Margotlog: Trish Hampl's "Pilgrim Soul"
It's as if I've been waiting to use Yeats' astonishing phrase until my dear friend and honored writer Patricia Hampl was about to retire from the University of Minnesota. Little did I know, years ago, that she'd been hovering in the fields where I would eventually spy my husband-to-be, sitting across from me at her townhouse. This was long after they'd worked together on the Minnesota Daily, long before I knew either of them. But when W. B. Yeats wrote "When You Are Old," he traversed the life of a woman he loved and discovered within her a love that belonged "amid a crowd of stars."
Trish lost her dear husband Terry Williams, one of the most self-effacing and meticulous people I've ever known. I lost my first husband via divorce, but kept the daughter. Perhaps being a pilgrim means walking along rough paths as well as catching glimpses of perfection.
For me, some of the finest prose written by anyone in our era has come from Patricia Hampl. My favorite of her memoirs remains A Romantic Education, published after she'd established a name as a poet. Reading about her romantic education felt a lot like reading about my own, except it was so exquisitely expressed. I had to read some paragraphs over and over, perhaps because reading it as I did, before I knew her better, felt like entering a romance so enticing that I had to be a part of it.
This evening, Trish will be honored as a distinguished professor at the University of Minnesota. She is retiring. I and many others will be there to applaud dear Trish, who has traced her path among the stars, even as she has held hands with us, given voice to her marvelous gifts, and continues to make so many of us happy. May she be the same.
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Monday, November 12, 2018
Margotlog: Memories Like Smoke
Margotlog: Memories Like Smoke
I haven't had many men "friends" in my life probably in part because during my growing up, it was so clear that the boys belonged to one tribe and the girls another. Times have changed. Now among a gaggle of women I trust and adore, there are several gay couples who are as close to my heart as the best of brothers. I especially appreciate this because I had no brothers.
My mother and her twin brother, Maxine and Max, did not remain close in part because of family abuse. This subject is very vivid in my mind right now because I'm writing a memoir that now touches on it. My parents came from quite different ethnic backgrounds: my mother's side of the family was German (her father) and Swedish (her mother); whereas both sides of my father's family were what we'd now call, without hesitation, "Italian." In the days of their immigration, however, they would have been labeled, at least in Italy, Sicilian and Neapolitan. In the generations before widespread railroad travel, crossing mountains or bodies of water, even relatively small ones, set people apart.
In the North Dakota small town of my mother's youth, being either Scandinavian or German was relatively common. It was the distance in age that, in part, prompted what became an ugly episode in my grandparents' lives. My German grandfather's first wife died in childbirth, and the family of the wife, from Milwaukee, took the child to live with them. Then my grandfather's eye fell on a tall, willowy young school teacher at a rural Dakota school. Her parents had died shortly after immigrating, and she had been raised by two older sisters. The photograph/portrait I have seen of her was taken later in life, but despite her gray hair, she was a lovely woman, her face turned slightly aside, her eyes gleaming, her mouth holding a hint of a smile.
When our mother would bring us on the train from Charleston, South Carolina, where my father spent most of his working life teaching at The Citadel, she intended for us to appreciate not only her successful businessman father, but also her "Mama" who loved beautiful things, who took naps (as did my very energetic mother), and who made delicious Swedish pastries. I never knew this grandmother, but my oldest cousin whose family remained in the small North Dakota town, has told me about going with her father to visit "Mama Max." Her father, Buddy, was my mother's twin brother, the one who stayed in the town; whereas my mother, after graduating from the University of Minnesota, went east as fast as she could to a library job in Pittsburgh. There she met smiling, curly-haired Leonard, second son of the Italians. My Italian grandfather had been converted to Protestantism and preached powerfully to a Pittsburgh Italian congregation. Not easy, that business of being Protestant among a community of mostly Catholics. My father used to recount being pelted with rotten eggs when he and his family walked up the hills to their father's church.
At some point when I was still very young, my North Dakota grandmother developed stomach cancer. I have a hazy memory of tiptoeing across the large parquet floor of the hall to a small door which usually remained half-open. There in a narrow bed, lay a figure who was my grandmother. She did not speak nor raise a hand. I don't remember ever seeing her stand. Slowly over the years, it came out (largely from my cousins who grew up in the town), that "Mama Max" had been abused. When the last of her four children left home for college--the youngest would have been "the twins," my mother and her brother--Mama Max slowly fell into a depression and wept a lot. After his first semester in college, my mother's brother, Buddy, came home to protect her.
My mother spent one summer helping her father repaint the kitchen a sunny yellow, but without fail, she returned to graduate from the University of Minnesota and head east. It has taken me years to piece together this story, and to honor my uncle's dedication to protect his mother. It was only years later, when I was pregnant with my first and only child, that my mother and I took the train from St. Paul/Minneapolis back to North Dakota. There we stayed two nights in a local motel. We called from the motel to see if her brother Buddy was at home. No doubt he was astonished to hear that she was nearby. Years later, wondering why she did not call long distance ahead of time. I think there can be only one answer: she intended to make the trip without the fear, embarrassment, or awkwardness of having already contacted her brother. But he was welcoming and invited us to his family's large lake house just outside of town. My first glimpse of Buddy, sitting in a large family room, immediately told me he was my grandfather's son. They looked very much alike.
Our visit was brief and friendly enough. The big house in town, which my grandfather had expanded when "the twins" were born, was being fashioned into a bed and breakfast. Though I have seen some of my cousins since, I probably never will visit Hankinson again. This essentially means that my sister is my only relative outside my daughter, and my husband's wide circle of family and friends. Keeping family secrets so long a time can turn confidences into whispers, so soft that they eventually disappear like smoke.
I haven't had many men "friends" in my life probably in part because during my growing up, it was so clear that the boys belonged to one tribe and the girls another. Times have changed. Now among a gaggle of women I trust and adore, there are several gay couples who are as close to my heart as the best of brothers. I especially appreciate this because I had no brothers.
My mother and her twin brother, Maxine and Max, did not remain close in part because of family abuse. This subject is very vivid in my mind right now because I'm writing a memoir that now touches on it. My parents came from quite different ethnic backgrounds: my mother's side of the family was German (her father) and Swedish (her mother); whereas both sides of my father's family were what we'd now call, without hesitation, "Italian." In the days of their immigration, however, they would have been labeled, at least in Italy, Sicilian and Neapolitan. In the generations before widespread railroad travel, crossing mountains or bodies of water, even relatively small ones, set people apart.
In the North Dakota small town of my mother's youth, being either Scandinavian or German was relatively common. It was the distance in age that, in part, prompted what became an ugly episode in my grandparents' lives. My German grandfather's first wife died in childbirth, and the family of the wife, from Milwaukee, took the child to live with them. Then my grandfather's eye fell on a tall, willowy young school teacher at a rural Dakota school. Her parents had died shortly after immigrating, and she had been raised by two older sisters. The photograph/portrait I have seen of her was taken later in life, but despite her gray hair, she was a lovely woman, her face turned slightly aside, her eyes gleaming, her mouth holding a hint of a smile.
When our mother would bring us on the train from Charleston, South Carolina, where my father spent most of his working life teaching at The Citadel, she intended for us to appreciate not only her successful businessman father, but also her "Mama" who loved beautiful things, who took naps (as did my very energetic mother), and who made delicious Swedish pastries. I never knew this grandmother, but my oldest cousin whose family remained in the small North Dakota town, has told me about going with her father to visit "Mama Max." Her father, Buddy, was my mother's twin brother, the one who stayed in the town; whereas my mother, after graduating from the University of Minnesota, went east as fast as she could to a library job in Pittsburgh. There she met smiling, curly-haired Leonard, second son of the Italians. My Italian grandfather had been converted to Protestantism and preached powerfully to a Pittsburgh Italian congregation. Not easy, that business of being Protestant among a community of mostly Catholics. My father used to recount being pelted with rotten eggs when he and his family walked up the hills to their father's church.
At some point when I was still very young, my North Dakota grandmother developed stomach cancer. I have a hazy memory of tiptoeing across the large parquet floor of the hall to a small door which usually remained half-open. There in a narrow bed, lay a figure who was my grandmother. She did not speak nor raise a hand. I don't remember ever seeing her stand. Slowly over the years, it came out (largely from my cousins who grew up in the town), that "Mama Max" had been abused. When the last of her four children left home for college--the youngest would have been "the twins," my mother and her brother--Mama Max slowly fell into a depression and wept a lot. After his first semester in college, my mother's brother, Buddy, came home to protect her.
