lucille clifton

photograph

my grandsons
spinning in their joy

universe
keep them turning turning
blacks blurs against the window
of the world
for they are beautiful
and there is trouble coming
round and round and round

**************************


I just read of Lucille Clifton's death, and had to put up a post that was quick (and most likely crappy, because I am so not a literary critic!) though necessary, because her poetry was among the first I was introduced to as an undergraduate a decade and a half ago.

I barely remember the poetry from high school, lines and stanzas from AP English that stuck nowhere, obsessed as I was with fiction -- Salinger and Faulkner and Cather -- because it was the stuff that seemed to sustain me.

What we did read (Eliot, perhaps) struck me as inaccessible, and in that impatient phase of adolescence, I didn't have time for translation.

As a college student, though, things were somewhat different. A new environment, new classmates, professors who were thoroughly eccentric and excited about the things they taught -- all of it combined to make me see things anew. In the first poetry class I took, we had a visitor from a very small Rochester, NY publisher called BOA. The guy was nice enough to bring a boxful of give aways to the class, a sampling of some of their most famous poets. In a move that was uncharacteristically bold of me, as soon as he gave the word, I scrambled to the front and grabbed some.

Dorianne Laux, Li-Young Lee, Lucille Clifton...all poets we had learned about in class, read aloud, and started to appreciate. Laux and Lee tended towards the erotic, or, at least their most popular poems did, so their books were swallowed up first. But the handful of Clifton's poems we had worked on struck me as important, and went beyond issues addressing the surge of hormones we were all mired in, so I picked up her book quilting: poems 1987-1990.

The poem about her grandsons at the top of this post captured perfectly both the beauty of childhood and the inability that adults have in always keeping them safe.

In a poem about the Walnut Grove Plantation, she addresses the men and women buried in the cemetery:

among the rocks
at walnut grove
your silence drumming
in my bones,
tell me your names.

nobody mentioned slaves
and yet the curious tools
shine with your fingerprints.
nobody mentioned slaves
but somebody did this work
who had no guide, no stone,
who moulders under rock.

tell me your names,
tell me your bashful names
and i will testify

************************

And when writing about a possible hysterectomy, Clifton laments losing her uterus:

no
they want to cut you out
stocking i will not need
where i am going
where am i going
old girl
without you
uterus
my bloody print
my estrogen kitchen
my black bag of desire

************************
I remember being struck by how she turned conventional thought on the menstrual cycle (painful, tiresome, burdensome mess) on its head, and celebrated it instead. (Okay, it wasn't a complete celebration, but she still provided a slightly different way of viewing one's period.) It felt fairly radical, at 18, to read this:

to my last period

well girl, goodbye,
after thirty-eight years.
thirty-eight years and you
never arrived
splendid in your red dress
without trouble for me
somewhere, somehow.

now it is done,
and i feel just like
the grandmothers who,
after the hussy has gone,
sit holding her photograph
and sighing, wasn't she
beautiful? wasn't she beautiful?

********************************

It is such a pleasure to read her. Because I can think back and know that she is one of the reasons I like what I like, and why I continued to take poetry classes and read poetry. Her words are one of the reasons I didn't turn away from poetry or continue to label it as lofty and unnecessarily vague. I hope she's at peace.

A Letter

Dear Sarah Palin,




Sincerely,

Kelly

Truckin'

In the midst of last night's darkness, somehow my brain concocted quite a story that played out, bizarrely, while I slumbered.

Dave had ditched historic preservation as a career and had taken up driving a big rig. My heart was broken as I said goodbye to him, running next to the truck as it took off, bringing who knows what kind of haul where. Wherever deliveries are made in the dream world, I guess. Or maybe the lure of cash was taking him to the Ice Road, ready to brave Alaska's weather systems and a highway system set up on a frozen lake, all for a big payout. Wherever he was going, I wasn't very happy.

We were also living in an enormous house. The foyer and living room were positively cavernous. The ceilings must have been 30 feet high, and at the top I could see the popcorn-like bubbles of stucco. How are we ever going to paint this, I was thinking And how does one decorate walls in a room like this? Really lengthy tapestries is the thought that ran through my head before the another thought struck me: I was alone with the kids for some length of time that I wasn't aware of.

