Why Does a Chicken?

I've been thinking a lot about riddles lately, since I've been reading a review copy of Peter Turchi's wonderful new book A Muse and A Maze: Writing as Puzzle, Mystery and Magic (my review of it will be in January's Numero Cinq.)

Turchi, who wrote another favorite of mine (Maps of the Imagination) has written a book full of tidbits writers should be thinking about all the time. His observations about how puzzle-making enters into creative writing confirm my own: Good stories always ask a few questions we have trouble answering. Poetry is especially dependent on riddles, since metaphorical thinking is a form of puzzle-making (observing something to be equal to something else.) When we remember a story or a poem, isn't it because it has asked us questions that required contemplation? We  linger in the mystery. Genre fiction, on the other hand, leads readers to solutions. So the more generic (genre-centered) writing is, the less it approaches unknowns and the more it offers up answers. Nothing wrong with that, if reading is done for entertainment - at the end of a good detective story, you usually can hear the final click of the box that contains the solution to the puzzle closing again.  Granted, some genre work does push itself into literary territory. But if you read literary fiction and poetry, too, then you have to be comfortable with riddles that can't be solved - you don't hear that box lid clicking closed.  That's what Turchi's book is all about, and I encourage you to read it - you can find out about it at this link. 

Ah, the unsolvable riddle - give me one of those from time to time and I'm happy. So my Poetry Friday contribution this week is a poem by A.A. Milne, made all the better since it convinces me that unanswerable questions can be introduced to kids from the time they learn to walk. I mean, why does a chicken? If you know why, you can answer in the comments!

COTTLESTON PIE

Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.

Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
Why does a chicken? I don't know why.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.

Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
A fish can't whistle and neither can I.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.

Today's Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted by Paul at These Four Corners. Head over there to see what other people have posted. 

Poetry Friday: Happy Birthday, Calvin Trillin!

Deadlines like little fish floating past me....

 
I haven't been posting very often on The Drift Record lately, not sure why. Since retiring from my teaching position with Vermont College of Fine Arts, I find myself more than a little thrilled with the non-push and non-rush of not even knowing what day of the week it is. Deadlines float past me like little fish that I don't need to catch, I just want to enjoy their liveliness and their shimmer. I don't mind seeing these little fingerlings swimming around down there under the water - I like knowing life is bustling somewhere around me. But it's like being in the back of a rowboat that's being rowed around a calm lake by a good friend - there's no need for conversation, we're just lolling around in the sunshine (well, yes, it's December, but I mean the interior glow) and I'm letting my hand drift in the water alongside the boat. Drifting over smooth, silky, cool water - a painting by Claude Monet - that's what retirement has been feeling like.

Smooth, silky, cool water...

On certainly special days, I feel like I'm still at that lake, but this time I'm a fresh-water turtle on a log at the lake's edge, and I have my neck out and I'm absolutely still, soaking up the sun. All's right with the world. My breathing is all I hear. No, that's not true - I hear kids laughing in the distance. Maybe a dog barking. Maybe a crow cawing. No need to respond.

Basking and not knowing what day it is....

So if I don't post regularly on Poetry Friday - that's why. I'm out at that lake. I'm taking a turn at being a quiet turtle on a warm log....

Today, however, I'm not a turtle - I'm popping in because it's Calvin Trillin's birthday, so I want to say Happy Birthday, Calvin.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Trillin

I love the way that man writes (could that explain why I have a whole shelf full of his books?) He's a master of the humorous essay, and he writes fine satirical poetry - political commentary with meter and rhyme.  Reading his work can quickly change a bad mood (when I'm not drifting around on a lake, I'm in the Titanic and it's going down fast) into an okay-it's-not-the-end-of-the-world mood. He makes me laugh out loud, and that's not easy to do because I'm often a cranky, judgmental, hard-to-satisfy reader.

Here is a little something he said about writing poetry, so that's what I'm going to share for Poetry Friday. I think I've got it right:

When people say 'How do you think about what to write about in the poems every week?'  I say, 'Well, I have to turn it in on Monday, so on Sunday nights I turn the shower to iambic pentameter and it sort of works out that way.'

Iambic pentameter in the shower -not as easy as he makes it sound.

Hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving and that you are looking forward to being with family and friends over the holidays. I love the bustle of Christmas...it's still a season when I stop being a turtle on a log and I become one of those shimmering fish.

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Poetry Friday this week is being hosted by Anastasia at Booktalking - head over there to see what other people are sharing. Don't miss the poem by the late Mark Strand over at Diane Mayr's Kurious Kitty.

Poetry Friday: Small Packages

It's Poetry Friday, and I want to offer up a song. The link to it was posted on Facebook by my friend Daphne Kalmar. The fact that I don't know what the words of the song mean - don't even know the alphabet in which the words of this song are written - makes me hesitate, but it's not really the meaning I'm attracted to. It's the smile on the singer's face. I can hardly describe how much I love the delight this woman feels as she sings her song.

(If the embedded video won't play, just click this link.)