My mother spent one summer helping her father repaint the kitchen a sunny yellow, but without fail, she returned to graduate from the University of Minnesota and head east. It has taken me years to piece together this story, and to honor my uncle's dedication to protect his mother. It was only years later, when I was pregnant with my first and only child, that my mother and I took the train from St. Paul/Minneapolis back to North Dakota. There we stayed two nights in a local motel. We called from the motel to see if her brother Buddy was at home. No doubt he was astonished to hear that she was nearby. Years later, wondering why she did not call long distance ahead of time. I think there can be only one answer: she intended to make the trip without the fear, embarrassment, or awkwardness of having already contacted her brother. But he was welcoming and invited us to his family's large lake house just outside of town. My first glimpse of Buddy, sitting in a large family room, immediately told me he was my grandfather's son. They looked very much alike.
Our visit was brief and friendly enough. The big house in town, which my grandfather had expanded when "the twins" were born, was being fashioned into a bed and breakfast. Though I have seen some of my cousins since, I probably never will visit Hankinson again. This essentially means that my sister is my only relative outside my daughter, and my husband's wide circle of family and friends. Keeping family secrets so long a time can turn confidences into whispers, so soft that they eventually disappear like smoke.
Saturday, October 20, 2018
Margotlog: Proust and Colette: Nothing Gold Can Stay
Margotlog: Proust and Colette: Nothing Gold Can Stay
Today with wind in golden leaves, and the sky a brilliant blue, it's as if loss is being transformed into immediate memory. We memorialize the gold even as it mounds the streets.
I pack up three bags of organic compost to recycle. As I finish my work at the compost site, a young man with a fist-full of smallish plastic bags walks past. I call out: "Do you have any larger ones?" He is gone in an instant, and just as leaves fly up in a slant of sun, he hands me two long green bags. The magic of memory: I have been listening to Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. It is very very long. In the eight-disc set, I visit over and over the house at Combray where he waits anxiously for his mother to come upstairs and give him a good-night kiss. The beach at Balbec where he goes with his grandmother--her gentle figure leaning over him. The next day at breakfast, intense golden light is smothered by heavy curtains, which let only a sliver fall across the breakfast table.
Finally in the midst of this memory magic, I can't stand my limited knowledge any more and look up Proust in the encyclopedia. I knew that he'd waited until the last decade of his rather short life to retire to a cork-lined room and write. There where he gave memory precedence, he initially wrote only one volume.Others followed, embellishing, recovering, re-inventing. He captured the extraordinarily lush style that neither smothers or impedes the onward flow of narrated memory. In the narrator's voice there is a tinge of irony, as adult Marcel faintly sympathizes with his younger agony when the young woman Albertine, whom he's loved for a long time, now fully reveals her sexual interest in women.
Yesterday, my husband and I went to Minneapolis to see a movie called "Colette," based on the early years of another French marvel, almost Proust's contemporary.Whatever I'd read about it had completely vanished to be replaced by my much earlier fascination with this true French stylist. Though Colette, like Proust, made marvelous decoys out of her own life, I found that Willie, the much older literateur who seduced young Colette, had initially used the material of her life to boost his own reputation.
When she took leave of him, intending to tell her own stories, not letting Willy subsume her into a charater called Claudine, I urged her on. By then, she had done away with her coil of braids; her hair became an enticingly boyish bob in fasion in the early 20th century. My mother's hair never had the swagger of Kiera Knigthly's Colette, but it fit nicely under a cloche. By this time, Colette had a girl/boy lover. Not so different, I say to myself, from Proust's Albertine who also seduced girl lovers whom she tried to keep from Marcel.
What was it about French culture at the close of Proust's era and the opening of Colette's, that gave these extraordinary stylists such rich aplomb? There is a freedom from niceties or reticence (think Emily Dickinson) which turn many American women's stories away from celebrating the flesh and toward hints of mystery--both powerfully appealing, but unable to capture the body as a free-wheeling ironic entity, worth all its rambunctious license.
Today with wind in golden leaves, and the sky a brilliant blue, it's as if loss is being transformed into immediate memory. We memorialize the gold even as it mounds the streets.
I pack up three bags of organic compost to recycle. As I finish my work at the compost site, a young man with a fist-full of smallish plastic bags walks past. I call out: "Do you have any larger ones?" He is gone in an instant, and just as leaves fly up in a slant of sun, he hands me two long green bags. The magic of memory: I have been listening to Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. It is very very long. In the eight-disc set, I visit over and over the house at Combray where he waits anxiously for his mother to come upstairs and give him a good-night kiss. The beach at Balbec where he goes with his grandmother--her gentle figure leaning over him. The next day at breakfast, intense golden light is smothered by heavy curtains, which let only a sliver fall across the breakfast table.
Finally in the midst of this memory magic, I can't stand my limited knowledge any more and look up Proust in the encyclopedia. I knew that he'd waited until the last decade of his rather short life to retire to a cork-lined room and write. There where he gave memory precedence, he initially wrote only one volume.Others followed, embellishing, recovering, re-inventing. He captured the extraordinarily lush style that neither smothers or impedes the onward flow of narrated memory. In the narrator's voice there is a tinge of irony, as adult Marcel faintly sympathizes with his younger agony when the young woman Albertine, whom he's loved for a long time, now fully reveals her sexual interest in women.
Yesterday, my husband and I went to Minneapolis to see a movie called "Colette," based on the early years of another French marvel, almost Proust's contemporary.Whatever I'd read about it had completely vanished to be replaced by my much earlier fascination with this true French stylist. Though Colette, like Proust, made marvelous decoys out of her own life, I found that Willie, the much older literateur who seduced young Colette, had initially used the material of her life to boost his own reputation.
When she took leave of him, intending to tell her own stories, not letting Willy subsume her into a charater called Claudine, I urged her on. By then, she had done away with her coil of braids; her hair became an enticingly boyish bob in fasion in the early 20th century. My mother's hair never had the swagger of Kiera Knigthly's Colette, but it fit nicely under a cloche. By this time, Colette had a girl/boy lover. Not so different, I say to myself, from Proust's Albertine who also seduced girl lovers whom she tried to keep from Marcel.
What was it about French culture at the close of Proust's era and the opening of Colette's, that gave these extraordinary stylists such rich aplomb? There is a freedom from niceties or reticence (think Emily Dickinson) which turn many American women's stories away from celebrating the flesh and toward hints of mystery--both powerfully appealing, but unable to capture the body as a free-wheeling ironic entity, worth all its rambunctious license.
Monday, October 15, 2018
Margotlog: First Snow
Margotlog: Snow
Yes, it snowed yesterday in St. Paul, Minnesota. The air swirled with heavy globs and drifty flakes, making me think, for a moment, of recalcitrant students until it dawned on me that I was not teaching undergraduates any more--AND this stuff in the front yard, back yard, and up and down the avenue was enrolled in an eduation system of its own kind.
Item One, Memory: Let's say thirty years ago, THE Halloween blizzard of all blizzards dumped at least three feet of snow on the Twin Cities in twenty-four hours. There we were, Fran and I, driving around in his "superior" Volkswagen. Item: THERE IS NO SUPERIOR VOLKSWAGEN in three feet of wet, heavy snow. We got stuck. Our tires spun. We skidded into snow banks. A big car pushed us out. Somehow we made our goal, whatever it was. That GOAL has melted into memory, but the blizzard itself will always remain frightful and intense--a whoop-de-do.
We were young and foolish.
Yesterday, globs of white stuff plummeted down, driving the squirrels in the backyard frantic. They were very wet, hungry and desperate. Not a one had built a leaf house in the arms of a tree. One, more intrepid than the others, rushed up on the deck and began chewing into the cooler where I'd been directed (by a higher power) to keep chunks of fancy suet cold. In my heavy house slippers, I chased the varmint off, but feeling sorry for the mob of gray desperados in the back yard, I cut several suet cakes into bits, grabbed handfulls of dry cat food, and with my parka flapping, but in my boots, rushed out to succor the mob. Opening the garage door to the metal trash cans that house the various kinds of seeds which I usually sprinkle on the ground, I suddenly found myself fanned by a squirrel rushing OUT of the garage. How it had made its way in, I now refuse to consider.
Let's say that nature has been kind. Outside my window, sun sparkles on the gold and red and green of a lovely fall morning. The light's angle is low which makes the leaves glimmer and shimmer in the light breeze. The temperature is around 45 degrees. It is a lovely fall day. I'll walk the long way, over Hamline Bridge to Fran's old neighborhood where Fran and I were deliriosly happy in first love.
But, I remind myself, it was May when we met. No weather events to mar our giddy delight. More mature and seasoned now, we can still be happy--he'll be home today from playing Scrabble in Madison. That would be Wisconsin for anyone reading this who isn't from the UPPER Midwest where almost every weather extreme except sand storms have been known to happen.
Yes, it snowed yesterday in St. Paul, Minnesota. The air swirled with heavy globs and drifty flakes, making me think, for a moment, of recalcitrant students until it dawned on me that I was not teaching undergraduates any more--AND this stuff in the front yard, back yard, and up and down the avenue was enrolled in an eduation system of its own kind.