I've gone great gaps of time without remembering dreams. I don't know if this is good or bad. I don't know what this means about my sleep patterns either. But whenever I start to have strange dreams that I remember vividly, I always think that I'm knocked up.

The night that I discovered I was pregnant with Hannah, I dreamed I was in the woods at my in-laws house, alone. It was snowy and dark and I was in short sleeves, but I wasn't scared at all. I wasn't even cold. I was just moving. And all I could hear were the sounds I made, the swishing through the snow and whatever was buried under foot. Something was happening. It was weird and uncharted and I didn't know quite what to make of it.

When I was pregnant with Lillian, I had home invasion dreams. Gone were the vague adventure dreams of something new, replaced by the need to protect and the fear of being unable to. And so once, during the night, two men and a woman pushed their way into our house and I felt one's hand wrap around my arm. It was the opposite of promise, with my brain intent on feeding my nightmares. One 20-month old in a crib next door, and something tiny growing within, and I was ready to do battle. But what if the fight wasn't fair?

I don't hear much from the girls about their dreams. When Lillian reports something, it's always the same. I went swimming with Ariel, she says. And I had lunch with all the princesses.

But that's what you dreamed last night, I tell her.

Yes, she says. I'm a very lucky dreamer.

Sometimes she talks in her sleep. Once, not too long ago, I heard her yell out, I don't love you anymore! You're not my friend! When I tried to tell her this the next morning, she would hear nothing of it. The concept of being asleep and talking was too much for her.

This morning I shared my dreams with Dave and Hannah as we sat on the couch. Both seemed entirely disinterested by the tractor trailer driving and the enormous new house filled with the former owner's furniture. I think there's a lot there to be mined. Maybe, though, not quite as much as could fit in the back of one of those Kane is Able semis.

A Hermitage of One's Own

I'm slogging through the life of Thomas Merton right now.

I say 'slogging' because he writes incredibly dense sentences like "Nevertheless, after a couple of months of it, I got to a state where phrases like 'the Good, the True, and the Beautiful' filled me with a kind of suppressed indignation, because they stood for the big sin of Platonism: the reduction of all reality to the level of pure abstraction, as if concrete, individual substances had no essential reality of their own, but were only shadows of some remote, universal, ideal essence filed away in a big-card index somewhere in heaven, while the demi-urges milled around the Logos piping their excitement in high, fluted, English intellectual tones."

I mean, Merton say what?

And I probably should be posting this on the religion thing I got going on elsewhere, but listen, I'm gonna channel my high school biology teacher and yell out in a voice clearly on the verge of a nervous breakdown: If you don't like it you can leave!

(To which I promptly laughed and almost got kicked out of class. Seriously, I had a laughing problem. Always laughed at the WORST TIMES EVER.)

If you don't know, Thomas Merton was raised with no particular religious background, but found Catholicism in college and converted. He later joined the Trappists in Gethsemani and promptly became one of the most famous monks evah. (I just skipped a whole hell of a lot of background there.) This because he had quite the literary proclivity and at the encouragement of his superior, wrote his memoir The Seven Storey Mountain, from which the lengthy sentence I quoted above was taken.

At a later point, Merton had a hermitage built on the grounds of the monastery, providing him with a means for greater solitude. (This part isn't within the book I'm reading. But whatevs.)

And this is actually the reason why I'm writing here. Because I'd kind of like to have a hermitage.

I was actually thinking that it should go in the place where Dave is planning on building the girls a playhouse this summer. While co-opting that space for myself will not win me mother of the year, it might win me a few moments of Merton-like solitude.

I'm not sure how I would outfit it, though. Spare and bare, a la a monk's abode? Basic but with a few luxuries, like a pillow or two? And what, exactly, would I do in there? Simply hide? Read? Sit with eyes focused on a woody knot in one of the planks, and stare until my eyes water and burn?

One of the things about parenthood is that when you do get a moment for yourself, you tend to not know how to spend it. How many times have you heard a parent say that they had a block of time to do something, alone, and then they ended up spending a decent portion of that time actually deciding what to do?

So who knows? Maybe I would just sit there, but I imagine just sitting there might feel pretty good anyway.

