The Sunday Salon: Poetry #2 - William Stafford

I have confessed here before that I'm not much of a poetry reader. I love words and word play and rhythmic lyrical phrasing; I write songs and I even write poetry. So I'm puzzled about why I struggle so with reading it. Perhaps it's because I didn't grow up in a house filled with poetry, and I don't recall it being much a part of my early education (except the poem about squishing the fly on the windowsill and a few bawdy limericks). I can love a good poem by Mary Oliver or Lucille Clifton; I enjoy some poetry readings; but it's rare for me to willingly sit down with a book of poetry and stick with it.

Here in Portland we had a local treasure, William Stafford, poet, teacher, peace activist. He died in 1993 and left a huge legacy of poetry and essays, and his best work: a son, Kim Stafford, who is following in his father's large footsteps and creating a wonderful body of poetry in his own right. He also teaches locally and maintains the archive of his father's work.

Here's a sample of Wm. Stafford's work:

Spirit of Place: Great Blue Heron

Out of their loneliness for each other
two reeds, or maybe two shadows, lurch
forward and become suddenly a life
lifted from dawn or the rain. It is
the wilderness come back again, a lagoon
with our city reflected in its eye.
We live by faith in such presences.

It is a test for us, that thin
but real, undulating figure that promises,
"If you keep faith I will exist
at the edge, where your vision joins
the sunlight and the rain: heads in the light,
feet that go down in the mud where the truth is."

(© 1987; from Even in Quiet Places, 1996)

Today I'm reading The Long Sigh the Wind Makes, a collection of Stafford's poems published in 1991, and some essays from his book Writing the Australian Crawl: Views on the Writer's Vocation. I also have a DVD , William Stafford, Life and Poems, one part of which has him deconstructing a few of his own poems. Wonderful stuff. My plan is to get to know the Staffords' work (father and son) better this year - who knows, maybe I'll get an opportunity to take a workshop with Kim.

Other reading news:

• I zipped through The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street - a sweet little memoir by Helene Hanff who, after her 20 year overseas correspondence with a London bookseller (detailed in 84, Charing Cross Road), finally gets to visit the city of her dreams.
  
• I finished The Gathering (Anne Enright), a book that was difficult for me to get through and made me wonder why it was the Man Booker prize winner. Literary judges often have very different taste than I do!
  
• I'm now into Small Island by Andrea Levy, which is a much more enjoyable read.
• Almost embarrassed to say that I'm still reading War and Peace - but I am past the 1,000th page! Maybe by next Sunday I'll declare it finished.
  

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The Sunday Salon: Poetry #1 - The Backyard

Good Sunday morning to all. I had hoped to have a wide variety of poetry read by this afternoon. But the weather and garden have other plans. Yesterday it was as though someone flipped the Spring switch -- leaves and flowers have popped out everywhere, bees and flies are waking up (and disturbing mid-afternoon naps), the grass is suddenly too long for the push mower. Best of all, it was warm enough to start the morning on the deck with a cup of coffee -- and to end it that way too. After the sun went down the air was heavy with the scent of fruit blossoms and neighborhood barbecues.

Days like this, I feel like Dorothy, her house landing with a thump in Oz, the door opening from black and white to blazing color. Song sparrows and robins welcome me to Munchkinland. I follow the yellow brick road to the garden, which is starting to look like the Emerald City with all its greenery.

So instead of reading poetry this weekend, I am seeing it, smelling it, hearing it in the trees and flowers and birds.

What I observed in the backyard:

Crows build a nest high in the fir tree 2 blocks south;

Plum blossoms fall, catch a small breeze, flutter over the garden like fairies;

Squirrel contemplates how to get to the feeder hanging from the apple tree; she hangs upside down on the ropes and twirls as if on a carnival ride;

Blue jays in the forsythia fight -- or mate; sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference;

At dusk a hummingbird fills up on currant flower juice;

In the walnut tree, a robin tries out her entire repertoire; always the last to bed and the first to rise.

I am embraced by the heavy scent of fruit flowers after nightfall.

I freed the lettuces and chard and brassicas from their greenhouse yesterday -- rather like sending your child off to the first day of school. Tempting to get up in the middle of the night and do slug patrol. The soil is rich and soft and loamy, due to all the good compost, the "green manure" (crimson clover) and the shredded leaves that protected it through the winter. This no-till method builds the soil year after year and doesn't tear it up with 'tiller blades. It's also really easy to pull up the clover (and add it to the magic compost pile, of course). And it doesn't have to be completely dry to do the planting (an important consideration in Oregon).

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I will get to some poetry later today; probably under the apple tree in my lawn chair, after our writers' group meets. On the stack are Pablo Neruda, Elizabeth Harris, Dorothy Parker, William Stafford, ee cummings and Emily Dickinson. Meantime, there are carrot and beet seeds to plant. I hope your Sunday is as luscious as mine!

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