Look at the way that woman's body moves - her arms, her hands, the way she makes that little "crazy" sign up by her head! Maybe she remembers something while she sings her song. Is it all joy, what she remembers? Maybe there's a little sorrow? I might be imagining it. For all I know, the song could be about a lost hat. But no, you can see it from time to time, the wrinkled brow, the catch in the voice, right?

What is she saying? Do I want to know? I imagine the woman is Russian, I imagine a long history of suffering, life under Stalin, Russian soldiers during the winter of 1942-43. But I have a huge imagination when it comes to sorrow.

While in Oaxaca this September, my husband and I walked past a thin young boy every day who played the accordion and hoped for spare change. He sometimes had an even younger sister with him, in charge of holding out her hand. We gave them whatever coins we had, sometimes more, on the way out from our apartment in the morning and on the way back in the late afternoon. He was always there. He couldn't play well; in fact, he didn't really play a tune, just a note here, a note there, while the accordion itself - pulled out, pushed in - did the job of wheezing and begging. Now I'm home in Seattle in my comfy house, but there's no doubt the boy is still there each day, his back up against the stone wall surrounding the Santo Domingo church. His song and the poverty and heartbreak it represents are there, but also here now, with me.

The woman in the video - her pleasure is as much a poem as the lyrics of her song, isn't it? The boy and his sister in Oaxaca - small as sighs - those sighs are poems. And when it comes right down to it, who can say what a poem is or how it comes to us?  I look at the woman while she sings - her hand slapping the table is a poem, her smile is a poem. And the melody drifting out into the Oaxaca air - I could hear the music before I could see the boy - that was a poem.   Delight, joy, suffering, songs, musical notes floating in the air, a teacup on a table, Mickey Mouse on a Russian apron, a hand held out for spare change - all poems. Sometimes they come in small packages.
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This week's Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted by Diane over at Random Noodling. Head over there to see what other people have posted.

POETRY FRIDAY: A Wandering Scotsman

I've recently been researching the life, prose and poetry of the Scottish writer Alastair Reid for an essay soon to be published in Numero Cinq as part of my Undersung series.  Reid, who died a few weeks ago at the age of 88, was a wonderful poet in his own right but was probably best known as a translator of Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. Reid also wrote a children's book that is a favorite of friends of mine (maybe it's reached cult status?)  The title (previously out of print but now back back in print via The New York Review Children's Collection) is OUNCE DICE TRICE; with pictures by the graphic artist and illustrator Ben Shahn.

The book includes, among other delights, several imaginative counting systems (from one to ten - a journey that Reid proves can be fun.) Two examples I particularly like:

Ounce, dice, trice, quartz, quince, sago, serpent, oxygen, nitrogen, denim

and

Instant, distant, tryst, catalyst, quest, sycamore, sophomore, oculist, novelist, dentist.

In the book, Reid collects relatively unknown words and offers them up to us in all their strangeness, the way a talented chef would reveal the secret ingredients of a favorite dish:

You can hear one of his best poems for adults, "Curiosity," by clicking here. The poem is a dog's and cat's (but mostly human's) view of the old adage "Curiosity killed the cat," with Reid coming down hard in favor of being curious.

That link can serve as my poetry contribution today to Poetry Friday, but here's what I'd really like to share - a description of childhood that Reid wrote:

“The principal difference between childhood and the stages of life into which it invariably dissolves is that as children we occupy a limitless present. The past has scarcely room to exist, since, if it means anything at all, it means only the previous day. Similarly, the future is in abeyance; we are not meant to do anything at all until we reach a suitable size. Correspondingly, the present is enormous, mainly because it is all there is.... Walks are dizzying adventures; the days tingle with unknowns, waiting to be made into wonders. Living so utterly in the present, children have an infinite power to transform; they are able to make the world into anything they wish, and they do so, with alacrity. There are no preconceptions, which is why, when a child tells us he is Napoleon, we had better behave with the respect due to a small emperor."

Like Maurice Sendak, Alastair Reid took children seriously while taking language playfully. I encourage you all to read more of his work. You can listen to the poet, with his slight Scottish burr, read several of his own poems for adults over at The Poetry Archive and at the Scottish Poetry Library. 

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Poetry Friday today is being hosted by Michelle at Today's Little Ditty. Head over there to see what other people have posted. And if you want to read my most recent post at Books Around the Table, click here.

Poetry Friday: Ahhhhhh....Home!

I am back from a long trip to Oaxaca - the entire month of September spent there, speaking Spanish, hearing Spanish, wandering through the city markets, wandering through the churches and plazas, wandering in general. I posted on August 29th, over at Books Around the Table, in anticipation of the trip, wondering whether Oaxaca would inspire me to write. After all, the stimulation of "all six senses" (taste, touch, smell, sight, sound - and wonder) is usually a good nudge toward creativity. Oaxaca certainly doesn't disappoint in terms of sensory excitement: Senses were stimulated. I think three photos (the tablecloth in our dining room, a pile of small rugs for sale in the market, a stack of tamales) say everything that needs to be said about textures, tastes and colors.