Also, I would love the chance to say, "Pardon me children, but mommy is going out to the hermitage."

If you could go all Thomas Merton on the world, and create your own getaway on your own property, what would you outfit it with? And what would you do there?

This Is Winter

I'm growing weary of winter. I'm looking forward to the return of days when I can take the kids to the park and touching the monkey bars isn't like putting one's hand into a cooler full of ice. I'm looking forward to a bit more freedom.

Yeah, winter sunsets are lovely, and the days are already starting to lengthen, so that by the time my husband gets home and I get my butt and bags in the car to head to school, the sky is doing funny things...all dark gray and gold and pink and red. It's getting dark, but it's not dark yet. So I consider that a triumph for my neurotransmitters, which have gotten thankfully heartier over the years, but still have gone a bit wonky by the time February rolls around. Light is always a good thing.

The best part of winter is having a fire in the fireplace and sitting in front of it with a book. Usually I end up having to put the book down because the kids come over and start sitting on me and then one runs to get the blanket and some pillows and we end up huddled in a cozy jumble front of this pretty, dangerous thing. It's mesmerizing, and occasionally the logs will pop and send embers towards us, but the screen catches them, and we remain toasty but unscathed.

I needed to have a fireplace. Which sounds incredibly obnoxious, I know: the lengthy list of things we've come to expect and demand in the houses we purchase. But really, a fireplace was non-negotiable. Everything else was.

I want to shove logs in there; I want that slightly smoky smell that wisps around the living room and into the fibers of the blanket we wrap ourselves in; I want to hear the crackling of the wood succumbing and see when the wood is so far gone that it breaks apart under the weight of new logs; I want to move things around with the poker, shift pieces to let some air in, and let the flame rise again. I want to tend the fire.

There is something contemplative about it, something soothing and restorative. You can let it die down, or you can bring it back to life. It would have to be just embers for wood to no longer catch. And it even tends to mellow the kids. A fire means downtime, it means sitting (although not necessarily still), and it means that we all tend to stop doing and start being together, usually in some kind of haphazard pile.

And although I love the arrival of Spring and greet it with near giddiness, it's always a bit of a downer to have that last fire, when the evening air is still cool enough and our wood pile has dwindled down to nothing. It's always quite bittersweet and strangely ceremonious. I'm happy to say good-bye to winter, to bare branches and the prolific nature of gray, but sad to say goodbye to that other source of heat and light.

Perhaps I'm not quite so ready to be rid of winter just yet. A few more weeks then. I'll take it.

When You Walk Through The Garden, Watch Your Back

David and I have been watching The Wire on DVD for the past few months. If you have never watched The Wire, I'm not sure how I can adequately sum up the experience, or how I can convince you that this is a show you need to see.

Critics have named it as either the best or the second best drama of the decade. (One reviewer insisted that The Sopranos was better). I recall reading one article that pegged it as the best TV show ever, which, yes, is quite blustery language, but watching such a great ensemble cast take turns telling the story of drug dealing/policing in the broken big city of Baltimore, and doing such a stellar job of it, it's hard not to believe the hype of that particular accolade.

I suppose, however, that some words of caution are in store. As the premise of the show is based around inner city life and the cops that work there, the show is no 90210. It's bleak, as gritty and dangerous as broken glass, and filled with the horrific music of gunfire. Based in the projects, the corners, the District police headquarters, and all the way to City Hall, we see how when the system is inexorably broken, people who make it out are a rare item. We see what happens to children when they're raised by the streets.

But it's also true that, wherever sunshine is a rare commodity, some light still seems to miraculously find its way to the ground.

Well, on occasion, at least.

For all of the terror and sadness, there are bits of hope and humor scattered about, from the corner boy who becomes disillusioned with 'the game,' to the addict who keeps trying out the 12-step program, to the police major who tries his hand at legalizing drugs on the sly to see if crime levels are brought down (they are), to the former gangster who, upon release from prison, briefly tries his hand at his old life, only to reject it after finding there is nothing there to sustain him. And then there are the cops, who while trying to bring down the big guns, find themselves growing strangely attached the middlemen, those ubiquitous corner boys who are the ones always being shaken down, and asked to take one (be it an arrest or a bullet) for the team. The relationship they build is a strange one, but moving nonetheless. (Video NSFW, language.)



