Green Books Campaign: The Book of Shadows

This review is part of the Green Books Campaign, bloggers reviewing books printed on recycled or FSC-certified paper to try to make everyone more aware of "green" books. The folks at Eco-Libris sent me a copy of Carlos Reyes' New and Selected Poems, The Book of Shadows, which is printed on recycled paper. I didn't see any difference between this paper and the paper in other volumes of poetry I've read, even after my attention was drawn to it.

The Book of Shadows was my introduction to the poetry of Carlos Reyes, and I enjoyed the way his subjects range from Portland, where he now lives, to places like Panama and Ireland. There are poems about the loss of love, about survival, and about ships, gambling, and Alaskan Yupik spirits.

Many of the poems are deceptively simple, like this one, where the simplicity is self-conscious and starkly illustrated:

Once There Was a Way, Maybe

How to get back
to the simplicity of it
--the skating
on the small pond, on thin ice--
where it was always possible
to break your nose
over a girlfriend
and live through it,
to get your heart broken
and get over it right then
and there.

Years later
things are not so simple.
Your head is a balloon
full of words, your fingers
something like honeyed batwings
(when they come to visit),
reality something
poking through on rare occasions
full of bones
on Sunday afternoon:
a plastic bag
full of chicken
but bones all the same
when the picnic's over.

There's a series of poems about what shadows do, and this one is my favorite, Shadow Piscator:

A shadow can fish
If you have seen

what happens
when clouds get

between the sun
and water on the lake

You'll know what I mean
the fish go crazy

If shadow
has a bucket or a net

or can cup his hands
he will catch many fish

What I liked best in this volume--and perhaps it's just because I've been collecting so many autumn poems since September--are his poems about autumn:

A Few Days Before September

I am under
a pale finger-
nail paring moon,

jarred from my reverie
by an intensely silver
almost wingless propeller-
driven airplane

roaring
across the zenith
of my pleasant
Sunday morning,

awakening the still
dead, those sleeping, those
with hangovers,
those with morning after

regrets,
those who thought
today was their day
and nothing more,

oblivious
to the dying of time
that this might be the last
most beautiful day
of summer

when all
the natural world
is on the verge.

Beauty gives way
to grim survival
in a corner
less lit by the sun.

I love that one purely for the line breaks in "the last/most beautiful day/ of summer."

And this next one... I wouldn't have thought any other poet could put the cap on my autumn theme after Merwin's poems yesterday, but the ending of this one is a fitting ending to the theme--not an ending, really, but a fading:

In the Fall

I walk the dangerous edge
of damp graveled roads
the perimeter of aging forests
the changing leaves
the gold instead of green
twirling in a colder wind.

How I enjoy
the smell of wild apples
beginning to turn cidery
with bitter frost
crabapples like dim lanterns.

Hoping for one more day
before the rains arrive
I walk down the leafy lane
to see a break
in the clouds and bright
sun once more

before winter tightens
its jaws around the trees
before the grey pulling
clouds suffocate the wind
before lakes, rivers and seas
fall from the heavens
drown every green thing
fading all green all gold
to dull and papery pale.

This is indeed a book of shadows, of things already out of sight. And it's about seeing the world in such a clear-eyed way that you no longer believe you can sew a shadow back on to stop anyone's crying.

Merwin and the End of Autumn

It began as terribly as any ordeal by airline ever does, short of the airplane actually crashing; we arrived at our local airport after an hour's drive through the Ohio countryside to find that our first flight was delayed. When it was still delayed, we were moved to another gate. Once we finally got on the plane, sitting with our legs up on the carry-on bags that almost but not entirely fit under the seats in front of us, there was another delay as the ground crew figured out that the weight on our plane was not balanced, that they had no ballast to correct this, and that three passengers would have to get off. Finally they ousted some people and we got in the line to take off, arriving at a different airport twenty minutes before our next flight. But we would not be on it; no, we would still be standing in the aisle waiting for an airport employee to stroll over and push the button to extend the skyway. My daughter shouted helpfully toward the front "open the door and I'll jump!" but her voice went disregarded. Despite our no-doubt-entertaining sprint for the connecting gate on a different concourse, we missed our connection. We did arrive at our destination airport right before the rental car counter closed, and then proceeded to drive down strangely deserted highways under a vast, starry sky for a little more than an hour until we found our motel, looking as if it stood alone in the darkness of the middle of the prairie.

