Been watching lots of movies lately, me, and reading far too little.  Here’s a pile of opinions: help yourself.

Man of Aran.  This is one of those films you’re just supposed to watch if you have any attachment to Ireland.  It’s no barn-burner, but it is historically significant and pretty interesting to my kind of geek.  Filmed in the early 1930s, Man of Aran is a quasi-documentary about a poor young family living through privation on Inis Mor, the largest of the Aran Islands.   It was made by Richard Flaherty, the same director as Nanook of the North.  He was obsessed with the whole man v. nature trope.  And, well, the family he filmed wasn’t actually a family, but they were locals who did know a thing or two about poverty and hard labor.  This is the first film of Flaherty’s to use any sound other than music, which is apparent but also charming.  For the fiber lovers, there are some cute, albeit brief, shots of sheep and lambs and some snippets of knitting.  The DVD has some great special features, including a documentary about the making of the film and its lasting affects on the people of Aran.  Oh, and I don’t think Jaws would ever have been made were it not for this film, though only the shark dies in Man of Aran. 

Layer Cake.  I’m a sucker for Matthew Vaughn’s brit-gangster films.  Just love ’em.  This time, he turned from producer into director, and I think it was a great idea.  This is definitely the best of the bunch.  I will admit to missing some of the harrum-scarrum pacing and the thickness of the accents, but this film takes us to the educated side of dope dealing and crime.  Daniel Clarke gives a great performance as a yuppie coke dealer XXXX, who is trapped in a deal-gone-bad and the insanity that follows it.  Colm Meaney, as usual, plays a great hard-ass.  George Harris plays a chilling enforcer, and exactly the kind of guy you’d want working for you if you were, well, a yuppie coke dealer.  Which I hope you’re not.  And Sienna Miller plays the smoking hottie, because gangsters need purty girls to hang out with, I guess (Jude Law, dude, you are a dumbass).   In this film, the twists and tricks and plots of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch are refined a bit, and the cleverness of the writing has a chance to shine more brightly.  While still fast-paced, this film just isn’t as hectic as its older siblings.  Loved it.

Young Adam.  Holy hell, I hated this mess of a movie.  When I found it on Netflix, I thought it was a sure thing, what with Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton in the same cast.  Nuh-nuh-nuh-nooo.  I hope it’s the director’s fault.  The film opens with McGregor and his boss pulling a dead woman out of a river and onto their barge.  Over the course of the film, we learn that McGregor’s character knows more than he should about her death, and he begins a relationship with Swinton, his boss’s wife.  Fine and good.  The pacing was plodding–that I can accept.  But McGregor’s character comes off by turns as a freaking sociopath and a would-be likable character.  But the actor seems so confused by his character’s actions that he can’t commit to either monster or failed man.  Throughout, McGregor’s character never seems to have a motive or soul or any reason to act as he does.  Scott and I were baffled throughout the movie.  My impression is that this director, David Mackenzie, is just a hateful misogynist–I don’t know what else to think.  I don’t normally get that impression from films, but it really seems like he hates each and every woman in the film.  I haven’t seen any of Mackenzie’s other work, but this hasn’t sent me searching for his next big project.  He may just have unseated Connery as my long-standing Scottish Guy I Hate, which I thought was impossible. 

The Tenth Good Thing About Barney, by Judith Viorst.  Yes.  I am this pitiful.  My cat is dying, so I am comfort myself by reading and re-reading the book my Mom got me when our first cat died.  Boy, would a therapist have fun with that.  But I love this book because it did comfort me when I was a little kid, and because I find solace knowing that when Scath does die, he will indeed be buried under a tree in our yard and he will feed my garden.  Except maybe I’m now convinced that Scath won’t die, and maybe he’s faking the cancer.  Ok, time to read the book again.

So, getting back to normal here at the Mean-Skuta Manse.  And for us, “normal” needs a prefix.

Somehow I accidentally agreed to be in a calendar (fully dressed, get your minds out of the gutter) some friends are putting together.  I’m normally pretty camera shy, having experienced both a shutterbug step-Dad and, well, stalking ( I don’t recommend the latter).  For a former drama-club kid, dancer, and singer with good stage presence, I’m pretty strange about being watched and/or photographed if I don’t feel totally in control of the situation.  But Anubh wants to make a calendar to display Richard’s work.  And I think I’m incapable of saying no to either of them, hence her hat and his hand-woven belt.  And Richard gave me the best helmet ever.  For free.  And I keep getting all of this Norse stuff, but haven’t worked up the complete, historically correct kit.  So, we’re heading to John the Ferrier’s for Imbolc, and I guess I’m going to swallow my crazy and make some lovely Viking clothes for myself so’s the helmet and the jewelery make visual sense.  Yikes.  Lots of sewing in my immediate future, followed by some cold-weather camping and then some people looking at me way too much when I’m just standing here would you stop with the clicking and the pointing and the ughhhhh.   Beer may be necessary.