It's in this world that we find brokenness and the concept that 'nowhere to go but up' is a bunch of bullshit. There is always further to go down, or a way to skate out sideways. The cops are alcoholics and the dealers seldom use. The schoolkids we meet are the lame horses in a race that's already been decided. And you wait for someone to attend to them, and witness some people try, only to discover that the new clothes a teacher purchased for one of his students have been taken by the kid's own parents, and sold on the street corners for drug money.

There are the guys in the game who are there because it's the family business, but who actually have a heart that can be found beneath the protective cage of their ribs, and there are the guys (and girls) in the game in whom there is zero trace of a soul, and those folks are the frightening sociopaths who kill as much for pleasure as for business.

The creators are so good that you soon find yourself enamored with and rooting for (though you're not exactly sure what you're rooting for) some of the guys who aren't so stone cold, whether it's D'Angelo, the guy who just wants to run things as a business, with none of the violence, or Bodie, the kid we see grow slowly disillusioned with the life, or Omar, the renegade with the shotgun who robs stash houses of their immense cash piles.

You also find yourself enamored with and rooting for the detectives, who know the real prize rests in catching the bosses, and who also know the bosses are usually stunningly smart and often one step ahead. Or that as they chase the money trail, it leads to City Hall, and so investigations are thwarted by higher ups. They can't seem to win either, chasing leads that go places they can't.

There you have it. A host of reasons why I recommend this show. It's so amazing and well-done that you might not mind that sometimes you need to take some Tylenol PM to take the edge off your sorrow. And the fact that it was overlooked by award shows should just serve to boost its cred further. As Bodie might say, "This shit is tight, yo. Check it."

I'm Trying Not To Talk Myself Out of This Shit

I'm 34.

Let's just say that my personality, at this point, is fairly entrenched. Most likely, I ain't changing.

Which is a shame in some regard, since I'd like to be able to look you square in the eye and tell you that I relish this new role and that I cannot wait to jump headfirst into nursing school and a new career. I wish I could trump the genes that have landed me in the afraid of change segment of the population, and the doubt myself severely segment of the population, and the who? me? segment as well.

As I continue on in school, I've been asked a few times lately why I chose nursing. After essentially getting a degree in reading and writing, why the seismic shift into something science-based? Why the leap from Holden Caufield to IVs?

And as cliched as it sounds, it boils down to the concept of helping. I'd like to be in a position to offer what I can, be it compassion or pain relief or basic care to a neglected populace. And I've always found medicine interesting, and treatment, and the fixing of people in general.

But I am also a terrified person. Anxiety-prone. Depression-prone. There are parts of me that are massively tough, but many other parts that are not. The other day I had some routine blood work done. While I was waiting, I watched a young girl of about 7 or 8 and her father come in and get shepherded back into one of the rooms. She looked wickedly pale and moved slowly. Clearly wintertime might not be the best season to judge someone's health by their color, but she looked unwell to me. I heard her small cry as the needle punctured a vein, and watched her father bring her back out into the waiting room, where he got her coat back on and zipped, patting her on the head and murmuring to her about how brave she was. And I had to bury my head in the Sports Illustrated that I was reading and bite my lip because I was truly about to cry.

Just the concept of a sick child getting tests was enough to send me reeling, and so naturally, I ask myself the question. Am I tough enough for this job?

I realize that not every area of medicine is an emotional minefield. But my feeling is that I'm not going into nursing to find some safe area where I never encounter anything sad.

I also realize that coping skills can be learned, that there are probably tons of physicians and nurses and all other manner of medical personal who are sensitive, and that perhaps they find ways to build up their exterior so they don't crack. Perhaps they find ways not to bring the heavy shit home.

Because as much as I want to help people, I'm not going into this so I can drive home at the end of the shift, put on my pajamas and curl up on the bed in the fetal position and weep until my eyes swell shut.

There is also the idea that sometimes we talk ourselves out of things that will ultimately benefit us, out of fear of discomfort. So I trudge on, despite misgivings, hoping that I'll eventually find the place I'm supposed to be.