That was how I spent the first weekend after the high school marching band season with my daughter, visiting the college she's most seriously considering. Early decision applications are due next week, so the beginning of November marks the end of any more consideration; it's time to submit.

Our trip back from the college visit went as well as any airline adventure ever can--our flights were on time, and our connecting gate was right next door to the gate we came in, adjacent to a restroom and a small restaurant. When we got back to our local airport, we watched the carousel go around for less than half its circle before our checked bag appeared in front of us. We made it home with plenty of time to get to the W.S. Merwin reading at our local college.

He read--I think "sonorously" is the best word for it. Although I'd been looking forward to this event for months, it took on a dreamlike quality; I would hear the beginning of one of the poems I'd liked best from one of his many volumes and would drift off into contemplation of a word, a line, an image. I think I dreamed a sort of unity between three of his poems and the "too soon autumn" theme I have had going on here since the beginning of September. So I will present you with the three, as another way to mark the end of autumn.

I think of this one with our initial journey late into the prairie night:

Lights Out

The old grieving autumn goes on calling to its summer
the valley is calling to other valleys beyond the ridge
each star is roaring alone into darkness
there is not a sound in the whole night

Isn't that lovely personification? Of course I love the image of the old grieving autumn--it's me--here I am, sampling the bittersweet fruits of having raised a child to be self-sufficient enough to move away.

The next one seems to me to be related because it describes something of how I feel about the end of daylight savings time at the end of this particular autumn:

Long Afternoon Light

Small roads written in sleep in the foothills
how long ago and I believed you were lost
with the bronze then deepening in the light
and the shy moss turning to itself holding
its own brightness above the badger's path
while a single crow sailed west without a sound
we trust without giving it a thought
that we will always see it as we see it
once and that what we know is only
a moment of what is ours and will stay
we believe it as the moment slips away
as lengthening shadows merge in the valley
and a window kindles there like a first star
what we see again comes to us in secret

Yes, overlaid on this fall is the memory of my first fall away from home at college, and the lengthening shadow of Eleanor's first fall away from me. I am going to be only a window kindled in the darkness, a first star, a point to measure the length of her journey.

But there are so many pleasures in the company of an increasingly adult daughter, and in the conversation of the first person I ever had a hand in helping to grow to her full autumnal glory--it was for her that I learned to buy clothing in shades of gold and brown, the colors that suit her best. She is like

One of the Butterflies

The trouble with pleasure is the timing
it can overtake me without warning
and be gone before I know it is here
it can stand facing me unrecognized
while I am remembering somewhere else
in another age or someone not seen
for years and never to be seen again
in this world and it seems that I cherish
only now a joy I was not aware of
when it was here although it remains
out of reach and will not be caught or named
or called back and if I could make it stay
as I want to it would turn into pain

She will not be called back. If I could make her stay as I want to it would turn into pain. It's the pleasure of this moment, the beauty of the butterfly in flight, that, like the autumn, has reached a musical pitch that continues straining forward and forward towards what eventually turns into distance.

The Sky As With Bells, As With Nothing In It

It has been so outrageously gorgeous outside this week that even a reluctant-to-see-summer-go scoffer like me can no longer hold out against the many-colored, fluttering charms of autumn. I went for a walk yesterday, for no reason except that it was so pretty I needed to be out in it, moving around like everything else.

Snowbell, our bunny, has been shedding his summer coat for the past month, and today I notice that his winter coat has come in underneath, thick and even softer than the usual bunny pelt, which is the softest fur I've ever felt, except for chinchilla.

Ron has just come back from a trip and no one has another scheduled for this weekend, which makes me optimistic that soon I can cook dinner and gather everyone around, although we probably won't sit outside and grill anything, as we did last weekend (making Snowbell nervous, as the grill always does). I imagine it will be like this poem, The Sky As With Bells, As With Nothing In It by Arda Collins:

This bright day all together we eat a Sunday dinner.
We watch the sun in the wind through a mirror
that reflects the leaves blowing hard behind glass doors.
Yellow-green, turning violently and violently, and quiet.
The gilded mirror opens up to trees like a high gate
on a wall that leads nowhere, as to a room that lies behind--
a display for window curtains in a department store--
a window dressed up in its Sunday best, an organdy veil
under wool drapes, silky tie-backs with tassels, wall to wall carpet.
A light comes through the curtains as though the last afternoon rays
were coming through the curtains. The light that shines
from a small fixed bulb fixed to white sheet rock.