And, sheesh, I cannot pick a project for the Knitting Olympics.  I hate seeing “undecided” there next to my name.  I’m trying to come up with something I can make from my stash, and that will be challenging enough but that I can work on while watching the Olympics.  I’d say lace, but the only lace-weight I have is tied up in the Kimono Shawl, and is driving me nuts.  So I could frog that and work with yarn I don’t like, or I can buy yarn I don’t need to make something I haven’t yet fallen in love with.  Or I can chuck the lace-weight idea entirely and make . . . Any suggestions?  Time to take a serious look through the yarn.

Those socks I made Scott are done, and fit well, but are a bit too scratchy right off the needles.  Here’s hoping they soften up in the wash.  And a pair of wool socks for my Mom is on the needles.  This is an experiment in fiber-sensitivities, so if they itch her, I get them back.  Cross your fingers for her–she needs to be able to wear more wool if she wants me to be able to make more goodies for her.  I’m using some lovely Wildfoote in Elderberry that Chris sent me a while back, and I love the texture of the yarn.

A handmade sling is winging its way out to California for the wool-footed boy.  I would have made it much sooner, but, well, we were a bit distracted.  I actually used the same batik I used to line my aunt’s purse from the same post.  I hope his folks like using the sling.

Originally posted by Rachel

And now, as they say, for something completely different.

John Berryman. The first time I read one of The Dream Songs, (#14, “Life Friends, is boring”) it was like walking out my front door one morning and discovering I was in Bora Bora. I had never read anything like it before or since, and ever since that day I have worshiped the man named John Berryman with a fierceness with which I had not worshiped another poet since my high school days of Plath-worship. (What does it say that I have a passionate love for suicides? Let’s not discuss.)

But this post is to give you some background on the poet and his work, not to profess my undying love of a suicidal alcoholic.

Writing out his mini-bio would be boring (I tried for a minute), and pointless, really, since there’s a pretty good one here:

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/berryman/life.htm

So go read that, please. I’ll wait.

Okay? Wonderful.

The Dream Songs, considered Berryman’s magnum opus, were borne out of a period in which he was seeing an analyst and keeping track of his dreams. The Dream Songs are, in effect, a dream journal of sorts, making wild leaps of logic, using unusual syntax, even switching back and forth between dialects and point-of-view, though the narrator, Henry, remains largely constant throughout (sometimes he talks about himself in the third person, sometimes even in the second person).  He also frequently addresses a companion, a black face performer, who calls Henry “Mr. Bones.” They are mostly 18 line poems broken into three stanzas, a form developed in a work that was to be the springboard for The Dream Songs, similarly titled, “The Nervous Songs,” a series of nine persona poems collected in his 1948 book, The Dispossessed. While the poems can obviously be read individually and even out of order, Berryman has always considered The Dream Songs to be one long poem held together by Henry’s personality. They were originally published as 77 Dream Songs in 1964, but Berryman continued to write them even after this publication, later adding a second volume more than double in length, His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, bringing the total number of Dream Songs to 385.

An incredible amount of criticism on The Dream Songs has focused on how similar Henry may or may not be to Berryman in real life. Certainly, there are many similarities, but as Berryman says,  “I think I’ll leave that one to the critics. Henry does resemble me, and I resemble Henry; but on the other hand I am not Henry. You know, I pay income tax; Henry pays no income tax. And bats come over and they stall in my hair—and fuck them, I’m not Henry; Henry doesn’t have any bats. ” Did I mention how much I fuckin’ love John Berryman?

And regarding the use of black face and dialect in The Dream Songs. Yes, I know, terribly, terribly un-PC. Yep. I know. I know. But it was, in fact, a different time, for one thing, and looking at the words of Berryman, I don’t think it was intended badly:

INTERVIEWER: What about the influence of blues and minstrel shows on The Dream Songs ?

Heavy. I have been interested in the language of the blues and Negro dialects all my life, always been. Especially Bessie. I picked all of it up from records, although while I was at Columbia the Apollo on 125th Street used to have blues singers. It was a completely coony house, and I used to go there sometimes; but mostly from records. For example, I never heard Bessie herself—she died.