Item One, Memory: Let's say thirty years ago, THE Halloween blizzard of all blizzards dumped at least three feet of snow on the Twin Cities in twenty-four hours. There we were, Fran and I, driving around in his "superior" Volkswagen. Item: THERE IS NO SUPERIOR VOLKSWAGEN in three feet of wet, heavy snow. We got stuck. Our tires spun. We skidded into snow banks. A big car pushed us out. Somehow we made our goal, whatever it was. That GOAL has melted into memory, but the blizzard itself will always remain frightful and intense--a whoop-de-do.
We were young and foolish.
Yesterday, globs of white stuff plummeted down, driving the squirrels in the backyard frantic. They were very wet, hungry and desperate. Not a one had built a leaf house in the arms of a tree. One, more intrepid than the others, rushed up on the deck and began chewing into the cooler where I'd been directed (by a higher power) to keep chunks of fancy suet cold. In my heavy house slippers, I chased the varmint off, but feeling sorry for the mob of gray desperados in the back yard, I cut several suet cakes into bits, grabbed handfulls of dry cat food, and with my parka flapping, but in my boots, rushed out to succor the mob. Opening the garage door to the metal trash cans that house the various kinds of seeds which I usually sprinkle on the ground, I suddenly found myself fanned by a squirrel rushing OUT of the garage. How it had made its way in, I now refuse to consider.
Let's say that nature has been kind. Outside my window, sun sparkles on the gold and red and green of a lovely fall morning. The light's angle is low which makes the leaves glimmer and shimmer in the light breeze. The temperature is around 45 degrees. It is a lovely fall day. I'll walk the long way, over Hamline Bridge to Fran's old neighborhood where Fran and I were deliriosly happy in first love.
But, I remind myself, it was May when we met. No weather events to mar our giddy delight. More mature and seasoned now, we can still be happy--he'll be home today from playing Scrabble in Madison. That would be Wisconsin for anyone reading this who isn't from the UPPER Midwest where almost every weather extreme except sand storms have been known to happen.
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Margotlog: A Russian Artist Among Us: Alexander Tylevich
Margotlog: A Russian Among Us: Alexander Tylevich
In our own vast country, how many of us can make sense of Russia with its mix of peoples, its peculiar history of enormous change, and its extraordinary artistic heritage? I have two recent claims: listening for maybe the fourth time to a wonderful translation and reading of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, and visiting the Bloomington (Minnesota) Center for the Arts to discover Alexander Tylevich's narrow, see-through mylar/bronze/steel figures frozen in motion--walking, biking, running. Anna Karenina, first published in its entirety in 1878, is set in the mid-to-late 19th century. It is probably the quintessential novel in any language, full full of gentle love, enormous wealth, dreadful sadness, and a sophistication that would put most Americans of any era, except maybe Lincoln, to shame.
Now, into our rather bland midwestern mix comes a contemporary Russian artist. My husband and I discovered Alexander Tylevich's work with the help of a friend. We saw first, Tylevich's huge, spiraling, free-wheeling collage in the "Robert Bruininks" University of Minnesota building just across from the Weisman Art Center. Tylevich's collage sculpture, probably five stories high, rises up and up and up from the ground floor, within its own columnar space, accompanied by its own spiraling stairway as if to help viewers take in the marvels of see-through colored plates cut in unexpected cones, squares, daggers--different yet related not just to each other, but to things scientific and mathematical, for this is a science building. Yet, when we asked the young people at the information desk, none seemed to know anything about the sculpture. We determined to find out what we could about Alexander Tylevich.
Then several months later arrived an announcement that his small sculptures would be on view at the Bloomington, Minnesota, Art Center. Here is what the website of the Art Center says about him:
Alexander Tylevich is an award-winning sculptor and architect born in Minsk, Belarus. His projects range from freestanding site-specific sculptures to a master plan for a metropolitan city. Since immigrating to the United States in 1989, he has realized more than 70 major art commissions and several architectural projects. He often works as a member of a larger team, with architects, landscape architects, and other design professionals. Tylevich’s work always demonstrates a purposeful co-mingling of the two disciplines of architecture and sculpture, and perhaps the best single word to describe his approach is ‘confluence.’
This certainly describes the enormous suspended sculpture we discovered in the University of Minnesota Bruininks' building. In fact, our neighbor who introduced us to Tylevich's work, helped install it, and emphasized that the process was rigorous, pains-staking, and frightening.
What we saw last week at the Bloomington Art Center certainly had elements in common with the huge suspended spiral. But two things were remarkably different: Though a few of the Tylevich's sculptures in the show are heroic, rising head and shoulders above some sort of crowd, most of the sculptures are small. Not tiny like Thumbelina, but the size of a large hand as they stride along or ride their bikes, in motion even as they themselves are anonymous--perhaps a Russian form of the "common man." Not a single one I saw seemed female. But then, these figures propose change, even revolution. I couldn't help thinking of my young, chain-smoking college literature teacher from Russian who introduced us to One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
The point of the book and perhaps too of Tylevich's small, very active figures is that the common man is made for change, brought about not by long hours at a desk but by odd offerings --a leg ending at the knee, or a face missing an ear, or a body as narrow as a pane of glass, steel, or bronze, somehow peddaling along though missing most of its other half. Yet motion/action never pauses for loss. One may be disfigured, yet one soldiers on.
In our own vast country, how many of us can make sense of Russia with its mix of peoples, its peculiar history of enormous change, and its extraordinary artistic heritage? I have two recent claims: listening for maybe the fourth time to a wonderful translation and reading of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, and visiting the Bloomington (Minnesota) Center for the Arts to discover Alexander Tylevich's narrow, see-through mylar/bronze/steel figures frozen in motion--walking, biking, running. Anna Karenina, first published in its entirety in 1878, is set in the mid-to-late 19th century. It is probably the quintessential novel in any language, full full of gentle love, enormous wealth, dreadful sadness, and a sophistication that would put most Americans of any era, except maybe Lincoln, to shame.
Now, into our rather bland midwestern mix comes a contemporary Russian artist. My husband and I discovered Alexander Tylevich's work with the help of a friend. We saw first, Tylevich's huge, spiraling, free-wheeling collage in the "Robert Bruininks" University of Minnesota building just across from the Weisman Art Center. Tylevich's collage sculpture, probably five stories high, rises up and up and up from the ground floor, within its own columnar space, accompanied by its own spiraling stairway as if to help viewers take in the marvels of see-through colored plates cut in unexpected cones, squares, daggers--different yet related not just to each other, but to things scientific and mathematical, for this is a science building. Yet, when we asked the young people at the information desk, none seemed to know anything about the sculpture. We determined to find out what we could about Alexander Tylevich.
Then several months later arrived an announcement that his small sculptures would be on view at the Bloomington, Minnesota, Art Center. Here is what the website of the Art Center says about him:
Alexander Tylevich is an award-winning sculptor and architect born in Minsk, Belarus. His projects range from freestanding site-specific sculptures to a master plan for a metropolitan city. Since immigrating to the United States in 1989, he has realized more than 70 major art commissions and several architectural projects. He often works as a member of a larger team, with architects, landscape architects, and other design professionals. Tylevich’s work always demonstrates a purposeful co-mingling of the two disciplines of architecture and sculpture, and perhaps the best single word to describe his approach is ‘confluence.’
This certainly describes the enormous suspended sculpture we discovered in the University of Minnesota Bruininks' building. In fact, our neighbor who introduced us to Tylevich's work, helped install it, and emphasized that the process was rigorous, pains-staking, and frightening.
What we saw last week at the Bloomington Art Center certainly had elements in common with the huge suspended spiral. But two things were remarkably different: Though a few of the Tylevich's sculptures in the show are heroic, rising head and shoulders above some sort of crowd, most of the sculptures are small. Not tiny like Thumbelina, but the size of a large hand as they stride along or ride their bikes, in motion even as they themselves are anonymous--perhaps a Russian form of the "common man." Not a single one I saw seemed female. But then, these figures propose change, even revolution. I couldn't help thinking of my young, chain-smoking college literature teacher from Russian who introduced us to One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
The point of the book and perhaps too of Tylevich's small, very active figures is that the common man is made for change, brought about not by long hours at a desk but by odd offerings --a leg ending at the knee, or a face missing an ear, or a body as narrow as a pane of glass, steel, or bronze, somehow peddaling along though missing most of its other half. Yet motion/action never pauses for loss. One may be disfigured, yet one soldiers on.
