely had a part to play in our meeting, too. (She and I might have posted Roethke's 'Waking' on the same day/in the same week some years back? Who knows how these connections happen?)  

I dithered at length over which of T's fine poems to post here today. Initially I'd asked her if for permission to post Pond; it was all pretty much typed up and ready to go when the news came in that Seamus Heaney had passed away (oh, sorrowful day). Given the respect and tender regard both T and I have for Seamus Heaney and his work, I decided to hold Pond for another time and instead post Limit of Spectacle Lake. My sense is this would be her preferred poem for this week, too. (She is away at the moment so I'm acting on faith here). 

T - woman, artist, mother, friend, chef, musician, poet - has a rare and exceptional capacity for not shying away from the gritty, dazzling and oft-times shocking realities of life and death. I admire her greatly for this and, too, for the ways in which her poems engage fearlessly with Truth - her own and the collective's. Hers are tenacious poems, poems that ask questions, that mine, probe and penetrate with deep integrity; the same can be said of Seamus Heaney's work. There are times when, reading T's poems, I sense his presence in the room, too. 

Seamus Heaney is considered my many to be one of the great Fathers of Poetry. I commend T's homage to him and her late husband, Mark - Seamus Heaney on the Bathroom Wall - to you. You will notice that today's Limit of Spectacle Lake is dedicated to her late father, Walter James Clear - another reason why I chose this poem instead of Pond for today. 

A suite of six of T's poems were recently published online in the journal Cascadia Review - do visit this site to read them? Several of my favorites are there, including Abandoned Apple Orchard, Earthquake with Forty Pianos and Pond.   

. . . he trusted in the end of all filtering light - T. Clear 
(Photographs/paintings by CB) 

In closing (and by way of a bio) an excerpt from T's blog --- 

"Driving today, after work, in dimming light along Lake Washington, the blue bruised water ruckled-up in the wind, the maples and alders side of the road in every shade of red/orange/yellow.  A swathe of rainbow to the north, a concentrated lump of color sitting just at the horizon. The sky beyond: velvet charcoal.

I kept shouting:
"I live here!"

I've driven that stretch of road so many times, it's easy to take it for granted. Easy to admit to a certain ordinariness in what is never ordinary, never the same from day to day, from hour to hour.

Easy to dismiss the forward-thinking gods who delivered me back to this city that I love, and to whom I say:

thank-you
thank-you
thank-you"

* 

This week's editor on the Tuesday Poem hub is Helen McKinlay with the poem Matangi Tai - a powerful testament to a vulnerable man, sorely wronged - by Samoan-born poet, novelist and health activist, Sia Figiel -

                        ". . . P.S: Don't go inciting no violence now sis
                                I know you and that heart of yours
                                I can see your salt already boilin' girl
                                But eh, fink of da mens Martin Luther King Jr.
                                And Mahatma Ghandi
                                And taste me in your ocean girl. . . "



Over on the TP hub, Helen writes, "I am always looking for poetry which speaks of the indigenous origins of the poet. Poetry which springs from the poet’s deep love for their homeland; its culture, its beliefs and its values.  Poetry which sometimes bears the scars of conflict, but never bears a grudge…poetry which makes us laugh from the belly and cry from the heart. A few weeks back I found such a poem: Songs of the fat brown woman, and began a search for the poet. . . " 

To read Sia's poem for Matangi Tai and to learn more about her and her work, please click on the quill.  

(Formatting challenges with Blogger today!) 

TUESDAY POEM | Lighthouse & Freakish Hermit Poetry by Rebecca Loudon

Tom Beckett: What do you want from writing? What do you hope for (expect?) from a poem?