INTERVIEWER: Why did you choose to employ the Negro dialect in The Dream Songs ?

Well, that’s a tough question. I’ll tell you, I wrote a story once called “The Imaginary Jew.” I was in Union Square in New York, waiting to see my girl, and I was taken for a Jew (I had a beard at the time ). There was a tough Irishman who wanted to beat me up, and I got into the conversation, and I couldn’t convince them that I wasn’t a Jew. Well, the Negro business—the black face—is related to that. That is, I feel extremely lucky to be white, let me put it that way, so that I don’t have that problem. Friends of mine—Ralph Ellison, for example, in my opinion one of the best writers in the country—he has the problem. He’s black, and he and Fanny, wherever they go, they are black…

(from “An Interview with John Berryman” conducted by John Plotz of the Harvard Advocate on Oct. 27, 1968. In Berryman’s Understanding: Reflections on the Poetry of John Berryman. Ed. Harry Thomas. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1988. Copyright © Harvard Advocate)

Okay, well, yes, he used the word coony. Not a word you hear much anymore. But, you know,  the times and all that.  And really, he was living in Harlem during the height of the popularity of these kinds of shows (or the Columbia University side of Harlem, anyway). So there’s that, too. Anyway, I think they bring an interesting dimension to the poems, something about identity and masks, and well, I’m sure we’ll talk about more of that sort of stuff later.

Okay, boys and girls, it’s link time! (Or if our dearth of comments is any indication, I should rephrase that to, “Okay, girl…!”) The Modern American Poetry website has lots of great stuff, from the bio I linked to above, to snippets of critical works, to pieces of interviews. I strongly urge you to read the interview segments, since Berryman has a great sense of humor. (I mean, come on, you read the taxes and bats quote!)

This page here has all kinds of Berryman links of varying interest: http://www.literaryhistory.com/20thC/Berryman.htm If you can get the Paris Review interview link to work, definitely read it, but I have had no such luck. It should be the complete Peter Stitt interview which is excerpted on the Modern Poetry web page linked above. I have a copy of the book, Berryman’s Understanding, which includes the entire text of both interviews excerpted there.

As far as books on Berryman go, I’ve read the Paul Mariani biography, Dream Song, and it’s quite good. The book mentioned above, Berryman’s Understanding, is very sadly out-of-print, but used copies are out there, and worth it–it includes all kinds of interesting articles in addition to the interviews already mentioned. And lastly, a new book that covers Berryman and five other poets–including none other than Lady Lazarus herself–in the context of confessionalism: The Wounded Surgeon, by Adam Kirsch. This is all, of course, in case anyone out there becomes as obsessive about him as me. As far as Berryman’s other poetry, well, the truth comes out. I am not a fan. I’ve never really made it through a significant chunk of his other work. The Dream Songs is a stand-out piece of genius, and I don’t think less of him for not turning out anything else as interesting. The Dream Songs were enough for me. It’s just too bad, with his suicide in 1972, that they weren’t enough for him.

Dream Song #76: Henry’s Confession

Nothin very bad happen to me lately.
How you explain that? —I explain that, Mr Bones,
terms o’ your bafflin odd sobriety.
Sober as man can get, no girls, no telephones,
what could happen bad to Mr Bones?
—If life is a handkerchief sandwich,

in a modesty of death I join my father
who dared so long agone leave me.
A bullet on a concrete stoop
close by a smothering southern sea
spreadeagled on an island, by my knee.
—You is from hunger, Mr Bones,

I offers you this handkerchief, now set
your left foot by my right foot,
shoulder to shoulder, all that jazz,
arm in arm, by the beautiful sea,
hum a little, Mr Bones.
—I saw nobody coming, so I went instead.

I was originally thinking I should wrap up my self-indulgent Nuala-fest with a translation of my own . . . and then I found a translation that made mine look inelegant and wordy, so I figured I’d leave it to Paul Muldoon, whom I love.  Thankfully, you can get to the original Irish and the excellent translation for free in an edition of Archipelago, which they have actually asked be disseminated over the web.   They covered An Leabhar Mor: The Great Book of Gaelic, a book and project that has had me so excited for the last several years I am often tempted to shake people really hard, screaming "Just buy a copy, will you!  You need to own this!"  It’s an anthology of centuries’ worth of great Celtic-language poetry with accompanying English translations.  But it’s illuminated and caligraphed, and I think it’s one of the most gorgeous collaborations I’ve ever seen.  And the Archipelago snippet includes one of the most powerful poems Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill has written.

