It was the fall of 2004, when Ron and I heard Eleanor's sixth-grade band begin to stomp their feet and clap their hands--stomp, stomp, clap! stomp, stomp, clap!--that we became aware that what we thought of as the rebellious songs of our adolescence had been fully taken over by elevators and middle school band directors.
Then, in the spring of 2008, we realized that it wasn't enough to be relieved when our kids weren't assigned to the creationist middle school science teacher, that we should have protested the first time we heard about him giving handouts about how dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time and then collecting the handouts at the end of each class so parents wouldn't see them.
Now it's 2011, and 17 degrees outside. I've been thinking of going out to one of the two stores in town looking for a bouquet of cut flowers to help me bear having to take down the Christmas decorations. But I'm not sure I'm up to the whole ordeal--a parking place far enough away from the door that I'll have room to extend my stiff leg into the frozen slush to get out of the car, cheery smiles for the people I pass, soft muzak on the store speakers, displays of the headline in the local paper about three murders near the lake we like to frequent in warmer weather...it might all be too much.
It's like this poem, "Hard Rain," by Tony Hoagland:
After I heard It's a Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
played softly by an accordion quartet
through the ceiling speakers at the Springdale Shopping Mall,
I understood: there's nothing
we can't pluck the stinger from,
nothing we can't turn into a soft-drink flavor or a t-shirt.
Even serenity can become something horrible
if you make a commercial about it
using smiling, white-haired people
quoting Thoreau to sell retirement homes
in the Everglades, where the swamp has been
drained and bulldozed into a nineteen-hold golf course
with electrified alligator barriers.
"You can't keep beating yourself up, Billy,"
I heard the therapist say on television
to the teenage murderer,
"about all those people you killed--
You just have to be the best person you can be,
one day at a time--"
And everybody in the audience claps and weeps a little,
because the level of deep feeling has been touched,
and they want to believe that
the power of Forgiveness is greater
than the power of Consequence, or History.
Dear Abby:
My father is a businessman who travels.
Each time he returns from one of his trips,
his shoes and trousers
are covered with blood--
but he never forgets to bring me a nice present.
Should I say something?
Signed, America
I used to think I was not part of this,
that I could mind my own business and get along,
but that was just another song
that had been taught to me since birth--
whose words I was humming under my breath,
as I was walking through the Springdale Mall.
I like the line about how "the level of deep feeling has been touched" because it seems to me to get right to the heart of the matter--what business is it of yours if my deep feeling is wrongly bestowed? Who gets to define "wrong" and why? Is there such a thing as evil, and if so, can I point my finger at a person and say that there's no more room for forgiveness, that he's already "History"?
Well, yeah. Not only can I, but I probably should. Although it would be a dreadful world if everybody stalked around showing their true feelings every day (no more of what Holden Caulfield calls "phoniness"), maybe one thing January is for is facing some of the gritty realities that get covered over with lovely growing things during the rest of the year.
Hmm, I'm not the only one thinking like this today; see this xkcd.
Showing posts with label Tony Hoagland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tony Hoagland. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Wild
I feel wild this week. Wild with anger about the many new one-size-fits-all policies at the kids' high school. Wild to spend the few remaining hours of unscheduled time we have before school starts next Tuesday. Wild to get on the road tomorrow to see friends and take Walker to a chess tournament while Eleanor and Ron stay here to host her birthday party, for which I have already provided all the necessary supplies. And wild about this poem, one that I find seasonal about now, from Tony Hoagland's latest volume:
Wild
In late August when the streams dry up
and the high meadows turn parched and blond,
bears are squeezed out of the mountains
down into the valley of condos and housing developments.
All residents are therefore prohibited
from putting their garbage out early.
The penalty for disobedience will be
bears: large black furry fellows
drinking from your sprinkler system,
rolling your trashcans down your lawn,
bashing through the screen door of the back porch to get their
first real taste of a spaghetti dinner,
while the family hides in the garage
and the wife dials 1-800-BEARS on her cell phone,
a number she just made up
in a burst of creative hysteria.