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
Margotlog: Cerise Chiffon and Medieval Stone: Musing on an Exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art
Margotlog: Cerise Chiffon and Medieval Stone: Musing on an Exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art
Walking up from the cafeteria in the Museum's depths, I stepped into the Medieval galleries, expecting ancient gray stone. A shimmering cerise gown stood in the way. As I moved through the large gallery, I discovered other models wearing rich fabrics. Some suggested medieval styles: high flared collars, tight sleeves with flaring cuffs, and bodices tight to the female form. These were not live models, but "dummies" without heads, except for the sightless eyes and severe lips of those wearing cloches--an odd word I remember my mother using. Cloche: a hat, usually made of felt, fitting tightly to the scalp. Some of these were of the same rich brocade as their heavy gowns.
Yet all around these figures, so dazzling in color and form, remained the mute, gray, ancient bas reliefs, or occasional figures from the medieval period. Many of them were fragments of larger works; many of them had religious meaning. The Virgin Mary is a crucial figure in Christianity. Her son died on the cross for human sins, yet she lived on and became an intercessor for our weak and troubled souls. I find her cowled and praying figure one of the most endearing hopes when I feel the most downcast. She is the mother of us all, quiet, loving, and generous in spirit. She mourns, yet lives.
What point did the museum curators intend when they studded her medieval milieu full of piety and quiet generosity with the dazzling gowns of modern designers? Yes, the gowns were all meant for women. No question about that. So, in their own way, they celebrated women, in figure, and elegance, and lavish richness. I suppose the gowns could be taken as a critique of medieval quietude.
Some of them almost flaunt the female body, like the cerise, strapless chiffon gown.
I propose that we need them all, these images of women, gray and antique, or lavish and modern. As the medieval gongs and viols, sharp cimbals and rat-a-tat drums made their mark, I thought of the centuries of women's presence, whether carved in stone or simply brought to life in contempory rich, elegant and sometimes revealing garments.
Walking up from the cafeteria in the Museum's depths, I stepped into the Medieval galleries, expecting ancient gray stone. A shimmering cerise gown stood in the way. As I moved through the large gallery, I discovered other models wearing rich fabrics. Some suggested medieval styles: high flared collars, tight sleeves with flaring cuffs, and bodices tight to the female form. These were not live models, but "dummies" without heads, except for the sightless eyes and severe lips of those wearing cloches--an odd word I remember my mother using. Cloche: a hat, usually made of felt, fitting tightly to the scalp. Some of these were of the same rich brocade as their heavy gowns.
Yet all around these figures, so dazzling in color and form, remained the mute, gray, ancient bas reliefs, or occasional figures from the medieval period. Many of them were fragments of larger works; many of them had religious meaning. The Virgin Mary is a crucial figure in Christianity. Her son died on the cross for human sins, yet she lived on and became an intercessor for our weak and troubled souls. I find her cowled and praying figure one of the most endearing hopes when I feel the most downcast. She is the mother of us all, quiet, loving, and generous in spirit. She mourns, yet lives.
What point did the museum curators intend when they studded her medieval milieu full of piety and quiet generosity with the dazzling gowns of modern designers? Yes, the gowns were all meant for women. No question about that. So, in their own way, they celebrated women, in figure, and elegance, and lavish richness. I suppose the gowns could be taken as a critique of medieval quietude.
Some of them almost flaunt the female body, like the cerise, strapless chiffon gown.
I propose that we need them all, these images of women, gray and antique, or lavish and modern. As the medieval gongs and viols, sharp cimbals and rat-a-tat drums made their mark, I thought of the centuries of women's presence, whether carved in stone or simply brought to life in contempory rich, elegant and sometimes revealing garments.
Monday, August 27, 2018
Margotlog: News from China and Iowa of Long Ago
Margotlog: Galts in China And Iowa During World War II and the Vietnam War
Here is an email I received this morning, out of the blue:
Dear Ms Galt: I have come into possession of a small notebook once kept by Edith Galt (1917-1961). I would be happy to return the notebook to the Galt family if you would like it back. I traced Edith\'s family via Ancestry.com, Newspapers.com and Google, and am contacting you because your contact information was the easiest for me to quickly find. The notebook is about 3x4 inches and contains notes and accounts that Edith kept while at Grinnell College and in China. Wedged among the yellowed pages is a small photograph of a young woman. The book was found, years ago, in the attic of farmhouse near Tama, Iowa, which is about 30 miles north of Grinnell. The elderly woman who found it is no longer sure exactly where the house was or if it is still standing. She found the notebook while sorting for her own move. I\'m happy to mail the book to any address you provide.
What a thrill: This is what the internet and email are supposed to provide: surprises, astonishment, and gratitude. Feeling all those lively emotions, I wrote back to this kind, honorable women:
It doesn't surprise me that the notebook was found near Grinnell.
According to my rather sketchy knowledge of the Galt family, my husband Fran's
father Ralph was raised in China by missionary parents, both of whom came
from Iowa. They returned to the U.S. for Ralph to attend Grinnell.
Once graduated , Ralph married a lovely young woman from New England, Louisa (named for Louisa May Alcott), and the two of them, in their turn, took a ship for missionary work in China.
This brings us up to the outbreak of World War II, during which Louisa and Ralph were exchanged for Japanese prisoners of war and were allowed to return on a slow boat around the tip of South America and through the Port of New York. Once in the U.S. Ralph refused to register for the draft. This was 1942, in the midst of World War II. As "draft refuser," or conscientious objector, Ralph was imprisoned in a federal prison in West Virginia from September 1942 to early 1944, a total of 21 months.
When he was incarcerated, his wife Louisa was already pregnant. She gave birth to Fran's brother Lester in 1943 while Ralph was still in prison. Once he was released on parole, the family moved to Shawnee Mission, Oklahoma, where Ralph was state director for the Christian Rural Oversea's Program, or CROP. The couple's second child, the son Francis, was born in 1947. Francis would eventually become my husband.
Interestingly enough, Fran himself refused the draft and spent two years, from 1966-68, in Federal prison at Springfield Medical Center for Federal Prisoners, Missouri. He was given the job of typist to two employees: a prison psychologist and a jail inspector. Released in 1968, Fran was later paroled by President Gerald Ford in 1976.
Grandfather Galt, the original missionary to China, and his wife Alti Cummings, had three children, Ralph, and two sisters, one of whom was Edith, whose diary has been discovered in an attic near Grinnell. It's truly astonishing how in the years before the internet or even transoceanic telephone, so many of my husband's family conducted their lives overseas. Perhaps it's a clue that until he met me, Fran did not cross an ocean, but remained close to the Midwest where his family settled before and after they took the long boat to China.
Here is an email I received this morning, out of the blue:
Dear Ms Galt: I have come into possession of a small notebook once kept by Edith Galt (1917-1961). I would be happy to return the notebook to the Galt family if you would like it back. I traced Edith\'s family via Ancestry.com, Newspapers.com and Google, and am contacting you because your contact information was the easiest for me to quickly find. The notebook is about 3x4 inches and contains notes and accounts that Edith kept while at Grinnell College and in China. Wedged among the yellowed pages is a small photograph of a young woman. The book was found, years ago, in the attic of farmhouse near Tama, Iowa, which is about 30 miles north of Grinnell. The elderly woman who found it is no longer sure exactly where the house was or if it is still standing. She found the notebook while sorting for her own move. I\'m happy to mail the book to any address you provide.
What a thrill: This is what the internet and email are supposed to provide: surprises, astonishment, and gratitude. Feeling all those lively emotions, I wrote back to this kind, honorable women:
It doesn't surprise me that the notebook was found near Grinnell.
According to my rather sketchy knowledge of the Galt family, my husband Fran's
father Ralph was raised in China by missionary parents, both of whom came
from Iowa. They returned to the U.S. for Ralph to attend Grinnell.
Once graduated , Ralph married a lovely young woman from New England, Louisa (named for Louisa May Alcott), and the two of them, in their turn, took a ship for missionary work in China.
This brings us up to the outbreak of World War II, during which Louisa and Ralph were exchanged for Japanese prisoners of war and were allowed to return on a slow boat around the tip of South America and through the Port of New York. Once in the U.S. Ralph refused to register for the draft. This was 1942, in the midst of World War II. As "draft refuser," or conscientious objector, Ralph was imprisoned in a federal prison in West Virginia from September 1942 to early 1944, a total of 21 months.
When he was incarcerated, his wife Louisa was already pregnant. She gave birth to Fran's brother Lester in 1943 while Ralph was still in prison. Once he was released on parole, the family moved to Shawnee Mission, Oklahoma, where Ralph was state director for the Christian Rural Oversea's Program, or CROP. The couple's second child, the son Francis, was born in 1947. Francis would eventually become my husband.
Interestingly enough, Fran himself refused the draft and spent two years, from 1966-68, in Federal prison at Springfield Medical Center for Federal Prisoners, Missouri. He was given the job of typist to two employees: a prison psychologist and a jail inspector. Released in 1968, Fran was later paroled by President Gerald Ford in 1976.