Right, so, you’ll have some scrolling to do, but go here: Fall 2003 Archipelago.  It’s a PDF, so it may take a while to load.  Once it does, save it to your hard-drive.  Read the whole thing.  I guarantee it will amaze you–or you’ll get your money back. 

Now, take a look at page 75, and you’ll find Dubh, which is a poem Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill wrote in reaction to the bombing of Srebrenica.  The title means black.  I wish I could invite you all into my head, because I’ve seen and heard Nuala read this poem, and it’s heart-breakingly good.  The word "dubh" echoes throughout the poem.  It sounds like bombs falling.  It sounds like shock-waves.  It sounds like war.  The rhythm is quick and hard, and her voice sounds so raw on this one.  Strong stuff. 

A lot of Irish people were in London during the blitz.  A lot of Irish people know what it feels like to live in fear of explosions tearing apart your body and your life.  The war in Serbia was particularly hard on Ireland, little pacifist gem that it is.  Thousands of refugees poured into Ireland, which only knew emigration, not immigration.  All fleeing genocide, a terror which Europe thought it would never have to revisit after World War II.  All searching for peace wherever they could find it.

When I was working for the Irish government in 1999, even the hawks in the Dail were beside themselves over NATO’s operations in Kosovo, whether they were doing the right thing, whether there even was a right thing to do.  I think Americans are only now beginning to understand the terror of experiencing attacks on our own soil.  I’m not trying to make a political statement, and I don’t think Nuala really was either.  It’s all about a visceral reaction to war and destruction.  All black.  Black with rage at the idea that another group of people–people like us–had again decided to slaughter their neighbors–people like us.  And that people like us let it go on for years before reacting violently.   Makes a fallen Catholic quasi-Quaker tree-hugging dirt-worshipper all weepy, through and through.

So, er, downer!  So sorry.  The Berryman discussions are going to be chipper, right?  Ok, no, but several of the poems in the Archipelago issue are great.  Check out:
Cathal O’Searcaigh’s Claochlo/Transfigured;
Colm Breathnach’s Dan do Scathach/A Poem to Scathach;
Iseabail no mheic Cailein’s Eistibh a Luchd an Tighese/Listen, People of this House (racy for 1500, no?);
And Scel Lem Duib/Brief Account

And buy a copy of the book, darn it!  It’s amazing. 

Apart from the whole car accident and its attendant drama, this is what we’ve been up to round here.

First, Scott gave me an amazing present:

If I remember correctly, he gave it to me on the Solstice.  But I could be eliding dates, because my brain is still a bit scrambled.  That, my lovelies, is an entirely handmade, gorgeous, historically accurate lunikeit.  Which is a type of necklace that was popular with the ladies throughout most of Scandinavia and in Rus settlements beginning in the 7th or 8th century.  The moons are called luniks or lunitzas, depending on where you’re from, and are symbols of a particularly beloved Norse Lunar Goddess.  The beads are a mix of handmade granulated silver bears, handmade glass lampworked beads, and mother-of-pearl beads.  Even the clasp was handmade by my favorite new Man Who Pours Molten Metal.   So this is the mysterious hunk of lovely I mentioned back in December.  Scott and the Man Who Pours Molten Metal designed it to be just the right length and very wearable.  I’ve worn it almost every day since Scott gave it to me, and if it didn’t weigh a metric f-ton, I might even sleep in it.  I heart it. 

As I mentioned, my entire family chipped in to get me a Lendrum double treadle spinning wheel for Christmas.  I was floored.  I was also a tad worried to start spinning, because most of my wheel spinning last winter happened in the run up to and in the weeks following my friend Michelle’s death of metastatic breast cancer.  So what with my cat in makeshift hospice here and the anniversary of my Grandpap’s death approaching, I was a bit worried that I would start associating wheel-spinning with grief and death, and I didn’t want that, no matter how fitting it may be. 

Anyway, the wheel arrived at my folk’s house a couple of days after Christmas, and Scott and I rushed down to pick it up.  I spun a little the night we got it.  And a little more the next day.  And a little more the next, which is when a cop called me, and I went to the hospital.  Our friend  found the wheel abandoned mid-draft when he came to our house to get our dog Kayo and check on our cat.  Sean’s a funny guy, so when he called my cell to let me know all was well with the pets, he left a message explaining that Kayo was spinning amazingly well, all things considered.  Anyway, now that things are getting back to normal, I’m spinning more.  That’s some muddy Coopworth.  I think I’m making a sport-weight sock yarn.   I don’t know who will get the socks yet.