We heard the church bells ring every morning and afternoon, calling people to mass. We heard oompahs coming from tubas in parades going down our street. We watched giant puppets spinning and dancing at a church where a wedding party was just arriving, and we spent an evening watching and listening to danzon: couples swaying - with a surprising mix of formality and sensuality - to Cuban music. Wonderful.

Oddly, I did no writing at all - other than postcards to family. Having prepped all the sensory receptors, maybe I overloaded on stimulation. And maybe I just wanted to live in the moment, not processing everything through the greedy How-Can-I-Use-This side of my brain. It's not that I was feeling blocked. I just didn't want to write. I wanted to buy chiles and plantains and sesame seeds and grapes up at the market, and I wanted to toast them and grind them up with chocolate into  a delicious mole without thinking, "I'll write a poem about delicious mole."

I wanted to laugh with Teresa, the woman who worked cleaning up the Airbnb garden apartment we rented - she gave me mole-making and tamale-making lessons. I wanted to look at the power in her arms as she stirred and stirred and stirred the mole, and just luxuriate in that strength and be amazed by it, without putting my amazement to practical use in a poem.

But two weeks into the vacation, I found myself wanting to come home. I began to read G. K. Chesterton, whose writing is quintessentially English - precise prose about the chalk hills of Sussex. I began to fantasize about my green garden, with the leaves on the cherry and apple trees beginning to turn gold; as I walked in the Oaxacan sunshine - 80 degrees year-round -  I thought about the way Seattle's air would now be filled with an autumn chill. I wondered what was the matter with me - why couldn't I stay in the moment?

Missing home has a powerful, powerful pull on people. Or maybe I should just say "on me." It's part and parcel of any wanderlust drama I create. It sits just off stage, smiling at me, ready to interrupt any poetic soliloquy I conjure up. "Home," it whispers. Or, after thirty days, "Home," it shouts - I can't control the volume. The longer I stay away, the louder it gets.

I heard recently that a poem I submitted to Seattle's On the Bus series was accepted and will appear on buses (or maybe just one bus?) around town. The title? "Home."

There's a good chance I'm more creative when life is slightly less stimulating. A nice walk around the block might be all I need from time to time - a chance to reflect, but not time to take in more and more and more. Maybe a few months from now, I'll write something inspired by Oaxaca. But one thing I've been reminded of: The life of a wanderer is not for me. I do like a bit of adventure, short, sweet, and temporary. And I do like to drift - you know that feeling in a rowboat, when you put the oars down and the current takes you for awhile? Drifting like that is lovely. But when I drift, I like to stay within sight of the shore. I like to know that with a few strong strokes, I can turn the boat shoreward, and I love the sound of the boat's hull scraping slightly along the pebbles as it comes back to rest on the beach.

 

Ahhhh....Home!

My trip to Oaxaca helped me remember that I am at my most creative not while rowing, not while traveling, not while taking in what is new and strange - but while leaning with my back up against a log on a rocky Northwest beach. My gaze and my thoughts might eventually turn outward, but my body - the real, physical me  - needs the taste, smell, touch, sight, sound and wonder of home. Cherry trees turning gold, cold air, sturdy evergreens, a rocky cove, saltwater and logs and a shore - definitely a shore - to pull into.

Here is a poem by Nelson Bentley about a Pacific Northwest beach. To some of you who read The Drift Record, it will be familiar - I've posted it twice before - maybe I'll post it each time I come home from a long trip to Somewhere Else.

Zero Tide 

I walked from our cabin into the wet dawn
To see the white caps modulating in,
The slow wash of the word in the beginning:
Wind on the bowing sedge seemed from Japan.
A cloud of sandpipers wavered above the dune,
Where surf spoke the permanence of sun.
Back inside, I sat on my son's bed
Where he sweetly slept, guarded by saints and poets,
Oceanic sunrise on his eyelids;
I whispered, "Sean, get up! It's a clamming tide,"
And thought of chill sand fresh from lowering waters,
Foam-bubbled frets across the hard-packed ridges.
"Sean, it's a zero tide!" From a still second,
He came out of the covers like a hummingbird.
"Don't wake up Julian." In the pale blue light
He dressed in whirring silence, all intent.
Along the empty coast the combers hummed:
Sleepy gulls mewled in the clearing mist.
My wife and baby slept folded in singing calm,
Involuted by love as rose or shell.

                                             - Nelson Bentley

Be sure to follow the links (here and here) to read more poems by Bentley - he was a generous teacher and mentor, and an undersung poet; he's not afraid (as I am) to use the word "sweetly,"; it makes me happy to think I can introduce his work to more of you. If you teach English to young adults, his beach-centered poems are the perfect way in to poetry - direct and heartfelt, with a story-telling voice that doesn't put kids off.

Just look at that water - deep emerald green - brrrrr....wonderful!

Poetry Friday was going to be hosted today by Monica at Cartwheels (previously The Poem Trail) - but she is unable to host due to an illness in the family. Instead, head over to Tricia Stohr-Hunt's blog, The Miss Rumphius Effect, for the round-up. Thanks, Tricia. And Monica, hope all is well soon.