Come sunshine, finish powdering your nose.
The wind is colder, doors shrink in their frames and close louder.

I think I love this poem mostly for that final couplet, the reminder of the way an autumn day can suddenly turn bleak when the sun goes in, and the feeling of withdrawing indoors, the end of all possibility outside. I'll get that feeling even more strongly as the days get shorter and sunshine scarcer.

Glory

This morning my morning glories are at their peak of glory. It's the time of year for glory--one last big explosion of it before the frost... come to think of it, it's almost time for northern gardeners to be getting out the insecticidal soap before bringing in the potted plants. Always something to do besides dream the autumn away. Those of us who are "not very high up on the vocational chart," as the poet Mary Ruefle puts it, have a little time for reverie, not to mention obsessional posting of autumn poems all the way up until the equinox:

Glory

The autumn aster, those lavender ones,
and the dark-blooming sedum
are beginning to bloom in the rainy earth
with the remote intensity of a dream. These things
take over. I am a glorifier, not very high up
on the vocational chart, and I glorify everything I see,
everything I can think of. I want ordinary men and women,
brushing their teeth, to feel the ocean in their mouth.
I am going to glorify the sink with toothpaste spat in it.
I am going to say it's a stretch of beach where the foam
rolls back and leaves little shells. Ordinary people
with a fear of worldly things, illness, pain, accidents,
poverty, of dark, of being alone, of misfortune.
The fears of everyday life. People who quietly and secretly
bear their dread, who do not speak freely of it to others.
People who have difficulty separating themselves
from the world around them, like a spider hanging
off the spike of a spider mum, in an inland autumn,
away from the sea, away from that most unfortunate nation
where people are butterballs dying of meat and drink.
I want to glorify the even tinier spiders in the belly of the spider
and in the closed knot of the mum's corolla, so this is likely
to go on into winter. Didn't I say we were speaking of autumn
with the remote intensity of a dream? The deckle edge of a cloud:
blood seeping through a bandage. Three bleached beech leaves
hanging on a twig. A pair of ruined mushrooms. The incumbent
snow. The very air. The imported light. All autumn struggling
to be gay, as people do in the midst of their woe.
I met a psychic who told me my position in the universe
but could not find the candy she hid from her grandkids.
The ordinary fear of losing one's mind. You rinse the sink,
walk out into the October sunshine, and look for it
by beginning to think. That's when I saw the autumn aster,
the sedum blooming in a purple field. The psychic said
I must see the world glory emblazoned on my chest. Secretly
I was hoping for a better word. I would have chosen for myself
an ordinary one like orchid or paw.
Something that would have no meaning in the astral realm.
One doesn't want to glorify everything. What might I actually say
when confronted with the view from K2? I'm not sure
I would say anything. What's your opinion?
You're a man with a corona in your mouth,
a woman with a cottonball in her purse,
what's your conception of the world?

What is your conception of the world today? Are you having one of those days when a pleasant feeling casts a glow on everything else you do? A landmark day when you're doing everything in honor of a birthday or anniversary? A day when some trouble shadows your attempts to get everything else done?

Letter to Galway Kinnell at the End of September

It's a lovely community-building exercise, but I think I've already written all I have to say about the BBAW topic for today--a book or genre I tried due to the influence of another blogger. My thoughts about the anxiety of blogging influence are in my May 20 post about book recommendations.

Rest assured that if your blog name is on my sidebar, you've influenced my reading. I started making a list, but anyone who comes here regularly knows that I don't have the soul of a librarian--I hate making lists or cataloging what I've read. Ron just came by and I said to him, "you know, you always instigate our bouts of organizing books" and he agreed, saying "you don't like categorizing them" and then added "if it were up to you, you'd have them all on the shelf by which ones had amusing titles next to each other," which is true, and a game we often play. It started with a story my mother told about finding two books side by side on the shelf at her college library: The Sound and the Fury As I Lay Dying.