Rebecca Loudon: A map is the most basic thing I want and need from my writing. A map from yesterday to today. A map from 1968 to next week. I want a north arrow, a legend, degree tick marks, time zones, a legend, latitude and longitude lines, mountains with ridges I can trace with my fingers, blue rivers, street names, oceans and springs, lakes, Arctic definitions and national parks, highways marked in red, historical monuments and wildlife preserves, capes and points and peninsulas, fjords and inlets, archipelagos and live volcanoes, and an impossibility of folding the map back to its original configuration. And that is what I want from each poem, each story, each letter, each blog post that I write. I want a map so I can find my way back.*

Last week, doing my morning round on Facebook, I happened upon an irresistible invitation from Madame Rebecca Loudon (see above) and promptly sent off an email with a list of words in the subject line. Realising I'd more-or-less prescribed a poem to the poet (yikes!), I quickly sent off another e- replacing my ramble with one word. Lighthouse. 

Madame guarantees a one-day turnaround and - never mind the fact there are oceans and continents between us - a week later her poetry postcard arrived in my mailbox. Handwritten mail is a rare thing these days and there's something unfailingly thrilling about receiving a handmade posted object (a lighthouse!) and, too, in seeing a web-friend's handwriting for the first time. Rebecca's Lighthouse, complete with poem, musical penmanship (she's a professional violinist and poet) and four US poet stamps is a thing of rare loveliness. To top it all, it was delivered to me on my birthday - how brilliantly synchronised was that?! 

You, too, can be on the receiving end of one of these! Visit Rebecca's blog www.callingdrbombay.blogspot.com and look for the donate button on the right hand side of the page. She will write on any topic for any amount. (Either private message Rebecca through Facebook or leave a comment on her blog where you and she can exchange email addresses.). Put in a request for a poetry postcard for yourself or ask for one as a gift for a friend - they make a brilliant, surprising and totally original present. 

To learn a little more about Rebecca, her writing process and her poems, click on the links below. 

http://www.avatarreview.net/AV2/RebeccaLoudon.htm

http://www.notellbooks.org/individual_title.php?id=17_0_1_0_C

http://itsaboutimewriters.homestead.com/loudonrebecca.html

http://galatearesurrection13.blogspot.co.nz/2009/12/featured-poet-rebecca-loudon.html

Rebecca Loudon 

I especially love this excerpt from a 2009 interview with Tom Beckett - 

". . . Poems begin for me from practice. When I am practicing my violin, when I am practicing drawing, when I am practicing writing. I used to write every day in notebooks. Not just poems, but anything I thought of. Then I switched to my blog to continue my daily writing practice. I believe that the mastery of any art comes from mastery of practice. It’s kind of weird. I don’t think many poets think in terms of daily practice. Maybe it’s from spending a lifetime as a musician. But we have these muscles, not even muscles—tissue, tissue memory. Practice strengthens that tissue memory. When I practice Bach every day then it’s my tissue memory that can perform Bach, not my fingers, not my brain. My brain just gets in the way of things, slows me down. It’s the same with writing. I’ve learned to have a notebook by my side pretty much all the time to jot down ideas. This is practice. This and reading.

When I rehearse, I write during rehearsal breaks. Pages and pages of fast unreadable penmanship inside my cheap notebooks. Poetry begins for me while I am reading. I am an unstoppable reader. I find poetry everywhere. In novels in cookbooks in roadmaps in billboard advertisements in history books on the back of cereal boxes. I jot ideas and words and whole lines and possible titles in my notebook. I let these simmer and later on I use these to form poems or discover that I have been slowly writing poems all along. . . " Rebecca Loudon 

(http://galatearesurrection13.blogspot.co.nz/2009/12/featured-poet-rebecca-loudon.html)

*

The interview I've quoted from here is without doubt one of two most eloquent, daring, transparent and brilliant interviews I've read in ages. The other is an interview with Melissa Green conducted by SusanT. Landry on her memoir site Run to the Roundhouse, Nellie. I guarantee you'll want to read each of these interviews several times over and, too, that you will want to go on to read Melissa's luminous memoir The Linen Way, published by Rosa Mira Books. 

*

This week's editor on the Tuesday Poem hub is Kathleen Jones

(Kathleen, Orchid and I met in Dunedin a couple of months ago!) with Marco Polo

by Ali Alizadeh

Please click on the quill!