Isn't that the way it goes?
Wildness enters your life and asks
that you invent a way to meet it,
and you run in the opposite direction
as the bears saunter down Main Street
sending station wagons crashing into fire hydrants,
getting the police department to phone
for tranquilizer guns,
the dart going by accident into the
neck of the unpopular police chief,
who is carried into early retirement
in an ambulance crowned with flashing red lights,
as the bears inherit the earth,
full of water and humans and garbage,
which looks to them like paradise.
When you're already feeling wild and get to the point where "wildness enters your life and asks/that you invent a way to meet it," isn't that the point where you feel road rage or checkout line rage or now-you've-made-a-mess rage? Aauurgh!
I like this poem's reminder to take a moment and sit back to admire the world full of "water and humans and garbage." It reminds me of watching the people at the zoo, something I spent some time doing last week when we crossed "go to the zoo" off our to-do list for this summer. The little ones who thought the arctic foxes were "cute" were amusing, and all the different ones who came to stand under the mister to cool off demonstrated a seemingly endless variety.
What's your favorite place for people-watching?
Wild
In late August when the streams dry up
and the high meadows turn parched and blond,
bears are squeezed out of the mountains
down into the valley of condos and housing developments.
All residents are therefore prohibited
from putting their garbage out early.
The penalty for disobedience will be
bears: large black furry fellows
drinking from your sprinkler system,
rolling your trashcans down your lawn,
bashing through the screen door of the back porch to get their
first real taste of a spaghetti dinner,
while the family hides in the garage
and the wife dials 1-800-BEARS on her cell phone,
a number she just made up
in a burst of creative hysteria.
Isn't that the way it goes?
Wildness enters your life and asks
that you invent a way to meet it,
and you run in the opposite direction
as the bears saunter down Main Street
sending station wagons crashing into fire hydrants,
getting the police department to phone
for tranquilizer guns,
the dart going by accident into the
neck of the unpopular police chief,
who is carried into early retirement
in an ambulance crowned with flashing red lights,
as the bears inherit the earth,
full of water and humans and garbage,
which looks to them like paradise.
When you're already feeling wild and get to the point where "wildness enters your life and asks/that you invent a way to meet it," isn't that the point where you feel road rage or checkout line rage or now-you've-made-a-mess rage? Aauurgh!
I like this poem's reminder to take a moment and sit back to admire the world full of "water and humans and garbage." It reminds me of watching the people at the zoo, something I spent some time doing last week when we crossed "go to the zoo" off our to-do list for this summer. The little ones who thought the arctic foxes were "cute" were amusing, and all the different ones who came to stand under the mister to cool off demonstrated a seemingly endless variety.
What's your favorite place for people-watching?
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Barton Springs
One of my favorite summer things, when the Ohio weather cooperates, is to take a lunch and go out to the lake, where we lie around on inflatable rafts and talk or blow up party island with a battery-operated pump and sail it out armed with water cannons. It's always a party when we take party island, usually one composed of 9-year-olds--kids who are big enough to climb in, but little enough to be pretty un-self-conscious about it.
There is, to me, nothing better than being in the water on a hot day. A pool will do, but so few of them are really deep these days, and a tall person can't swim in shallow water. The ocean is great, but we can't afford to go there very often. As a kid, I sometimes swam in a quarry, which was exciting because of all the warnings about varying depth and no diving. As an adult, I longed to swim in a pool I saw in Hawaii with a waterfall, and was later deeply gratified to get to swim in a waterfall pool in Branson, Missouri. One of the most memorable places I ever swam was Barton Springs, outside of Austin, Texas. It was a 90-degree day, as you can pretty much count on in Texas in July, and the water was only about 60 degrees.
So when I found this poem about Barton Springs in Tony Hoagland's new volume (Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty), I was pre-disposed to like it:
Oh life, how I loved your cold spring mornings
of putting my stuff in the green gym bag
and crossing wet grass to the southeast gate
to push my crumpled dollar through the slot.