Here are the supposed-to-be-Scott’s-socks:


Which are my size, because, well, because I was freaking out.  This picture really makes me want sock blockers.  These poor socks look absolutely tortured, but I promise you they are sock-shaped.  They’re fresh off the line.  I love the yarn even more now that the Trekking has bloomed further.  But I do owe them a better pic: things are a bit slap-dash around Mean-Skuta Manse at the moment. 

And these are thick-as-all-git-out Peace Fleece socks, take two:


I made my first pair of socks out of this yarn, and I decided to revisit it.  These beauties are amazingly warm.  I hope they last for years, because knitting them up was murder on my hands.  Because the fabric was so stiff and thick.  They can stand up on their own, even when clean. 

Next, I started again on socks for Scott, which has been more of a challenge than I expected because he’s a slender guy with wide feet and heels that never seemed disproportionate until I tried to make him socks.  So these are loose in the ankle:


It’s ok–he’s not complaining.  I’m using Knit Picks Essential, which is a nice vanilla yarn.  Not the softest, not the prettiest, but available in his favorite color: dark.  These also want sock blockers–that heel does not have a tumor or huge bulge.  So strange. 

In addition to the knitting, there’s been a lot of quilt talk hereabouts.  I wanted to make some broken squares, both for the obvious metaphor and to see if I could overcome some of my, er, let’s call if perfectionism, and think of Gee’s Bend and necessity and frugality.  The first one is too ugly for words.  I’m seriously thinking of burning it.  The second one:

only hurts my brain a little bit.  Potholder, see.  Scrap cotton denim and scrap cotton batting inside, machine quilted because I  didn’t want to bleed all over it, since I’m not down with thimbles lately.  Who knows where it will live.  I won’t be making a quilt full of broken squares anytime soon. 

Making those squares forced me to confront the scrap pile.  Now, I know some of you sew, and I’m sure some of you have scraps.  But I’m pretty sure I’ve out-scrapped most folks who don’t work in sweatshops.  I make really a lot of clothes for my friends in my living history group.  And I’ve been sewing for the masses since I was 15, so that’s 17 years worth of scraps from really a lot of clothes.  I’ve probably made hundreds of garments.  And I’ve made a few quilts and a bunch of baby slings (for carrying babies lovingly, not flinging them at enemies, sickos) and some curtains and slip covers and such.  And I don’t throw away scraps as I work.  I save ’em all.  And my friends occasionally give me their scraps.  And I do a fair amount of patchwork, but I still can never beat down the pile, but am very interested in maintaining orderly, beautiful surroundings.  Which was becoming an issue: my last organization method was:
1. Place random scaps in bottom of basket
2. Stomp on scraps until maximum flatness is achieved
3. Repeat until basket is full and/or broken
4. Drape beautiful finished something over basket of shame
So last weekend, I got serious.  I planned to make another square or two, and instead I purged and trimmed and pressed and folded.  I’ve gotten rid of two trash bags full of stuff I didn’t love or that was too small to use, and the scraps I kept are all lovingly sorted by color and material.  Quite proud, me. 

Oh, and I’m still working away on my first cabled sweater. 

Which is already hard to photograph inside in winter, but is even harder to photograph with my particular assistant:

Scath says hi, and he wants you to know that he fricking hates cancer, but that he loves catnip and steroids and canned food and going outside.  Now pet his head.  "PET MY HEAD, WOMAN!  Stop touching that stupid sheep hair!" 
I have to get another refill on his meds next week, which has me and my vet flabbergasted.   

I wanted to write at least one more post about Nuala (I feel disrespectful calling her that, but it’s just so much easier to type) before we move on to something completely different. But I feel like we haven’t really given her much of a fair shake yet, though I suspect, this blog is just going to be like that. Busy people Lanea and I are, and so far no one’s stepped up to take any of the pressure off of us for interesting content…..so……