Grandfather Galt, the original missionary to China, and his wife Alti Cummings, had three children, Ralph, and two sisters, one of whom was Edith, whose diary has been discovered in an attic near Grinnell. It's truly astonishing how in the years before the internet or even transoceanic telephone, so many of my husband's family conducted their lives overseas. Perhaps it's a clue that until he met me, Fran did not cross an ocean, but remained close to the Midwest where his family settled before and after they took the long boat to China.
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Thursday, July 26, 2018
Margotlog: The Art of Losing
Margotlog: The Art of Losing
Elizabeth Bishop's villanelle, "The Art of Losing" has the command and sheen of great art. It's been one of my favorites for a very long time. Now I think of it after a day of losing first one, then another, then yet another crucial item: my car keys, my bigger cell phone, and almost my mind.
The art of losing isn't hard to master
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Losing and searching can become an obsession of flitting here, then there. Will the cell phone be hiding in the depths of my purse? Did I put it on the dining room floor as I ate dinner last night?
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spend.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I call my very put-together friend whose house is just beyond the Ford Bridge i.e. just inside Minneapolis. "Mary," I say with a touch of hysteria in my voice, "I can't seem to find your house. Some nice man with a dress shop pointed me back to the Parkway, but now the numbers on 35th Avenue are totally off, far beyond yours!"
....I lost two cities, lovely ones. And vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
Plucking up my courage, still unable to find my cell phone. I take a discarded old phone to AT&T where a charming young man sets is up to work again with a new "sym" card. Now it's chirping as it powers up. But will I be able to turn it off once on the plane to Amherst? So far, that hasn't worked. It chirps, and chirps, and chirps.
practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
Tomorrow in the dark before dawn, I will fly to visit this dear friend, younger than I am by at least a decade. Seven months ago, his partner of many years died of a cancer that could no longer be kept at bay. "I still weep every day," he tells me on the phone. Now as I turn myself toward the east, I sorrow for the one who is lost, joy for his life we both loved, though in vastly different intensites.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love), I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Elizabeth Bishop's villanelle, "The Art of Losing" has the command and sheen of great art. It's been one of my favorites for a very long time. Now I think of it after a day of losing first one, then another, then yet another crucial item: my car keys, my bigger cell phone, and almost my mind.
The art of losing isn't hard to master
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Losing and searching can become an obsession of flitting here, then there. Will the cell phone be hiding in the depths of my purse? Did I put it on the dining room floor as I ate dinner last night?
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spend.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I call my very put-together friend whose house is just beyond the Ford Bridge i.e. just inside Minneapolis. "Mary," I say with a touch of hysteria in my voice, "I can't seem to find your house. Some nice man with a dress shop pointed me back to the Parkway, but now the numbers on 35th Avenue are totally off, far beyond yours!"
....I lost two cities, lovely ones. And vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
Plucking up my courage, still unable to find my cell phone. I take a discarded old phone to AT&T where a charming young man sets is up to work again with a new "sym" card. Now it's chirping as it powers up. But will I be able to turn it off once on the plane to Amherst? So far, that hasn't worked. It chirps, and chirps, and chirps.
practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
Tomorrow in the dark before dawn, I will fly to visit this dear friend, younger than I am by at least a decade. Seven months ago, his partner of many years died of a cancer that could no longer be kept at bay. "I still weep every day," he tells me on the phone. Now as I turn myself toward the east, I sorrow for the one who is lost, joy for his life we both loved, though in vastly different intensites.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love), I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Friday, July 6, 2018
Margotlog: Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning To Be Free
Margotlog: "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning To Be Free"
The photo on the front page of the StarTribune
6/16/18 shows a boy, around six, staring up at an adult in combat garb toting a
night-stick and hand gun. Behind the boy stands another adult wearing a red
t-shirt, worn jeans, and running shoes.
How is it possible that the United States, home of
immigrants from around the world, has begun in a big way, the separation of immigrant children from
their parents? In 1900, my Italian grandmother, newly arrived in New York from Sicily. Her husband had served in the Italiay army and been sent to the North where he converted to Protestantism. When he returned to their tiny town in northern Sicily and built a small church for a very small congregation, Catholic townpeople burned it. He rebuilt, but the townpeople burned the second church. Fearing for their lives, the family came to New York. There Rose who would become my grandmother became so concerned
for the hungry children and poorly clad women around her in the New York tenements that she
delivered food, warm clothing, and blankets to residents three flights up. She
soon collapsed and died.
Doing good for those in need is surely at the heart of every
religious tradition on earth—that is, except for the Trump administration.
Trump & Company have ordered thousands of children to be separated from their
parents who’ve illegally crossed the U.S./Mexican border.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-[tossed] to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Let us be the lamp of hope, as we offer freedom from want, charity toward all, and acceptance among us.
Thursday, June 14, 2018
Margotlog: Two Statues in Florence's Bargello
Margotlog: Two Statues (Interrupted) in Florence's Bargello
Usually I've thought of myself as a lover of paintings, but when I visited Florence's Bargello Museum this past May, I changed my mind. Once a prison, the Bargello now is Florence's "municipal" sculpture gallery, full of extraordinary sculptures that fill a huge upper gallery. There are so many it's hard to take them all in. I didn't try. Almost immediately I was riveted by two, small, free-standing sculptures of young men. The first--Donatello's "David," is very family. This tart" of a boy, with round stomach and flaring backside, hides his expression under his shepherd's hat, decked with flowers and pulled low over his curls. But his pose is unmistakably that of triumph: Standing with one leg cocked, he balances one hand on the sword he used to slay the giant, Goliath.
It is a very sexy statue. The giant's winged helmet slides its wing up the boy's leg, giving us a shiver so enticing, it's hard to believe--that soft wing against the boy's naked inner thigh. Yet David doesn't seem to notice. He pouts, and withdraws into himself. He does not lift his head. In fact, he seems bemused by what he has done.
Across the huge chamber stands another young male figure--very slender, almost emaciated, holding a staff against his body. He is "St. John the Baptist" by Desiderio da Settingnano.
............................
To visit the Bargello I was using the last few hours of my "Firenze" three-day pass. Initially I had activated the pass when I arrived with my two friends from Minnesota, Mary and Drew. An hour or so after we checked into our "Monestary Stay" convent, Drew became ill. The vivid red swath on his neck shouted distress: infection was creeping down his throat from his ear.
Immediately we took a taxi to a British doctor whom Mary located on the internet. This kind man gave Drew an antibiotic injection, but also suggested we visit Careggie, the hospital/clinic complex high in the hills around Florence.
I remember nothing of the drive to the hospital, but the nightmare of arrival is clear: we flitted from door to door, doctor to doctor in this huge complex and finally ended taking seats in a huge clinic full of other sufferers. Despite my Italian, despite waiting four hours, we eventually gave up.
Sitting beside the taxi driver as we left the hospital and drove back to town, I was struck by the beautiful green of the umbrella pines and darker spears of cypress. It was a beautiful May afternoon. For a few moments, the land enchanted me it has so often before.
Mary and Drew located a flight home that left just after midnight. This gave us time to enjoy a "last supper" at Accadi near the hotel. Next morning, they were gone, and I had two days to use my Firenze pass.
Sampling gelato, which was especially delicious, I walked along the Arno with its frothy jets and visited the Church of the Carmine. Then retracing my steps toward the Ponte Vecchio, and my room, I changed clothes to something cooler and headed for the Bargello.
..........................
Desiderio da Settignano is a less well-known than is Donatello, in part, I think, because he did not live as long, and in part because his scrulptures are more direct than Donatello's. Yet I was determined to give St. John the Baptist as much attention as I could muster.
Slowly, studying first the front of the sculpture, noticing the pelts that clothe the shepherd's emaciated form, I remembered bits of the Baptist's story. As Christ's precurser, John the Baptist lived in the wilderness, searching for spiritual insight. He ate nuts and fruit and made friends of wolves and even lions. Settingano's Baptist is so thin as to be anoxsic, but that is the point: he has renounced the fruits of the worldly life, and become an ascetic.
Keeping my eyes on the face with its somewhat stern expression, I slowly walked about the scupture. Do I remember whether Settignanon put his John the Baptist firmly on both feet? Now that I think of it, I believe that like Donatello's David, Settingnano has John the Baptist bend one knee. One heel is off the ground. This seems to suggest that all human effort is tentative. Just as with myself and my dear friends, Mary and Drew, we become caught in a flow of experience, not knowing what would happen next.
Now my eyes fill with tears. I am so sorry that Mary and Drew lost the experiences we had hoped to share. Their return home was harrowing--they missed the first transAtlantic flight out of Amsterdam and had to wait hours and hours before boarding another. Once home, Drew spent two days in the hospital. But modern medicine can work miracles. Drew is well, and Mary is her joyful self again.