When I get my allotted case of cancer,
let me swim ten more times at Barton Springs,
in the outdoor pool at 6 A.M. in the cold water
with the geezers and the jocks.
With my head bald from radiation
and my chemotherapeutic weight loss
I will be sleek as a cheetah
--and I will not complain about life's
pedestrian hypocrisies;
I will not consider death a contractual violation.
Let my cancer be the slow-growing kind
so I will have all the time I need
to backstroke over the rocks and little fishes,
looking upwards through my bronze-tinted goggles
into the vaults and rafters of the oaks,
as the crows exchange their morning gossip
in the pale mutations of early light.
It was worth death to see you through these optic nerves,
to feel breeze through the fur on my arms,
to be chilled and stirred in your mortal martini.
In documents elsewhere I have already recorded
my complaints in some painstaking detail.
Now, because all things near water are joyful,
there might be time to catch up on praise.
"All things near water are joyful." What a phrase to remember on a summer's day. What's the most fun place you've ever been swimming?
There is, to me, nothing better than being in the water on a hot day. A pool will do, but so few of them are really deep these days, and a tall person can't swim in shallow water. The ocean is great, but we can't afford to go there very often. As a kid, I sometimes swam in a quarry, which was exciting because of all the warnings about varying depth and no diving. As an adult, I longed to swim in a pool I saw in Hawaii with a waterfall, and was later deeply gratified to get to swim in a waterfall pool in Branson, Missouri. One of the most memorable places I ever swam was Barton Springs, outside of Austin, Texas. It was a 90-degree day, as you can pretty much count on in Texas in July, and the water was only about 60 degrees.
So when I found this poem about Barton Springs in Tony Hoagland's new volume (Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty), I was pre-disposed to like it:
Oh life, how I loved your cold spring mornings
of putting my stuff in the green gym bag
and crossing wet grass to the southeast gate
to push my crumpled dollar through the slot.
When I get my allotted case of cancer,
let me swim ten more times at Barton Springs,
in the outdoor pool at 6 A.M. in the cold water
with the geezers and the jocks.
With my head bald from radiation
and my chemotherapeutic weight loss
I will be sleek as a cheetah
--and I will not complain about life's
pedestrian hypocrisies;
I will not consider death a contractual violation.
Let my cancer be the slow-growing kind
so I will have all the time I need
to backstroke over the rocks and little fishes,
looking upwards through my bronze-tinted goggles
into the vaults and rafters of the oaks,
as the crows exchange their morning gossip
in the pale mutations of early light.
It was worth death to see you through these optic nerves,
to feel breeze through the fur on my arms,
to be chilled and stirred in your mortal martini.
In documents elsewhere I have already recorded
my complaints in some painstaking detail.
Now, because all things near water are joyful,
there might be time to catch up on praise.
"All things near water are joyful." What a phrase to remember on a summer's day. What's the most fun place you've ever been swimming?
Thursday, May 13, 2010
The Story of the Father
I think the hardest thing to do when you're grieving is nothing. It would be so much more satisfying to make a grand gesture, to lash out. Like in "The Story of the Father" by Tony Hoagland:
This is another story that I sometimes think about:
the story of the father
after the funeral of his son the suicide,
going home and burning all the photographs of that dead boy;
standing next to the backyard barbecue,
feeding the pictures to the fire; watching the pale smoke
rise and disappear into the humid Mississippi sky;
aware that he is standing at the edge of some great border,
ignorant that he is hogging all the pain.
How quiet the suburbs are in the middle of an afternoon
when a man is destroying evidence,
breathing in the chemistry of burning Polaroids,
watching the trees over the rickety fence
seem to life and nod in recognition.
Later, he will be surprised
by the anger of his family:
the wife hiding her face in her hands,
the daughter calling him names,
--but for now, he is certain of his act; now
he is like a man destroying a religion,
or hacking at the root of a tree.