Well, for starters, I like Nuala’s work. (We’re allowed to say that, right?) Not all of it, but I really dig a large chunk of it. And at the same time, I can say with great certainty that I never would have picked it up on my own. (That’s what’s cool about this blog, right?) For one, I’m just not the Irish studies girl that Lanea is. For another, through the years, I think my interests have grown more…obtuse?…than they used to be. One of the reasons, actually, why I stopped writing poetry with any real urge to publish was I was beginning to see a huge divide between the kind of poetry that I write and the kind of poetry I read. I can’t seem to write things that don’t make a very tangible sort of sense–even if only to me–and the kind of poetry I tend to love is the kind of poetry that makes a very different kind of sense, that occupies a different syntax, that is very difficult to define in any other sort of tangible way. John Ashbery, Ann Lauterbach, John Berryman–these are my heroes. They create something completey new, something completely different, and almost wholly unrecognizable except on a purely emotional, tonal level for me. I mentioned to Lanea an article that I saw in the New Yorker on Ashbery recently (the New Yorker won’t make it available on their website, dammit, but it was in the November 7, 2005 issue, if you have the urge to hunt it down–and I urge you to.). In it, Ashbery talks about "resisting the impulse to make sense." He thinks of his poems as "environments, the idea being that an environment is something you are immersed in but cannot possibly be conscious of the whole of." While I think this statement is a particularly apt description of the poetry of the likes of Ashbery, I think it really says a lot about poetry in general, how we read it, what our brains do when we’re confronted with verse. The first reading of a poem is like walking into a room and taking in the overall atmosphere–the smells, the colors, the people. Then, as our minds are want to do, we begin to dissect the room into pieces, focusing on the sofa, the painting on the wall, the clock in the corner. While fiction is generally taken in in gulps, poetry slows us down and really makes us take things in bit by bit. But it also shows the fractured nature of our thoughts. Because really, I think it’s hard to talk about a poem as a whole. Because once we focus in on the bits, it’s not always easy to step back and fit them back into the poem again, at least not in the same way as that first reading.

That was a bit of a tangent, but Lanea talked a bit about why she loved poetry in her last post, and for me, it’s a twofold experience, and those two experiences don’t always fit together. One takes place almost entirely in the gut. It’s the music of words and the very base instinct of how certain words strung together in a certain order make me feel. This part has little to do with meaning, and more about sound, syntax, and gut reaction. Then there’s the cerebral act of slicing and dicing, of navigating the the poem for a deeper meaning. Some poems go in for the gut above all, some stir my intellect first and foremost. Many do both, but many are one or the other for me.

Anyhow, I was saying that I probably would not have arrived at Nuala on my own. But look at what I gained by finding her after all: a renewed appreciation for, plain and simple, well-crafted verse. In my previous post on Nuala, I did some of that intellectual slicing and dicing, and that’s all well and good, but part of me feels like sort of talking around Nuala in a broader sort of way today.

My least favorite of her poems are the ones that have what I think of as the most colloquial tone–for instance, The Head ("My auntie’s man, Tom Murphy has a talent / for identifying skulls.") and "In Memoriam Elly Ni Dhomhnaill" ("She got an honours degree / in biology in Nineteen-four"). These poems show that Nuala is as much storyteller or bard as she is poet, but I think I like her best as modern mythmaker (or borrower, as the case may be). "Bond" and "Nightfishing", as we already discussed, but also a poem like "Mac Airt" where she shows a wicked sense of humor in her "feminist footnote" of what appears to be a story of divine birth by rape.

I think Nuala also has a talent for lyricism. For instance, her use of repetition in "The Smell of Blood", "This Lonely Load", "Aubade", and "Word on the Wind". I also enjoy her variations on themes, like in "Ark of the Covenant", which reads almost like a laundry list of promises of things to come. Again, "Aubade" comes to mind, with it’s variations on "It’s all the same" and "it’s not all the same". This use of variation brings an intensity to the poem, like a jazz solo focusing in on a core theme, improvising around it until it reaches that one final note: "It isn’t the same at all."

I think another reason why I wouldn’t likely have found Nuala’s work on my own, and this is maybe a little silly, but I’m a city girl.  I mean, I moved from moderate sized city to big, big city for a reason. Nature, to me, is a pretty park at the intersection of two major streets, or Lake Michigan with what is essentially a major highway running not 50 yards behind it. Moving to the burbs a couple of years ago (the most urban of burbs), the sight of a rabbit in my building’s courtyard still makes me giggle. And, well, Nuala likes her nature. There is very little she writes that isn’t very connected to the land or the sea in an almost tactile way. This is a woman who isn’t afraid to get down on her knees in a poem, and stick her hands in the mud. Now, I used to read a lot of Mary Oliver a long time ago, but she was sort of nature-lite. You could picture her in full-on khakis and mosquito netting, on a pristine little perch a good fifty yards away, taking notes in her little notebook. Not Nuala. She’s right there in the thick of it. And it turns out, I respect that in her work. Whether it’s nature or whatever, there’s nothing distant about her writing. She’s really a poet that’s not afraid to get her hands dirty and really go at the jugular of the matter. It’s lovely. It’s refreshing. I’m glad we were introduced.