Like Settignano's beautiful, emaciated figure of John the Baptist, we can pause only for a moment before life sends us on our way. Yet, as I studied this astere figure, so slender and alone, I discovered on the far side of his face, the beginning of a joyful smile. In the midst of uncertainty and torment, he broke free into ecstatic hope.
Usually I've thought of myself as a lover of paintings, but when I visited Florence's Bargello Museum this past May, I changed my mind. Once a prison, the Bargello now is Florence's "municipal" sculpture gallery, full of extraordinary sculptures that fill a huge upper gallery. There are so many it's hard to take them all in. I didn't try. Almost immediately I was riveted by two, small, free-standing sculptures of young men. The first--Donatello's "David," is very family. This tart" of a boy, with round stomach and flaring backside, hides his expression under his shepherd's hat, decked with flowers and pulled low over his curls. But his pose is unmistakably that of triumph: Standing with one leg cocked, he balances one hand on the sword he used to slay the giant, Goliath.
It is a very sexy statue. The giant's winged helmet slides its wing up the boy's leg, giving us a shiver so enticing, it's hard to believe--that soft wing against the boy's naked inner thigh. Yet David doesn't seem to notice. He pouts, and withdraws into himself. He does not lift his head. In fact, he seems bemused by what he has done.
Across the huge chamber stands another young male figure--very slender, almost emaciated, holding a staff against his body. He is "St. John the Baptist" by Desiderio da Settingnano.
............................
To visit the Bargello I was using the last few hours of my "Firenze" three-day pass. Initially I had activated the pass when I arrived with my two friends from Minnesota, Mary and Drew. An hour or so after we checked into our "Monestary Stay" convent, Drew became ill. The vivid red swath on his neck shouted distress: infection was creeping down his throat from his ear.
Immediately we took a taxi to a British doctor whom Mary located on the internet. This kind man gave Drew an antibiotic injection, but also suggested we visit Careggie, the hospital/clinic complex high in the hills around Florence.
I remember nothing of the drive to the hospital, but the nightmare of arrival is clear: we flitted from door to door, doctor to doctor in this huge complex and finally ended taking seats in a huge clinic full of other sufferers. Despite my Italian, despite waiting four hours, we eventually gave up.
Sitting beside the taxi driver as we left the hospital and drove back to town, I was struck by the beautiful green of the umbrella pines and darker spears of cypress. It was a beautiful May afternoon. For a few moments, the land enchanted me it has so often before.
Mary and Drew located a flight home that left just after midnight. This gave us time to enjoy a "last supper" at Accadi near the hotel. Next morning, they were gone, and I had two days to use my Firenze pass.
Sampling gelato, which was especially delicious, I walked along the Arno with its frothy jets and visited the Church of the Carmine. Then retracing my steps toward the Ponte Vecchio, and my room, I changed clothes to something cooler and headed for the Bargello.
..........................
Desiderio da Settignano is a less well-known than is Donatello, in part, I think, because he did not live as long, and in part because his scrulptures are more direct than Donatello's. Yet I was determined to give St. John the Baptist as much attention as I could muster.
Slowly, studying first the front of the sculpture, noticing the pelts that clothe the shepherd's emaciated form, I remembered bits of the Baptist's story. As Christ's precurser, John the Baptist lived in the wilderness, searching for spiritual insight. He ate nuts and fruit and made friends of wolves and even lions. Settingano's Baptist is so thin as to be anoxsic, but that is the point: he has renounced the fruits of the worldly life, and become an ascetic.
Keeping my eyes on the face with its somewhat stern expression, I slowly walked about the scupture. Do I remember whether Settignanon put his John the Baptist firmly on both feet? Now that I think of it, I believe that like Donatello's David, Settingnano has John the Baptist bend one knee. One heel is off the ground. This seems to suggest that all human effort is tentative. Just as with myself and my dear friends, Mary and Drew, we become caught in a flow of experience, not knowing what would happen next.
Now my eyes fill with tears. I am so sorry that Mary and Drew lost the experiences we had hoped to share. Their return home was harrowing--they missed the first transAtlantic flight out of Amsterdam and had to wait hours and hours before boarding another. Once home, Drew spent two days in the hospital. But modern medicine can work miracles. Drew is well, and Mary is her joyful self again.
Like Settignano's beautiful, emaciated figure of John the Baptist, we can pause only for a moment before life sends us on our way. Yet, as I studied this astere figure, so slender and alone, I discovered on the far side of his face, the beginning of a joyful smile. In the midst of uncertainty and torment, he broke free into ecstatic hope.
Monday, May 21, 2018
Margotlog: What Is So Rare as a Day in May?
Margotlog: What Is So Rare as a Day in May?
Here in North Country Land, we've suffered through a very very long winter. There was a snowfall in early May. I thought I might slit my throat and let a few drops of red blood festoon the white. Suddenly, all has changed, and as Yeats wrote, "a terrible beauty is born." But it's not terrible. "It's wonderful, it's marvelous that you should care for me. It's awful nice, It's paradise, It's what I long to see. You make my life so glamorous." That's Fred Astair singing to Audrey Hepburn in "Funny Face," one of their June/January matings which were as kind and friendly and even a little silly, always ending in "amorous." Note: It was the Gershwin brothers who wrote the song.
The robins in our back yard are strutting about with their red vests puffed out as if they were marshals at the parade. A wren pair has taken up residence in our neighbor's "play" house, where they've raised a brood for three or four years in a row. The noisiest of birds, and some of the smallest. I love their stuck-up tails and chatter in the vines. Even a female grosbeak, not as flaboyantly black and red as her consort, but still a biggish, brown-streaked bird with, as her name suggests, a very large beak, comes every day to the feeder.
Yes, the birds are back, but it's the sudden eruption of green and sweet scents that make me swoon. Years ago, outside the front window, I planted against all caution a sunburst locust --"too small a yard for three large trees" frowned the arborist. Yet the locust has flourished, and now spreads its fluffy, yellow-green fronds (truly more like a fern than a tree) outside my window. Up and down the avenues, as I walk to the drug store, huge lilacs hold their bouquets of light purple and white with such aplomb as to be dancers in a ballet.
Yet, there are already weeds--tree shoots I should have removed last autumn now wave their success in my face. I promise myself tomorrow to go out and whack them to the ground. There are losses: the beautiful azalea that returned for three years with its clusters of pink flowers--a lot like ballerinas dancing "The Sugar Plum Fair"--has succumbed to one of the longest and coldest winters we'd had in a long time. Only one side is in bloom, but the cluster of delicate pink flowers reminds me of home in Charleston, South Carolina, where the true azaleas bloom in April or even March, and the entire neighborhood where I grew up is rich with pink, just as ours is now. Ah, horticultureal success, and global-warming, bring the south to us in the north land. Amen.
Here in North Country Land, we've suffered through a very very long winter. There was a snowfall in early May. I thought I might slit my throat and let a few drops of red blood festoon the white. Suddenly, all has changed, and as Yeats wrote, "a terrible beauty is born." But it's not terrible. "It's wonderful, it's marvelous that you should care for me. It's awful nice, It's paradise, It's what I long to see. You make my life so glamorous." That's Fred Astair singing to Audrey Hepburn in "Funny Face," one of their June/January matings which were as kind and friendly and even a little silly, always ending in "amorous." Note: It was the Gershwin brothers who wrote the song.
The robins in our back yard are strutting about with their red vests puffed out as if they were marshals at the parade. A wren pair has taken up residence in our neighbor's "play" house, where they've raised a brood for three or four years in a row. The noisiest of birds, and some of the smallest. I love their stuck-up tails and chatter in the vines. Even a female grosbeak, not as flaboyantly black and red as her consort, but still a biggish, brown-streaked bird with, as her name suggests, a very large beak, comes every day to the feeder.
Yes, the birds are back, but it's the sudden eruption of green and sweet scents that make me swoon. Years ago, outside the front window, I planted against all caution a sunburst locust --"too small a yard for three large trees" frowned the arborist. Yet the locust has flourished, and now spreads its fluffy, yellow-green fronds (truly more like a fern than a tree) outside my window. Up and down the avenues, as I walk to the drug store, huge lilacs hold their bouquets of light purple and white with such aplomb as to be dancers in a ballet.
Yet, there are already weeds--tree shoots I should have removed last autumn now wave their success in my face. I promise myself tomorrow to go out and whack them to the ground. There are losses: the beautiful azalea that returned for three years with its clusters of pink flowers--a lot like ballerinas dancing "The Sugar Plum Fair"--has succumbed to one of the longest and coldest winters we'd had in a long time. Only one side is in bloom, but the cluster of delicate pink flowers reminds me of home in Charleston, South Carolina, where the true azaleas bloom in April or even March, and the entire neighborhood where I grew up is rich with pink, just as ours is now. Ah, horticultureal success, and global-warming, bring the south to us in the north land. Amen.