Over and over I have arrived here just in time
to watch the father use a rusty piece of wire
to nudge the last photo of the boy
into the orange part of the flame:
the face going brown, the memory undeveloping.
It is not the misbegotten logic of the father;
it is not the pity of the snuffed-out youth;
it is the old intelligence of pain
that I admire:
how it moves around inside of him like smoke;
how it knows exactly what to do with human beings
to stay inside of them forever.
Much has been made of how "accessible" the poetry of Billy Collins is; this poem seems to me similarly easy to enter. Although where you end up might not be where you thought you were going.
This is another story that I sometimes think about:
the story of the father
after the funeral of his son the suicide,
going home and burning all the photographs of that dead boy;
standing next to the backyard barbecue,
feeding the pictures to the fire; watching the pale smoke
rise and disappear into the humid Mississippi sky;
aware that he is standing at the edge of some great border,
ignorant that he is hogging all the pain.
How quiet the suburbs are in the middle of an afternoon
when a man is destroying evidence,
breathing in the chemistry of burning Polaroids,
watching the trees over the rickety fence
seem to life and nod in recognition.
Later, he will be surprised
by the anger of his family:
the wife hiding her face in her hands,
the daughter calling him names,
--but for now, he is certain of his act; now
he is like a man destroying a religion,
or hacking at the root of a tree.
Over and over I have arrived here just in time
to watch the father use a rusty piece of wire
to nudge the last photo of the boy
into the orange part of the flame:
the face going brown, the memory undeveloping.
It is not the misbegotten logic of the father;
it is not the pity of the snuffed-out youth;
it is the old intelligence of pain
that I admire:
how it moves around inside of him like smoke;
how it knows exactly what to do with human beings
to stay inside of them forever.
Much has been made of how "accessible" the poetry of Billy Collins is; this poem seems to me similarly easy to enter. Although where you end up might not be where you thought you were going.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Two Trains
The bit of conversation I had with Readersguide in the comments about Symbolism According to Cliff's Notes reminded me of a Tony Hoagland poem that I enjoyed because it builds up and then shoots down a couple of symbolic meanings:
Two Trains
Then there was that song called "Two Trains Running,"
a Mississippi blues they play on late-night radio,
that program after midnight called FM in the AM,
--well, I always thought it was about trains.
Then somebody told me it was about what a man and woman do
under the covers of their bed, moving back and forth
like slow pistons in a shiny black locomotive,
the rods and valves trying to stay coordinated
long enough that they will "get to the station"
at the same time. And one of the trains
goes out of sight into the mountain tunnel,
but when they break back into the light
the other train has somehow pulled ahead,
the two trains running like that, side by side,
first one and then the other, with the fierce white
bursts of smoke puffing from their stacks,
into a sky so sharp and blue you want to die.
So then for a long time I thought the song was about sex.
But then Mack told me that all train songs
are really about Jesus, about how the second train
is shadowing the first, so He walks in your footsteps
and He watches you from behind, He is running with you,
He is your brakeman and your engineer,
your coolant and your coal,
and He will catch you when you fall,
and when you stall He will push you through
the darkest mountain valley, up the steepest hill,
and the rough chuff chuff of His fingers on the washboard
and the harmonica woo woo is the long soul cry by which He
pulls you through the bloody tunnel of the world.
So then I thought the two trains song was a gospel song.
Then I quit my job in Santa Fe and Sharon drove
her spike heel through my heart
and I got twelve years older and Dean moved away,
and now I think the song might be about good-byes--
because we are no even in the same time zone,
or moving at the same speed, or perhaps even
headed toward the same destination--
forgodsakes, we are not even trains!
What grief it is to love some people like your own
blood, and then to see them simply disappear;
to feel time bearing us away
one boxcar at a time.