I leave you with another of my favorites of hers, "Miraculous Grass" (trans. Seamus Heaney). Because organized religion fascinates me as a born-again atheist.

There you were in your purple vestments
half-way through the Mass, an ordained priest
under your linen alb and chasuble and stole:
and when you saw my face in the crowd
for Holy Communion
the consecrated host fell from your fingers.

I felt shame, I never
mentioned it once,
my lips were sealed.
But still it lurked in my heart
like a thorn under mud, and it
worked itself in so deep and sheer
it nearly killed me.

Next thing then, I was laid up in bed.
Consultants came in their hundreds,
doctors and brothers and priests,
but I baffled them all: I was
incurable, they left me for dead.

So out you go, men,
out with the spades and scythes,
the hooks and shovels and hoes.
Tackle the rubble,
cut back the bushes, clear off the rubbish,
the sappy growth, the whole straggle and mess
that infests my green unfortunate field.

And there where the sacred wafer fell
you will discover
in the middle of the shooting weeds
a clump of miraculous grass.

The priest will have to come then
with his delicate fingers, and lift the host
and bring it to me and put it on my tongue.
Where it will melt, and I will rise in the bed
as fit and well as the youngster I used to be.

I have utterly failed in making sure I send personal thanks to all of you, but I just wanted to pop in and say that Scott and I really appreciate all of your kindness.  It means so much to know so many people are thinking of us.  Thank you all. 

Scott starts physical therapy today.  He still has a fair amount of head, neck, and back pain, so I hope the PT can help a lot with that.  We got Scott a new car over the weekend.  Buying a car is a huge pain, of course, and one we don’t feel the need to repeat for a while.  Suffice it to say, we found one car dealer we will curse forever, and one who was really great.  He got a Camry, which has side curtain airbags (a new requirement in my book) and is a pretty safe car all round.  We’re also likely to talk to a lawyer this week so we can be sure that any medical expenses will be handled fairly. 

And our lovely cat is still holding on and in a great mood.  Scath has asked us to allow him to be an outdoor cat millions of times in his 12 years.  Last week, he was meowing at the door, yet again, while our dog Kayo was waiting for Scott to play fetch with Scott.  I turned to the cat and said "Scath, you don’t go outside."  And Scott asked the $10,000 question: "why not?" 

So we are indulging Scath in escorted trips around the back yard, which he absolutely loves.  He gets more adventurous every time, so we may be forced to commit the ultimate offense against Feline kind and get him a leash, because neither of us wants to call the vet and explain that we’ve lost our cancer-ridden, drug dependent, elderly charge.  Scath really wants to be outside so he can attack the ginger Tom who is always peacocking him through the window, and because Kayo goes outside, and one’s subordinates are supposed to have less freedom, not more.  I’d blather on more, but His Majesty is calling for his morning constitutional.

Edited: Oh, and I finished some socks, and started some new socks for Scott, which will be too loose in the ankles because he has big heels.  But that’s ok–first socks are like that first pancake, which is really a dog treat, because the dog wants it now now now and we humans know the next pancake will be so much better.  And a sweater–I started a cabled cardigan yesterday out of some gorgeous emerald green mohair/wool yarn I had made for me by Annie Kelly at Kipparoo Farm in Maryland.  This is my first cabled project, a pattern of Annie’s, and I’m liking it.  But the true joy is all in the yarn.  There Kiparoo site isn’t quite up yet, but you should just call Annie, tell her what colors you like and whether or not you like mohair in your yarn, and give her your credit card numbers.  I kid you not (bad pun–sorry–very tired).  Delicious yarn.  The color is heavenl–er–terra-ly, and the texture of the yarn if gorgeous.  Very shiny, but in an organic way.  And it makes a very satisfying click when it finds its way home in each stitch.  I hope that makes sense.  Kiparoo does have a booth at Maryland Sheep and Wool every year, but I really love going to the farm itself. 

Originally posted by Rachel

Oprah’s about to pick a new book for her bookclub on 1/16. It’s published by FSG, it retails for $9.00 and it’s said to be 144 pages. Could it be? Could Oprah be bringing poetry to the masses?