Tuesday, May 8, 2018
Margotlog: Notes from Florence - 2018
Notes from Florence - 2018
In the part of Azelio, a teacher calls to her children. If we were in the U.S., she's ask them to say
"cheese." But here, where cheese is beloved, she asks for a "soriso," a smile like a sunrise.
So many of her pupils are Asian, I comment. She answers, "Chinese" Nearby a new mother coos to her baby, encourages, "Say 'Papa,' say 'Mama.'" A merli like our American robin except all black, flies across the path, its chirrup like the robin I left at home, perching on our birdbath filling up with snow.
Who belongs where anymore? I name one of the few Italian trees I remember, "tilio," much like our North American bassrood with its heart-shaped leaves. Nearby a man with bronze skin leans over his knees as if sick. Should I offer him part of my sandwich? So much known and unknown. A man with pale skin rides a bicycle through the shade, his tailored coattails flapping. As I approach the slumped man, he sits up, pulls a ringing cell phone from his pocket, andputs it to his ear.
In the part of Azelio, a teacher calls to her children. If we were in the U.S., she's ask them to say
"cheese." But here, where cheese is beloved, she asks for a "soriso," a smile like a sunrise.
So many of her pupils are Asian, I comment. She answers, "Chinese" Nearby a new mother coos to her baby, encourages, "Say 'Papa,' say 'Mama.'" A merli like our American robin except all black, flies across the path, its chirrup like the robin I left at home, perching on our birdbath filling up with snow.
Who belongs where anymore? I name one of the few Italian trees I remember, "tilio," much like our North American bassrood with its heart-shaped leaves. Nearby a man with bronze skin leans over his knees as if sick. Should I offer him part of my sandwich? So much known and unknown. A man with pale skin rides a bicycle through the shade, his tailored coattails flapping. As I approach the slumped man, he sits up, pulls a ringing cell phone from his pocket, andputs it to his ear.
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Margotlog: Facebook
Margotlog:Facebook
It's probably what many of us fear--that our electronic contacts to those we treasure (and inevitably to those we don't) will be taken over by an "alien" force who starts writing things that shock, deride, and besmirch us.
Facebook has been in the news laterly because it has been less than cautious about protecting the electronic communications of its "users." Here's how I unpack that statement: First, "face" suggests we know to whom we speak. Second, "book" suggests a book held in front of us, read by one of us at a time. Of course real books are printed in the hundreds of thousands, depending on what their editors/publishers think will sell. But they are "used" by one person or a small number when one voice reads aloud to a class, family, or congregation. Or a teacher assigns a book to students, and most of them do indeed read it, then discuss it.
I tried Facebook years ago. For a few months it was rather fun. I have no idea now what I "posted" or what "mail" I received, but mostly I wrote little nothings, little squibs about real books, movies, plays --reviews, so to speak. I did not "communicate" with my readers as if we were face to face or speaking on the phone. Something about the privacy of writing on a computer seemed alien to speaking immediately and directly to a single person or a horde.
Then, all of a sudden, I began finding I had "posted" stuff that didn't sound like me. These posts were too jocular or snide; they implied things I would never speak about in public. Or even to my most intimate friends except in a low voice, in absolute privacy.
Within a week or so, it was clear that some alien force had assumed my voice. Putting words in my mouth, and worst of all, portraying me as someone I was not. Even here, I refuse to reveal the nastiness I was credited with promulgating. It took me a while to grasp what was happening. Once I did, I had to search around for help in having my "entity" removed from the organization.
Now I read about hundreds of thousands of people who use Facebook several times a day. They write about everyday things, they express opinions, they rant and rave, they proclaim politically; they act as if they sat across a table from the person (s) they communicate with.
I find it disturbing and very very dangerous. These "users" are placing elements of their opinions, experiences, attitudes, loves, hates before anonymous groups. It's far more "public" than standing on one's own front steps and shouting what you believe to the neighborhood. Or making a "sandwich board" with a message on it, which also includes your private information, easy for the world to read but rather hard to appropriate as you walk up and down a busy street.
We are often incredibly naive. I was, until that naivete began to get me in trouble.
Just for the record, as I write this on the blog format, I find myself reluctant to "post" it. I don't want to stir up those malign creatures who enjoy creating anguish, and coming off scott-free. Is this entry for an archive labeled "never sent?" No, I guess not. Let me know what you think. Or not. This is a blog, not necessarily an interactive entity. I value your privacy just like mine.
All best, M.
It's probably what many of us fear--that our electronic contacts to those we treasure (and inevitably to those we don't) will be taken over by an "alien" force who starts writing things that shock, deride, and besmirch us.
Facebook has been in the news laterly because it has been less than cautious about protecting the electronic communications of its "users." Here's how I unpack that statement: First, "face" suggests we know to whom we speak. Second, "book" suggests a book held in front of us, read by one of us at a time. Of course real books are printed in the hundreds of thousands, depending on what their editors/publishers think will sell. But they are "used" by one person or a small number when one voice reads aloud to a class, family, or congregation. Or a teacher assigns a book to students, and most of them do indeed read it, then discuss it.
I tried Facebook years ago. For a few months it was rather fun. I have no idea now what I "posted" or what "mail" I received, but mostly I wrote little nothings, little squibs about real books, movies, plays --reviews, so to speak. I did not "communicate" with my readers as if we were face to face or speaking on the phone. Something about the privacy of writing on a computer seemed alien to speaking immediately and directly to a single person or a horde.
Then, all of a sudden, I began finding I had "posted" stuff that didn't sound like me. These posts were too jocular or snide; they implied things I would never speak about in public. Or even to my most intimate friends except in a low voice, in absolute privacy.
Within a week or so, it was clear that some alien force had assumed my voice. Putting words in my mouth, and worst of all, portraying me as someone I was not. Even here, I refuse to reveal the nastiness I was credited with promulgating. It took me a while to grasp what was happening. Once I did, I had to search around for help in having my "entity" removed from the organization.
Now I read about hundreds of thousands of people who use Facebook several times a day. They write about everyday things, they express opinions, they rant and rave, they proclaim politically; they act as if they sat across a table from the person (s) they communicate with.
I find it disturbing and very very dangerous. These "users" are placing elements of their opinions, experiences, attitudes, loves, hates before anonymous groups. It's far more "public" than standing on one's own front steps and shouting what you believe to the neighborhood. Or making a "sandwich board" with a message on it, which also includes your private information, easy for the world to read but rather hard to appropriate as you walk up and down a busy street.
We are often incredibly naive. I was, until that naivete began to get me in trouble.
Just for the record, as I write this on the blog format, I find myself reluctant to "post" it. I don't want to stir up those malign creatures who enjoy creating anguish, and coming off scott-free. Is this entry for an archive labeled "never sent?" No, I guess not. Let me know what you think. Or not. This is a blog, not necessarily an interactive entity. I value your privacy just like mine.
All best, M.
Friday, April 6, 2018
A Missionary Couple in 1912 China
Margotlog: A Missionary Couple in 1912 China
This couple, Altie and Elmer Galt, were my husband's Iowa grandparents who came as Protestant missionaries to China in 1912. I would know almost nothing about them except that Altie kept a diary which I've been reading. The small brown book is stamped with this title: "The Missionaries Anglo-Chinese Diary, 1912."
Her name was Altie Cummings and she had married Elmer Galt. Each page of the diary is identified by a page number, the day of whatever moon of the year it was (for example the 25th of 6th Moon), the day of the week, and above that, the month and year--all this in English. Then to the right is a message in Chinese, which, of course, I can't read. Each small page has room for two entries.
On August 12, 1912Wednesday, she writes, "I wash up and put away the last of Arthur's dear little clothes." Arthur was their first child. "Such a strange lonesome day," she writes on Sunday, August 4th. "Went to church again first time for three weeks"
Baby Arthur had celebrated his first birthday on July 28th, a Sunday. "The dear laddie's birthday," she wrote. 'Such a precious treasure all year. If he only could be well today..just about the same, but every day no better; of course is really worse."
Her honesty and forthrightness astonish me. There is sadness and unclouded observation at the same time. "In the night baby had very hard time--vomiting and gagging. Sent for Dr. Love. They both [she means the doctor and his wife] came at 2:30 a.m. and stayed most of time until 2:30 p.m. Forenoon he seemed no worse than Sunday in spite of hard night, took new food, beef extract. By three o'clock began to get worse again--so hard. Dr. and Mrs. Love came at 8:00 p.m. to spend night. I go to bed at 11:00 but do not sleep - very hard night."
They tried many things to rouse and comfort the baby. "At 8:30 a.m.," she writes, "he finally drops into a natural sleep, and at 9:30 he quietly passed away--My baby!"
