Poetry Friday: Thomas Lux, Genoans, Tatars, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Aquarius, Fleas, &c.

Today, March 20th, is the day medieval scholars chose as the "beginning" of the Black Death - according to them, the plague was generated on March 20th in the year 1345 when there was a "triple conjuntion of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius." That's a slightly more elegant explanation than the real one - that infected rats were carried to Europe on ships from Asia and the Middle East - once in harbor, infected rats died in the streets, and infected fleas from those dead rats then jumped onto humans and infected them.

There's a poem about the plague that I heard read by its author once and have never forgotten. It's written by Tom Lux, and once you've heard Lux read, no one else will satisfy, except possibly Seamus Heaney. Lux has a gorgeous, sonorous voice, and he's not afraid to broadcast it.

Maybe the reason I love this poem is because I have an older brother I adored and followed around like a puppy when I was a kid. I know, the poem is eerie. Lux based his poem on the old claim that Tatars, attacking the position of Genoans fighting them in the Middle East, catapulted dead troops struck down by the plague over the Genoan walls in an attempt to infect the enemy.



Plague Victims Catapulted Into Besieged City

Early germ
warfare. The dead
hurled this way look like wheels
in the sky. Look: there goes
Larry the Shoemaker, barefoot, over the wall,
and Mary Sausage Stuffer, see how she flies,
and the Hatter twins, both at once, soar
over the parapet, little Tommy's elbow bent
as if in a salute,
and his sister, Mathilde, she follows him,
arms outstretched, through the air,
just as she did
on earth.

--Thomas Lux

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On March 27th - that's next Friday - I'll be hosting the Poetry Friday round-up for the first time, right here at The Drift Record. But this week, you'll find it at The Wild Rose Reader. Elaine, how do you have time to do this AND your Political Verses blog?

P-oetry Friday: The Letter P

THE LETTER P

Erin over at Down the Rabbit Hole participated in an interesting challenge: she was assigned a random letter (she got the letter "n") by Lindsay over at Adventures of a Book Thief (who got the letter "m" from someone called HBee over at ....well, you get the pattern) - the goal is to make a list of things you love that begin with the letter you've been assigned. Erin's list is great and includes explanations: night, Neverland, Nosferatu, north, narwhals.....At the end of the entry, she asked if anyone else wanted a random letter and I volunteered. She sent me the letter "P." So now it's my turn. But first, because it's Poetry Friday, I offer up this p-oem:

P Poem

p pod
p ter rabbit
p ter pan
p nut butter
p j's
p stains
p brains
p u
p kaboo
p zand q's
p's be with you

P.S. - That' p-retty bad. For fun, here are ten of my favorite things beginning with the letter P:

1. POSTCARDS - I'm addicted to real photo postcards, the kind that itinerant PHOTOGRAPHERS made by traveling the country and taking photos of houses, stores, families, events, landscapes - to be mailed or kept as souvenirs. It's especially exciting to find one that shows real PEOPLE going about their lives, where you wonder exactly what was happening before/after it was taken.


2. PICNICS- It's hard to choose just one reason for why I love these. Is it because they came to me in summer, the season of my birthday and the season of belief? Because even in an industrious family, this was the time people gave themselves PERMISSION to relax? Because we always got baked beans and POTATO SALAD? (No one made potato salad like my grandmother, and then my mother, and now me, and next my daughter....the secret is: go heavy on the dill PICKLES....) Because a picnic was always so temporary - finish eating, pack up the hamper, toss the garbage, shake off the tablecloth, and it all disappeared? The answer is yes to all of these POSSIBILITIES, as well as one more: the setting was always PARADISE - a lake, a river, or saltwater somewhere nearby, sand, driftwood, sun. On some occasions, the scent of eucalyptus trees. Adults falling asleep on blankets while kids PLAYED.



3. PARIS - What's not to love? The small streets of the Marais, the medieval collection at the Cluny, the vintage shopping arcades, the PINK tinge to the old buildings, the slow-moving Seine, the PUPPET theater in the Luxembourg Gardens. Even the manhole covers in Paris are beautiful. Plus, Paris takes you into subcategory "P"'s - PATE, PATISSERIES, PARFUMERIES ....Here is a photo I love of children at a puppet show in Paris - the photographer was Alfred Eisenstadt. Just look at those faces! This is why I love writing for kids:



4. PESTO - The perfect combination - olive oil, basil, garlic, Parmesan cheese. Close your eyes and take a bite of anything with pesto on it or in it, and you're in Italy, and the sun is shining. Here's a woman in Orvieto on market day, and a delicatessen in Bologna (photos from Flickr.com)