TUESDAY POEM | The Dress by Martha Morseth

http://www.lizzyc.com.au/2009/09/its-all-in-the-details-the-wedding-dress-wedding-photographer-melbourne/

                                        THE DRESS

                                        You hear the door slam

                                        her car grumble away

                                        know she’ll be gone long enough

                                        to search through the shelves

                                        the box should still be there

                                        she’d never throw it away.

                                        Each year she holds the dress against her body

                                        asks, ‘Wasn’t I beautiful?’

                                        You and Isobel will say, ‘You still are, Mum,’

                                        as you watch her place her hope back in the cupboard.

                                        When you were younger

                                        Isobel was the princess-bride because she’s older

                                        you, a lady in waiting wrapped in a paisley shawl.

                                        You put your school papers aside

                                        listen for sounds of the car

                                        footsteps on the porch

                                        the house cathedral still

                                        Isobel at school

                                        on your desk the Lady of Shalott essay lies finished.

                                        You open the cupboard door as though

                                        an ancient squeak would matter

                                        place the box on your bed

                                        take off your sweater

                                        your jeans

                                        hold the brocade and pearls to your chest

                                        slide the weight over your head

                                        entwine desiccated white roses through your hair

                                        stand in front of the mirror

                                        know you are that lady

                                        seeing shadows of the world.

                                        You place the box back deep on its shelf

                                        as careful as those other times

                                        read your essay again, know it’s good

                                        hear your mother screech open the door

                                        call to you

                                        ‘Jonah, I’m home.’

                                        Martha Morseth

A few words on The Dress from Martha: "Because inspiration comes hard these days, a friend occasionally sends me a word to ignite the muse. When she suggested 'dress', I thought first of types---romantic black, religious grey, etc---and ended up remembering my old wedding dress my daughters and their friends used for play. The material was a light-weight cream brocade which led me to imagine a richer and heavier fabric of pearls and lace of earlier times that characters like the Lady of Shalott may have worn. The rest, the setting and drama, developed from that image."

Martha has a way of approaching serious, uncomfortable subjects from a wholly original vantage point, combining clarity and insight with acerbic humour and compassion. She can be sharp-tongued without showing the faintest hint of malice or unkindness.   

Born in the United States, Martha immigrated to Dunedin in 1972. She taught high school English until 1999. Her poems and stories have been published in literary and popular magazines and anthologies.  Her first collection of poems, Staying Inside the Lines, was released in 2002. Together with four other poets - Kay Mackenzie-Cooke, Jenny Powell, Sue Wootton and moi - Martha founded the Dunedin open mic series, Upfront, spotlighting women poets. Pearson has published three of her books for teenagers, two of which are short story collections - Yeah! and EDGE/a cut of unreal; and a book of one-act plays - Let’s Hear it for the Winner! Three of her one-act plays were produced for Otago University’s 2003 Gay Pride week, and a full-length play, The Trials and Tribulations of Emily, based on New Zealand’s first woman doctor, was produced in 2007. Two of her stories have been on Radio New Zealand. She has had poems published in anthologies, literary and popular journals including The Listener, Landfall, Sport, Takahe, JAAM, Poetry New Zealand, and in on-line journals as well as in her collection, Staying Inside the Lines (Inkweed 2002).

Trevor Reeves wrote of Martha's first collection Staying Inside the Lines --- "Martha is at her best when juxtaposing things with one another; events, tastes, activities, smells - a potpourri of words and images that are refreshing and delightful, yet bristling with the occasional menace. . . "

A selection of her poems and images can be found at http://www.otago.ac.nz/deepsouth/2007/index.html (University of Otago, Deep South literary journal) and additional biographical information can be found in the Writers Profiles of the NZ Society of Authors pages - www.authors.org.nz.  

(Thank you for The Dress, Martha.)

This week's editor on the Tuesday Poem hub is Renee Liang

whose rich commentary accompanies the poem Where

by Paula Morris