Try it right now--go over to a nearby bookshelf and find two books that really ought to be right next to each other. I'm going to do it myself. Okay, I'm back; it took me about two seconds to see that Summerland ought to be next to The Gone-Away World at this time of year.

That makes me think that what I really want to share with you today is another autumn poem, this one by a poet I've just discovered that I love, Todd Davis. Don't let the title put you off; you don't have to know Kinnell's poems to enjoy this one.

Letter to Galway Kinnell at the End of September

I confuse the name for goldenrod with the name for this month,
but what else would we call this time of year--afternoon light
like saffron, blue lake reflecting blue sky? Where we entered,
asters and goldenrod flooded the length of the meadow, field

literally abuzz, swaying with the movement of bees, air
warm enough to draw sweat and the smell of those flowers
and our bodies drifting around us. The part of the sun that rested
the kettle of heat upon the goldenrod's tiny, yellow blossoms

lifted the clearing clean out of the ground, somehow suspending us--
if not in air, then in time--and that's what we want after all.
Not starting over, not being reborn, but borne up like these bees,
or the birds who migrate toward a place of neverending, all of us

unmoored, still part of the earth, but absolved of our obligations to it:
the necessity of growing old, the bald fact that a month from now
all this beauty will crumble--asters black, goldenrod brown,
no more than flower-dust when we rake our hands across their heads.

This is what I want in all things--to have the rules suspended just for me. Don't you?

Autumn

Here's a poem for all you autumn-lovers, "Autumn" by Philip Larkin:

The air deals blows: surely too hard, too often?
No: it is bent on bringing summer down.
Dead leaves desert in thousands, outwards, upwards,
Numerous as birds; but the birds fly away,

And the blows sound on, like distant collapsing water,
Or empty hospitals falling room by room
Down in the west, perhaps, where the angry light is.
Then rain starts; the year goes suddenly slack.

O rain, o frost, so much has still to be cleared:
All this ripeness, all this reproachful flesh,
And summer, that keeps returning like a ghost
Of something death has merely made beautiful,

And night skies so brilliantly spread-eagled
With their sharp hint of a journey--all must disperse
Before the season is lost and anonymous,
Like a London court one is never sure of finding

But none the less exists, at the back of the fog,
Bare earth, a lamp, scrapers. Then it will be time
To seek there that ill-favoured, curious house,
Bar up the door, mantle the fat flame,

And sit once more alone with sprawling papers,
Bitten-up letters, boxes of photographs,
And the case of butterflies so rich it looks
As if all summer settled there and died.

One of the things that hurts me about the approach of autumn is all the butterfly death...as soon as I see one in front of my car, it's in the grill. No matter how many times I notice that little fluttering motion out of the corner of my eye, I can't stop or swerve in time to save a butterfly.

Seems like a metaphor, doesn't it?

How Not to Die

September means the end of all the lovely long, hot sunny days with time to read and travel. Roadside weeds are already starting to turn yellow and brown because it's almost time for them to die.

I don't want anything to die. Everybody going around saying how much they love autumn makes me feel contrary. "Just write on your forehead," I think, "I love signs of impending death."

When you're feeling contrary is a good time to read a Gregory Corso poem, like this one:

How Not to Die

Around people
if I feel I'm gonna die
I excuse myself
telling them "I gotta go!"
"Go where?" they wanna know
I don't answer
I just get outa there
away from them
because somehow
they sense something wrong
and never know what to do
it scares them such suddenness
How awful
to just sit there
and they asking:
"Are you okay?"
"Can we get you something?"
"Want to lie down?"
Ye Gods! people!
Who wants to die amongst people?!
Especially when they can't do shit
To the movies--to the movies
that's where I hurry to
when I feel I'm going to die
So far it's worked

I've been spending my evenings with a bunch of people, and they can't do shit, although it's my job to teach them some. And after that I like to retreat to the movies--the ones in my own basement, where a feature doesn't have to take more than about twenty minutes and it begins with the same images every time, the "Rev, Rev, Dancealution" machine making me smile inwardly, quietly, to myself.