RAINING QUINCES

Several years ago, while searching the internet for information on long-distance walking, I discovered The Solitary Walker, a wonderful, multifaceted blog published by Robert Wilkinson.  As the title of the blog reveals, Robert is a passionate walker. He has walked thousands of miles in the U.K. and the rest of Europe.  According to my last count, he has completed five caminos on the network of pilgrim paths that lead from various parts of Europe to Santiago de Compostela, Spain.  However, as any reader of The Solitary Walker will soon discover, walking is not Robert's only passion.  He is also a gifted poet, and he has just published his first collection of poems under the title of Raining Quinces.

The new collection contains over eighty poems which are organized under three sections: Camino (poems inspired by Robert's wanderings on the French and Spanish pilgrim routes to Santiago); Lightness of Being (light verse and humorous poems); and Blue Fruit (poems on love, life, nature, landscape, art, and family relationships).  Underpinning all of the poems, however, is a spiritual quest, an ongoing journey to pierce through the veneer of the material world and discover something of eternal value.  

In "Deep Blue," one the last poems in the book, the poet is engaged in an imaginary conversation with Deep Blue, the name of the chess-playing computer which beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a famous 1997 match.  When Deep Blue questions the value of poetry in modern times, the poet reminds it of how difficult it is to compose poems —

                                         In words direct as sunlight,

                                         Subtle as moonbeams

                                         And real as seeds and stones.

Readers of Robert's new poetry collection will discover that the poet's own standards have been clearly achieved with both grace and beauty.  These poems are "direct as sunlight, subtle as moonbeams, and real as seeds and stones."  In ways that are both unexpected and pleasurable, they open our eyes and hearts to the realities of life; they allow us to see our own questing hearts in the hearts of others; and they remind us that a fearless creative life is itself a path to understanding — perhaps even redemption. 

Raining Quinces can be purchased through both Amazon US and Amazon UK.  I heartily recommend it.  I also highly recommend Robert's excellent new online poetry magazine, The Passionate Transitory, which features poetry from contemporary poets throughout the world.  The magazine also features interviews with these poets.

"ONE TODAY" — THE 2013 INAUGURAL POEM

    

Inaugural Parade, 2013

The American poet Richard Blanco was selected by the White House to create a special poem to commemorate the Second Inauguration of President Obama. Some of you may have heard the poem recited by Blanco during the inaugural ceremony on January 21st.  In the event you missed it, you can read it below.

Any poem addressed to the entire nation will undoubtedly find its share of criticism, particularly from those who do not share the President's vision for the country. From my perspective, however, "One Today" succeeds because it captures not only the spirit and diversity of our nation, but also the President's conviction that what unites people is greater than what divides them.  "All of us," Blanco proclaims, are "as vital as the one light we move through."

                                                     One Today

                                                 by Richard Blanco

                      One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,

                      peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces

                      of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth

                      across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.

                      One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story

                      told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

                      My face, your face, millions of faces in the morning's mirrors,

                      each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:

                      pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,

                      fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows

                      begging our praise.  Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—

                      bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,

                      on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—

                      to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did

                      for twenty years, so I could write this poem.

                      All of us as vital as the one light we move through, 

                      the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:

                      equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,

                      the "I have a dream" we all keep dreaming,

                      or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won't explain

                      the empty desks of twenty children marked absent

                      today, and forever.  Many prayers, but one light

                      breathing color into stained glass windows,

                      life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth

                      onto the steps of our museums and park benches

                      as mothers watch children slide into the day.

                      One ground.  Our ground, rooting us to every stalk

                      of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat

                      and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills

                      in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands

                      digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands 

                      as worn as my father's cutting sugarcane

                      so my brother and I could have books and shoes.

                      The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains

                      mingled by one wind—our breath.  Breathe.  Hear it

                      through the day's gorgeous din of honking cabs,

                      buses launching down avenues, the symphony 

                      of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,

                      the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.

                      Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,

                      or whispers across cafe tables, Hear: the doors we open

                      for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,

                      buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos dias

                      in the language my mother taught me—in every language

                      spoken into one wind carrying our lives

                      without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

                      One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed

                      their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked

                      their way to the sea.  Thank the work of our hands:

                      weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report

                      for the boss on time, stitching another wound

                      or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,

                      or the last floor on the Freedom Tower

                      jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

                      One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes

                      tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
                      of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love

                      that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother

                      who knew how to give, of forgiving a father

                      who couldn't give what you wanted.

                      We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight

                      of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,

                      always under one sky, our sky.  And always one moon

                      like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop

                      and every window, of one country—all of us—

                      facing the stars

                      hope—a new constellation

                      waiting for us to map it,

                      waiting for us to name it—together.

To hear and see Richard Blanco's recitation of the inaugural poem, click here. Publications of Richard Blanco's poetry include City of a Hundred Fires (University of Pittsburg Press, 1998), by Richard Blanco; Directions to the Beach of the Dead (University of Arizona Press, 2005), by Richard Blanco; and Looking for the Gulf Motel (University of Pittsburg Press, 2012), by Richard Blanco. 

WHY POETRY?

It is difficult to get the news from poems,

yet men die miserably every day for the lack of what is found there.