And sometimes, sitting in my chair
I can feel the absence stretching out in all directions--
like the deaf, defoliated silence
just after a train has thundered past the platform,
just before the mindless birds begin to chirp again
--and the wildflowers that grow beside the tracks
wobble wildly on their little stems,
then gradually grow still and stand
motherless and vertical in the middle of everything.
I don't approve of the idea that a song or a poem has to be "about" something besides what it actually says; I like to read literally, at least at first. The wildflower at the end can still be a wildflower--it doesn't have to be the speaker. The speaker is putting himself in the place of the flower, maybe, and feeling the same way--left behind, trying to grow a backbone.
The only thing I like about imagining a book is about something other than what it says is the possibilities it offers for playing games like the one the kids and I were playing this morning. If the book was about any period in history previous to the 20th century, we appended "IN SPACE!" (A Tale of Two Cities...IN SPACE!) and if the book was already set in space, we appended "in Victorian London" to the title (Footfall...IN VICTORIAN LONDON!)
Can you think of some good ones along those lines?
Two Trains
Then there was that song called "Two Trains Running,"
a Mississippi blues they play on late-night radio,
that program after midnight called FM in the AM,
--well, I always thought it was about trains.
Then somebody told me it was about what a man and woman do
under the covers of their bed, moving back and forth
like slow pistons in a shiny black locomotive,
the rods and valves trying to stay coordinated
long enough that they will "get to the station"
at the same time. And one of the trains
goes out of sight into the mountain tunnel,
but when they break back into the light
the other train has somehow pulled ahead,
the two trains running like that, side by side,
first one and then the other, with the fierce white
bursts of smoke puffing from their stacks,
into a sky so sharp and blue you want to die.
So then for a long time I thought the song was about sex.
But then Mack told me that all train songs
are really about Jesus, about how the second train
is shadowing the first, so He walks in your footsteps
and He watches you from behind, He is running with you,
He is your brakeman and your engineer,
your coolant and your coal,
and He will catch you when you fall,
and when you stall He will push you through
the darkest mountain valley, up the steepest hill,
and the rough chuff chuff of His fingers on the washboard
and the harmonica woo woo is the long soul cry by which He
pulls you through the bloody tunnel of the world.
So then I thought the two trains song was a gospel song.
Then I quit my job in Santa Fe and Sharon drove
her spike heel through my heart
and I got twelve years older and Dean moved away,
and now I think the song might be about good-byes--
because we are no even in the same time zone,
or moving at the same speed, or perhaps even
headed toward the same destination--
forgodsakes, we are not even trains!
What grief it is to love some people like your own
blood, and then to see them simply disappear;
to feel time bearing us away
one boxcar at a time.
And sometimes, sitting in my chair
I can feel the absence stretching out in all directions--
like the deaf, defoliated silence
just after a train has thundered past the platform,
just before the mindless birds begin to chirp again
--and the wildflowers that grow beside the tracks
wobble wildly on their little stems,
then gradually grow still and stand
motherless and vertical in the middle of everything.
I don't approve of the idea that a song or a poem has to be "about" something besides what it actually says; I like to read literally, at least at first. The wildflower at the end can still be a wildflower--it doesn't have to be the speaker. The speaker is putting himself in the place of the flower, maybe, and feeling the same way--left behind, trying to grow a backbone.
The only thing I like about imagining a book is about something other than what it says is the possibilities it offers for playing games like the one the kids and I were playing this morning. If the book was about any period in history previous to the 20th century, we appended "IN SPACE!" (A Tale of Two Cities...IN SPACE!) and if the book was already set in space, we appended "in Victorian London" to the title (Footfall...IN VICTORIAN LONDON!)
Can you think of some good ones along those lines?