Edit: Okay, after some time on the FSG website, I think I know what it is, and it ain’t poetry. Alas. I’d tell you my hunch, but then I’d have to kill you. Or the Harpo thugs would have to kill me. You know, there’d be death involved somehow. Too risky.

I’ve been off-line for a bit.  Some woman (I know her name, but won’t post it, of course) ran a red light and t-boned my husband’s car on the 29th.   She was going at least 45 miles per hour, ran a red light, and didn’t even bother to touch the brakes.  She is about five feet tall, and she was driving a Ford Expedition, one of the biggest SUVs on the road.  She didn’t even touch her brakes.  She didn’t even touch her brakes. She walked away.  Scott was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance.  He was unconscious for a while, and then he was awake, in a lot of pain, and totally lacking short-term memory.  He received a terrible concussion, temporarily lost much of his peripheral vision in his right eye, and had serious speech problems for several hours.  It was absolutely terrifying.

Thankfully, he had an excellent trauma team and great care at the hospital.  Scott’s vision and speech have recovered.  He doesn’t remember most of Thursday, he has a lot of pain in his neck, and will need physical therapy and massage therapy for a while so that he can return to his normal active self.  I still can’t get the police officer who was on the scene to return my phone calls, but I hope the woman who did this gets more than a ticket for running a light.  Had she hit him a few inches further back on the car, he could have been killed or maimed.  The car actually looks much worse in person.  The engine is off its mounts and several inches away from where it belongs.  The whole front end is shifted several inches to the right.

I fretted and cried and couldn’t sleep.  I cursed the woman who did this.  I knit until I wore a blister into my middle finger, where my active sock needle rests.  i knit so tightly that the sock I was making for my husband is actually a bit snug on me.  When I couldn’t help Scott, I helped the elderly man in the next bed, who didn’t have anyone with him at the hospital.  He called me dearie and I thought it was sweet.  I watched all night to make sure that IV tubes stayed straight so the pumps wouldn’t beep, and to make sure that everyone was breathing more evenly than I was.  Realizing that Scott remembered a nurse he hadn’t seen for half an hour was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life.

When we got home, I talked to one person after another who called to wish Scott a speedy recovery, and I was buoyed to remember how many people agree that Scott is a wonderful man, and that we all love and need him in our lives.  I baked.  I cleaned.  I talked to insurance agents and doctors and to the pets, who were both perplexed.  I managed not to track down the other driver and wring her neck, for which I think I deserve a gold star.

We’re tired, and we have a long fight ahead of us, but Scott and I both feel very fortunate.  I’ve already heard from several of you folks, and I am very thankful to know you are thinking of us.  Please stay safe.  And get side-curtain airbags.  And don’t run red lights.

The holidays and their attendent madness kept us all away from Nuala for a bit, but I meant to talk about Aubade, and now I have to talk about it.  Some jerk ran into my husband’s car last week.  He’ll be ok, and this poem will rattle about in my brain-pan for a while.  I am making do with today’s happenings, and I’m immensely grateful.

I love poetry because I love language and rhythm.  But I love particular poems for the same reason that I love particular stories or paintings or people–because they connect to some particular part of me and mine.  The first time I read this poem, I knew that the writer knew what it was like to mother children and care for family and self when life is hard.  That matters to me.  I had a tough kidhood.  I have a tough adulthood sometimes.  The truth of getting by, of making do, of patching up broken things and broken days is what keeps us here, and what helps us live when tragedy strikes, whether it’s the tragedy of lost love or poverty or broken bones or death. 

Aubade
translated by Michael Longley

It’s all the same to morning what it dawns on —
On the bickering of jackdaws in leafy trees;
On that dandy from the wetlands, the green mallard’s
Stylish glissando among reeds; on the moorhen
Whose white petticoat flickers around the boghole;
On the oystercatcher on tiptoe at low tide.

It’s all the same to the sun what it rises on —
On the windows in houses in Georgian squares;
On bees swarming to blitz suburban gardens;
On young couples yawning in unison before
They do it again; on dew like sweat or tears
On lilies and roses; on your bare shoulders.

But it isn’t all the same to us that night-time
Runs out; that we must make do with today’s
Happenings, and stoop and somehow glue together
The silly little shards of our lives, so that
Our children can drink water from broken bowls,
Not from cupped hands. It isn’t the same at all.

Nuala says it better than I can.  Our hawk was in the yard when we came home from the hospital.  I was glad to see him, and to know that he wasn’t as frightened as I was.