William Carlos Williams

One of the great joys of blogging is the opportunity to interact with other people who love poetry, many of whom are poets themselves.  It's a social pleasure that I rarely encounter in my day-to-day life offline.  Perhaps it's an unjustifiable cultural bias of mine, but most of my fellow Americans seem to head for the exits at the mere mention of poetry.

Thanks to an extraordinary teacher I had in high school, poetry has been a constant companion of mine for more than five decades.  When I have felt friendless and alone, poetry has offered its friendship and reminded me that I am not the first to undertake this uncertain voyage; nor shall I be the last.  When I have felt bewildered and lost, poetry has provided a bright lodestar against which I could take my bearings and find my way.  And when I have found myself stymied over the inability to understand the true essence of love—this pervasive ideal that seems impossible to define with any precision—poetry has always revealed something so beautiful, so simple and unexpected, that I could say at last, "yes, this is what love feels like." 

I'm digressing a bit here, for the main point of this post is to share some wonderful observations I have come across recently about the unique importance of poetry in our lives.  The first quote comes from  V.V. Raman, who is a theoretical physicist, rather than a poet himself.  All of the other quotes are from former poets laureate of the United States, and are found in The Poets Laureate Anthology (2010).

V.V. Raman

(From Interview with Krista Tippett in Einstein's God)

[P]oetry is what gives meaning to existence.  Not fact and figures and charts, but poetry. Poetry is essentially a really sophisticated way of experiencing the world.  And it is much more than mere words and stories.  Poetry is to the human condition what the telescope and the microscope are to the scientist.

W.S. Merwin

Prose is about something, but poetry is about what can't be said.  Why do people turn to poetry when all of a sudden the Twin Towers get hit, or when their marriage breaks up, or when the person they love most in the world drops dead in the same room?  Because they can't say it.  They can't say it at all, and they want something that addresses what can't be said.

Kay Ryan

It's poetry's uselessness that excites me . . . Prose is practical language. Conversation is practical language.  Let them handle the usefulness jobs. But of course, poetry has its balms.  It makes us feel less lonely by one.  It makes us have more room inside ourselves.

Billy Collins

Time is not just money—sorry, Ben Franklin—time is a way of telling us if we are moving at the right pace through the life that has been given us. One of the most basic pleasures of poetry is the way it slows us down. The intentionality of its language gives us pause.  Its formal arrangement checks our haste.

Stanley Kunitz

If we want to know what it felt like to be alive at any given moment in the long odyssey of the race, it is to poetry we must turn.  The moment is dear to us, precisely because it is so fugitive, and it is somewhat of a paradox that poets should spend a lifetime hunting for the magic that will make the moment stay.  Art is the chalice into which we pour the wine of transcendence.  What is imagination but a reflection of our yearning to belong to eternity as well as to time.

Robert Fitzgerald 

Our lifetimes have seen the opening of abysses before which the mind quails.  But it seems to me there are few things everyone can humbly try to hold onto: love and mercy (and humor) in everyday living; the quest for exact truth in language and affairs of the intellect; self-recollection or prayer; and the peace, the composed energy of art.

                                         

Photos:  Photo of V.V. Raman downloaded from Wikipedia.  All other photos were downloaded from the website of the Poet Laureates of the United States.

BASHO: THE JOURNEY ITSELF IS HOME

The moon and sun are eternal travelers.  Even the years wander on.  A lifetime adrift in a boat or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

                                                                  Basho

In these wonderful lines from Narrow Road to the Interior, Matsuo Basho, the celebrated 17th century Japanese poet and haiku master, has reminded us that home is not the destination of our journey; it is the journey itself.  With a philosophy rooted in Taoism and Zen, Basho understood that life can only be lived when one is fully awake, fully aware, and fully invested in the mystery and glory of the present moment.  Home is the uncertain path beneath our feet, the mysterious dance of form and color around every bend, the unexpected wind upon our face.  Home is a fading church bell, the intense fragrance of flowers in the early evening, the haunting sound of whippoorwills calling to one another at twilight.  Home is the restless dragonfly, the solitary heron that feeds in the shallows, the bluebird that sits outside your window pondering the meaning of an early snowfall.  Home is both movement and stillness, the stillness in our movement and the movement in our stillness.

Many of the treasured moments of Basho's life were expressed in his celebrated haiku verses.  I have chosen several of these verses and paired them with some of my photos that seem appropriate.  Enjoy!

Temple bells die out.

The fragrant blossoms remain.

A perfect evening!

Silent the old town 

the scent of flowers floating

and evening bell

The dragonfly

can't quite land

on that blade of grass

Even that old horse
is something to see this
snow-covered morning

Now in sad autumn

as I take my 

darkening path

a solitary bird

A lightning flash --
and, piercing the darkness,
the night heron's cry

Twilight whippoorwills

whistle on,

sweet deepened

of dark loneliness

Summer grasses:
all that remains of great soldiers'
imperial dreams

First white snow of fall

just enough to bend 

the leaves

of faded daffodils

In summer mountains
bow to holy high-water clogs
bless this long journey

One more -- one that not only captures the essence of Basho's life, but also provides a good template for the rest of us:

A wanderer,

so let that be my name --

the first winter rain