Monday, May 18, 2009
A Color of the Sky
I've been sicker than I can remember being for a long time, and it was just not going away. Finally on Saturday I felt so much worse I drove myself 45 minutes south to the nearest Urgent Care and came home with antibiotics, albuterol puffer, and a magic remedy that paralyzes my cough reflex long enough for me to get some sleep. (Readers, please note the irony of the puffer, in light of my recent shelving of the kids' nebulizer.) I think I didn't take being sick as seriously as I might have in January or February because, look, it's May. The yellow and orange azaleas are in flagrant, extravagant bloom in my backyard. The rhododendrons are opening up from their deep, deep red. The sun is shining. How could anything be that wrong? Until I got to where I couldn't do anything except cough. I have a mostly uncontrollable, sound-barrier-breaking cough that makes cats leap off my lap in alarm. It makes people move away from me, when I'm around any. Mostly I've been driving, to class and out on unavoidable errands. My cough also alarmed my students...they hope it wasn't the swine flu. Not that the Urgent Care center tested me for it. I'm hoping that my general dullness of mind hasn't been too noticeable. My brain feels shaken up in there; my head hurts and I've pulled my shoulder from coughing. And I'm not even going to tell you what a trial it is to cough this hard at this particular time of the month.
Now this morning is another absolutely glorious, if chilly for May, sunlit-blossom-morning. Here's the poem that fits my mood, "A Color of the Sky" by Tony Hoagland:
Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,
driving over the hills from work.
There are the dark parts on the road
when you pass through clumps of wood
and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,
but that doesn't make the road an allegory.
I should call Marie and apologize
for being so boring at dinner last night,
but can I really promise not to be that way again?
And anyway, I'd rather watch the trees, tossing
in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.
Otherwise it's spring, and everything looks frail;
the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves
are full of infant chlorophyll,
the very tint of inexperience.
Last summer's song is making a comeback on the radio,
and on the highway overpass,
the only metaphysical vandal in America has written
MEMORY LOVES TIME
in big black spraypaint letters,
which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.
Last night I dreamed of X again.
She's like a stain on my subconscious sheets.
Years ago she penetrated me
but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
I never got her out,
but now I'm glad.
What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.
Outside the youth center, between the liquor store
and the police station,
a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;
overflowing with blossomfoam,
like a sudsy mug of beer;
like a bride ripping off her clothes,
dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,
so Nature's wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It's been doing that all week:
making beauty
and throwing it away,
and making more.
I love the kind of peaceful, surreal mood of that poem, and the way little is what is seems--"what I thought was an injustice" (like being sick this time of year) "turned out to be a color of the sky," maybe something I wouldn't ordinarily notice so much except when I'm flat on my back!
And I love the "metaphysical vandal." It reminds me of the perennially spray-painted overpass on the Washington D.C. beltway that said "Surrender Dorothy" right before the Mormon temple which looks, in all its white and rising glory, a little like the outline of the castle of the wicked witch of the west. When you think about it.
Seen any good graffiti in your travels lately?
Now this morning is another absolutely glorious, if chilly for May, sunlit-blossom-morning. Here's the poem that fits my mood, "A Color of the Sky" by Tony Hoagland:
Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,
driving over the hills from work.
There are the dark parts on the road
when you pass through clumps of wood
and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,
but that doesn't make the road an allegory.
I should call Marie and apologize
for being so boring at dinner last night,
but can I really promise not to be that way again?
And anyway, I'd rather watch the trees, tossing
in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.
Otherwise it's spring, and everything looks frail;
the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves
are full of infant chlorophyll,
the very tint of inexperience.
Last summer's song is making a comeback on the radio,
and on the highway overpass,
the only metaphysical vandal in America has written
MEMORY LOVES TIME
in big black spraypaint letters,
which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.
Last night I dreamed of X again.
She's like a stain on my subconscious sheets.
Years ago she penetrated me
but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
I never got her out,
but now I'm glad.
What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.
Outside the youth center, between the liquor store
and the police station,
a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;
overflowing with blossomfoam,
like a sudsy mug of beer;
like a bride ripping off her clothes,
dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,
so Nature's wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It's been doing that all week:
making beauty
and throwing it away,
and making more.