5. POETRY - well, that's a given, right?

6. PASTRAMI - but not just any pastrami. This has to be a pastrami Reuben sandwich on rye and it has to be at Kenny and Zuke's in PORTLAND (sorry, New York, but Kenny and Zuke's wins, hands down. ) Their Reuben, without a doubt, is the sandwich of choice for the gods on Mt. Olympus. Believe me, this sandwich is worth flying across the country to taste. And the whole Kenny & Zuke's vibe is energizing, PLEASUREFUL, noisy, fun. Top it all off with an egg cream and, for dessert, a traditional regelach. Oh, yum. Even Homer Simpson agrees:




7. PERLMAN - as in Itzhak Perlman. No matter what he plays, you can hear EVERY note clear as a bell, no matter how slight, no note is slighted, and you can hear his love of and respect for and PASSION for the instrument:
8. PEPPERS - jalapeno, serrano, de arbol, ancho, poblano, manzana, mirasol, pasilla, chilaca, guero, rocotillo, verde, guajillo, habanero, piquin (ouch, ouch, ouch, hot!!) - where would food be without them?


9. PARADES - I love them big or small. Love the floats, love the silly Parade Marshall and/or the Princess looking like waving to the crowd is the highlight of her life. Love the themes - St. Patrick's Day, a local Tulip Festival, 4th of July, Little Italy's San Gennaro. And there's something about a marching band that always makes me break out crying, which is probably not the intended effect.

10. PIAZZOLLA- as in Astor Piazzolla, the composer and bandoneon player who revolutionized traditional tango music. Piazzolla was born in Argentina but spent most of his childhood in New York City. He was the son of Italian immigrants, and learned to play the bandoneon when his father, nostalgic for his homeland, found one in a pawn shop. Yo-Yo Ma plays Piazzolla's "new tango" music on "Soul of the Tango: The Music of Astor Piazzolla."

I'll continue the chain....does anyone want me to send them a random letter? Just enter it in the comments field (w/ email address or some way to contact you via a blog...?) and I'll send you one.

LATE ADDITION: Oh, no!!! Tricia of The Miss Rumphius Effect has just reminded me of Pride and Prejudice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well, I have to continue my list, because that can't be left out. I'll make it a baker's dozen of P's:

11. (Two-for-one) PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and PERSUASION by Jane Austen - perfect books, which I read every few years. And unless anybody thinks these classics are too highbrow, I'll include the BBC version of P & P with Colin Firth (w/Darcy's infamous dive into the POND, though my favorite scene is when he runs toward the carriage as Elizabeth is trying to get away - the way he buttons his jacket and straightens it as he hurries to catch her before she leaves....) And I'll add Persuasion's near-perfect adaptation to film. Thank you, Ms. Austen:



12. POMEGRANATES - which are so beautiful and mysterious and strange. They have always unnerved me, ever since reading the myth of PERSEPHONE and her abduction by Hades to the Underworld. Imagine Demeter's grief as she searches for her daughter, and Helios, the sun, telling her where the girl is. Imagine begging Zeus, the girl's father, to let her come back from the Underworld, and then imagine eating just a few seeds of a pomegranate while you are retrieving her, and condemning your daughter to one season a year below the earth as Queen of the Underworld. Gad. And imagine how nice it would be if we understood our own modern religions in this metaphorical way - as myths to explain the seasons, the weather, the salt of the oceans, the natural world in general - instead of needing them to be the literal truth. Powerful stories, understood metaphorically - that appeals to me.


13. PAIN AU CHOCOLATE made by Besalu, Seattle's yummiest PATISSERIE (see #3 sub-categories). Anyone who has ever eaten one of these at Besalu knows what I'm talking about. In heaven, I'm going to have one every single morning, along with a cappucino made by the people at Caffe PUCCINI in San Francisco:





I have to stop this!! (there's PIZZA, PUGET SOUND, PRESENTS, PULLED PORK sandwiches from PASEO in Seattle's Fremont District, PROVENCE, PUMPERNICKLE bread, the PACIFIC Ocean, PROSCIUTTO, POTTER (Beatrix) and PETER(Rabbit), .....and how can I leave out PENCILS?? No, I can't leave out pencils....

and I can't leave out the most important one of all:

PEACE

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Poetry Friday is being hosted this week by Tricia over at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Since this post honors the letter P, don't I get one P.S. ?? Here it is:

P.S. There is no way to leave out PIKE PLACE MARKET in Seattle - one of my favorite places ever. Hard to believe that back in the mid-70's our City Fathers (along with some pretty greedy real estate developers) were talking about pulling it down; now it's probably one of the most visited sites in Seattle (and you can get some fine vegetables, fish, olives, cheese, bread, humbow and PIROSHKIS there...) (and the view of ferry boats out on Elliott Bay is to die for) (strolling around buying grapes, avocados, limes, cilantro, pears, blue cheese, hazelnuts....oh, Pike Place Market is as close to living in Europe as I'm ever going to get.)