I love the kind of peaceful, surreal mood of that poem, and the way little is what is seems--"what I thought was an injustice" (like being sick this time of year) "turned out to be a color of the sky," maybe something I wouldn't ordinarily notice so much except when I'm flat on my back!
And I love the "metaphysical vandal." It reminds me of the perennially spray-painted overpass on the Washington D.C. beltway that said "Surrender Dorothy" right before the Mormon temple which looks, in all its white and rising glory, a little like the outline of the castle of the wicked witch of the west. When you think about it.
Seen any good graffiti in your travels lately?
Monday, April 6, 2009
I Have News for You
I am a person who likes drama. I used to like storms, before I moved to a rural area where electricity is evidently hard to sustain. I like exaggerated gestures and vacations with something exciting to do every moment. I like The Reduced Shakespeare Company, because watching them makes me laugh so hard my stomach hurts.
Sometimes I try to imitate people who are calm and cool and laid-back about things. Yeah, we'll do that when we get to it, I think. And the next minute I'm up and racing around, yelling "it's time! We're going to be late!"
And sometimes I try to imitate people who accept the world at face value, and who try to say what they mean, as if I hadn't been reared by people who always asked me to go in the kitchen and get them a glass of water when the conversation went above my head, people who will sit silently in the dining room, like Pearl Tull in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, and wait for someone to notice they want the butter passed.
These are just some of the reasons I love this poem, I Have News for You, by Tony Hoagland, sent to me by my friend Laura (who can see the whole story of a childhood in her first glance at a broken playground swing):
There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood
and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.
There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures irrecoverable
and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings
do not send their tuberous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives
as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;
and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
unpacking the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.
Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,
who do not yearn after love or fame or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
Thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.
Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.
I have news for you:
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room
and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.
Don't you like the way the ending of the poem suggests the old story about the person who turns on the weather to see what it's like outside, and the other person who says to just go and open the door?
I'll bet "people who get up in the morning and cross a room/and open a window to let the sweet breeze in" are calmer partly because they live in a better climate. (It's going to snow here today! Aaurgh! Will it stick? Will I make it through my commute tomorrow morning?) And I'll bet those calmer people don't spend too much of their time writing little updates on Facebook or Twitter.
Anyway, what do those folks who update that they're feeling sick want from me? A dictionary? A link to a sad violin solo? Me boarding an airplane feeling like Beth March, with a pot of chicken soup? Is it a matter of life and death? Is it already too late? Aaahh!
Sometimes I try to imitate people who are calm and cool and laid-back about things. Yeah, we'll do that when we get to it, I think. And the next minute I'm up and racing around, yelling "it's time! We're going to be late!"
And sometimes I try to imitate people who accept the world at face value, and who try to say what they mean, as if I hadn't been reared by people who always asked me to go in the kitchen and get them a glass of water when the conversation went above my head, people who will sit silently in the dining room, like Pearl Tull in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, and wait for someone to notice they want the butter passed.
These are just some of the reasons I love this poem, I Have News for You, by Tony Hoagland, sent to me by my friend Laura (who can see the whole story of a childhood in her first glance at a broken playground swing):
There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood
and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.
There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures irrecoverable
and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings
do not send their tuberous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives
as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;
and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
unpacking the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.
Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,
who do not yearn after love or fame or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
Thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.
Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.
I have news for you:
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room
and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.
Don't you like the way the ending of the poem suggests the old story about the person who turns on the weather to see what it's like outside, and the other person who says to just go and open the door?
I'll bet "people who get up in the morning and cross a room/and open a window to let the sweet breeze in" are calmer partly because they live in a better climate. (It's going to snow here today! Aaurgh! Will it stick? Will I make it through my commute tomorrow morning?) And I'll bet those calmer people don't spend too much of their time writing little updates on Facebook or Twitter.
Anyway, what do those folks who update that they're feeling sick want from me? A dictionary? A link to a sad violin solo? Me boarding an airplane feeling like Beth March, with a pot of chicken soup? Is it a matter of life and death? Is it already too late? Aaahh!
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