One More Post for Friday: A Poetry Stretch

Scroll down for my Poetry Friday post with a poem by Mary Cornish. But I want to add in a response to Tricia's POETRY STRETCH challenge (see The Miss Rumphius Effect) for this week: to write a personal ad written by an animal. I cheated - this is not written by an animal. But it is written by a magician and it involves an animal.

Magician's Assistant?

i saw u in half
price books, games
section, but no illusions:
my eyes threw knives
while u spun.
oh! i want
to pull you by the ears
out of my hat, honey-bunny,
make magic w/ me,
pls don't disappear again.

Poetry Friday: Mary Cornish

Mary Cornish is one of my favorite poets. Her intelligence shines through in every poem she writes, but it doesn't rule her exclusively; rather, her heart and her intellect share the responsibilities and they manage to get along well! That kind of balance is rare. Billy Collins says of her work, "She takes us by the hand and leads us into rooms of wonder." Her book RED STUDIO is simply stunning -- she has such a painterly eye, she always manages to set the scene beautifully as if composing a picture, and yet she makes us see even the absence of objects and people, and she turns us toward memory. The poems in the book deal with both her grief at the loss of a beloved husband and her delight in the real, physical world. Here's one of my favorite poems from that book. In it, Cornish talks about a children's game but manages to say so much more.


HOUSEHOLD ALCHEMY


Five pears in a wooden bowl,
sun on the table-- cause enough
for celebration or defeat: the skin
of fruit, the flesh of trees.
Out of such ripening, the self
could step from the bowl of the world
into light on pears--
as when children
play Hide the Thimble: the object
always hidden in plain sight,
the search that turns a solid house
quicksilver. Rain falls on the glass
in every room; a curtain flickers
over the sink; the sill moves
in and out of shadow.
And the children say,
You're getting cold,
you're getting very hot.
Now leaves fuse
on the window, shimmer
from a moving branch outside.
Light breathes on the table
across my husband's hand--
it is smoke
and a cloud, and a fugitive servant...

The flame of five pears, gold
as honey, the stillness of the bowl
that holds them in plain sight.
In the wheel-fire of the world:
We're getting hot. We're burning.


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Poetry Friday today is being hosted by Anastasia Suen over at Picture Book of the Day. Thanks, Anastasia! (And hooray, hooray, hooray, it is MARCH!!!!)

Poetry Friday: Oh. No. More. Snow.

It snowed another four inches in Seattle Wednesday night, and it shouldn't snow at the end of February in Seattle, not if there have already been several good snowstorms for the season. People are beginning to stare at their feet as they walk by you on the sidewalk, for no other reason than a general long-winter malaise.


So in an effort to raise my eyes (and my spirits) and look around, here is a poem I thought I would save until May, since it mentions that lovely month (or "lusty month" as Lerner and Loewe said in Camelot - "the darling month when everyone throws self-control away.") I am in deep need of this poem RIGHT NOW. It's by Sara Teasdale, whose work was always described to me in derogatory terms when I studied poetry. I think that's because she stayed with meter and lyricism longer than most modern poets, and because women writers were and are often put down (by other women as much as men) when their focus falls on domestic scenes. Whatever the reason, there's a charge of sentimentality against some of Teasdale's poetry, and not without reason. Even this poem has some problems that make me nervous - that line "trailing stately round her bluffs" almost sinks it, with its elevated diction. But oh, how can anyone resist those redbirds, the redbud, the buckberry, the wild plum....? I would forgive Teasdale anything, just for giving me those colors on a gray February day.

Redbirds

Redbirds, redbirds
Long and long ago,
What a honey-call you had
In hills I used to know;
Redbud, buckberry,
Wild plum-tree
And proud river sweeping
Southward to the sea,
Brown and gold in the sun
Sparkling far below,
Trailing stately round her bluffs
Where the poplars grow --
Redbirds, redbirds,
Are you singing still
As you sang one May day
On Saxton's Hill?

Sara Teasdale

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The Poetry Friday round-up this week is over at Mommy's Favorite Children's Books.