Journal writing, like letter writing, opens doors to everyday life. Altie's straight-forward, tender style, touches on sadness and joy with the same gentle frankness. Reading it gives me as much pleasure as fiction. But the experience is different. She is writing for herself (and perhaps her husband, even the future, though she shows no sign in her style of such awareness). Everything is lively and sincere, unclouded by uncertainty. She does not imagine that anyone could question her right to speak on the page. Perhaps this comes from whatever "calling" brought the couple to mission work. But her accounts are not strickly religious. Instead, they recount the pleasure of visitors--and there are many. Some are Chinese, many with Anglo names whom I suspect are single women from the United States who answered a "call" to carry God's word to foreign shores.
Yet, there's little "religiousity" in her accounts. She writes of visitors, of church services and the people she enjoys encountering there. She identifies her Chinese servants. I sense that she does not treat them as equals, which does not at all mean that she is harsh or insensitive to them. Rather, that they belong to another society, and social class within her world. This reminds me also of Eudora Welty's characters in her charming novel Delta Wedding. The year is not that different from Alti's 1912. The household in the state of Mississippi's Yazoo Delta teams with children and Negro servants, almost all referred to by their first names or nicknames--Bitsy, Howard, Roxie. Altie mentions the names of her Chinese servants, but I can't tell if they are what we'd call "first names," or something else. This is perhaps the only time my lack of knowledge about Chinese society inpedes my appreciation of her writing.
For the most part, Alti's life centers around her house and baby, this first year of his life, She is bolstered and encouraged by many enjoyable encounters with other women--ministers' wives, women missionaries, and travelers who stop to visit. It is a society segregated by gender, at least in her diary. The greatest pleasure in reading the diary comes from the amazing transparency and liveliness of her style. She is an unaffected writer who can create with a few strokes of the pen a scene, a mood, an assessment.
On Saturday, the 25th of May, she wrote: "Strawberry Shortcake! a few berries with ice cream two or three times before--from now on plentiful. Chiang NaiNai here fitting a new cover on my parasol. I also have gotten my blue grasscloth dress fitted." There is so much vivid description and intense pleasure conveyed in six handwritten lines.
This couple, Altie and Elmer Galt, were my husband's Iowa grandparents who came as Protestant missionaries to China in 1912. I would know almost nothing about them except that Altie kept a diary which I've been reading. The small brown book is stamped with this title: "The Missionaries Anglo-Chinese Diary, 1912."
Her name was Altie Cummings and she had married Elmer Galt. Each page of the diary is identified by a page number, the day of whatever moon of the year it was (for example the 25th of 6th Moon), the day of the week, and above that, the month and year--all this in English. Then to the right is a message in Chinese, which, of course, I can't read. Each small page has room for two entries.
On August 12, 1912Wednesday, she writes, "I wash up and put away the last of Arthur's dear little clothes." Arthur was their first child. "Such a strange lonesome day," she writes on Sunday, August 4th. "Went to church again first time for three weeks"
Baby Arthur had celebrated his first birthday on July 28th, a Sunday. "The dear laddie's birthday," she wrote. 'Such a precious treasure all year. If he only could be well today..just about the same, but every day no better; of course is really worse."
Her honesty and forthrightness astonish me. There is sadness and unclouded observation at the same time. "In the night baby had very hard time--vomiting and gagging. Sent for Dr. Love. They both [she means the doctor and his wife] came at 2:30 a.m. and stayed most of time until 2:30 p.m. Forenoon he seemed no worse than Sunday in spite of hard night, took new food, beef extract. By three o'clock began to get worse again--so hard. Dr. and Mrs. Love came at 8:00 p.m. to spend night. I go to bed at 11:00 but do not sleep - very hard night."
They tried many things to rouse and comfort the baby. "At 8:30 a.m.," she writes, "he finally drops into a natural sleep, and at 9:30 he quietly passed away--My baby!"
Journal writing, like letter writing, opens doors to everyday life. Altie's straight-forward, tender style, touches on sadness and joy with the same gentle frankness. Reading it gives me as much pleasure as fiction. But the experience is different. She is writing for herself (and perhaps her husband, even the future, though she shows no sign in her style of such awareness). Everything is lively and sincere, unclouded by uncertainty. She does not imagine that anyone could question her right to speak on the page. Perhaps this comes from whatever "calling" brought the couple to mission work. But her accounts are not strickly religious. Instead, they recount the pleasure of visitors--and there are many. Some are Chinese, many with Anglo names whom I suspect are single women from the United States who answered a "call" to carry God's word to foreign shores.
Yet, there's little "religiousity" in her accounts. She writes of visitors, of church services and the people she enjoys encountering there. She identifies her Chinese servants. I sense that she does not treat them as equals, which does not at all mean that she is harsh or insensitive to them. Rather, that they belong to another society, and social class within her world. This reminds me also of Eudora Welty's characters in her charming novel Delta Wedding. The year is not that different from Alti's 1912. The household in the state of Mississippi's Yazoo Delta teams with children and Negro servants, almost all referred to by their first names or nicknames--Bitsy, Howard, Roxie. Altie mentions the names of her Chinese servants, but I can't tell if they are what we'd call "first names," or something else. This is perhaps the only time my lack of knowledge about Chinese society inpedes my appreciation of her writing.
For the most part, Alti's life centers around her house and baby, this first year of his life, She is bolstered and encouraged by many enjoyable encounters with other women--ministers' wives, women missionaries, and travelers who stop to visit. It is a society segregated by gender, at least in her diary. The greatest pleasure in reading the diary comes from the amazing transparency and liveliness of her style. She is an unaffected writer who can create with a few strokes of the pen a scene, a mood, an assessment.
On Saturday, the 25th of May, she wrote: "Strawberry Shortcake! a few berries with ice cream two or three times before--from now on plentiful. Chiang NaiNai here fitting a new cover on my parasol. I also have gotten my blue grasscloth dress fitted." There is so much vivid description and intense pleasure conveyed in six handwritten lines.
Monday, February 19, 2018
Margotlog: Screen Time Eats Us Alive
Margotlog: Screen Time Eats Us Alive
It's been a shattering handful of days for those of us who love order, quiet, a safe and secure future. Not only have 17 students been shot in a Tallahhassee school by a gunman with a weapon powerful enough to rain bullets, but the report from special prosecutor Mueller has identified 13 Russian inviduals as well as 3 Russian "entities" that wormed their way into U.S. "social media."
Note: a few other developments bear on this too, though not so obviously: the State of Minnesota has plans to outlaw the use of "handheld devices," aka smart phones, by anyone driving an automobile. Yes, the smarty phone can be fixed on a dashboard, but the driver's hands must rest on the wheel. This leaves unacknowledged what will happen when the driver's eyes flit to identify the latest caller. I anticipate crashes, fender benders, veering out of lanes--things already damaging the rest of us. As long as smart phones are allowed to be displayed while a driver maneuvers a car, there will still be crashes and deaths of drivers desperately keeping their eyes on the road and their hands on the wheel.
FLASH: The one time I tried using my less-than-smart phone while I was driving, I found it so distracting that within three minutes I pulled over and shut the damn thing off.
This country, with its hightest standard of living in the world (I'll let that pass for now) and the most advanced technology (a huge part of the problem), is slowly unraveling. I'm here to tell you that in many ways, most of us are aiding and abbetting. (Just in case you don't do much with cloth, to unravel means that the warp and woof separate, revealing NOTHING, aka, a VOID.)
We already have evidence of VOIDIDITY in its most blatant form: Facebook has refused to bend to appeals for those hoping to protect children from becoming chained to a screen, and will soon inaugurate a FACEFULL FOR CHILDREN.
It seems that with the recent evidence of tampering, FACEFOOL Biggies have acknowledged there simply haven't been protections enough. Just at Mueller's investigation discovered, the Russian YUCKS have been drooling all over FACEFOOL, and prejudicing viewers who can't help themselves, we will how be educating our children, not just young adults, full adults, and senesant adults to work the stupidity of FACEFOOL.
Why, you ask, am I so against the FOOL of a FACE? Maybe six or seven years ago, my Facebook account was hacked. How did I figure this out? Some Troll posted junk that didn't originate with me. As quick as I could, I sent that FACE FALL into the dustbin of history. But there are far more dangerous infiltrations to a FACE FULL account: messages masquerading as coming from real people, messages that tilt certain truths far from what should be self-evident.
WE ALL NEED TO BECOME MUCH, MUCH SMARTER. We need QUIET TIME to absorb what we see and hear; to think about implications and ramifications. We need NOT TO BE SO BUSY LOOKING INTO A SCREEN'S VOID.
So now, I can ask, with a rather clear conscience, WHY do we need FACE FOOL? If we have any sense at all, we will get our news from reliable sources--like the Minneapols/St Paul Star Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the New York Times, the Washington Post. One way we can tell if a local paper is rather reliable is whether it publishes wire news and commentary from the two best newspapers in the U.S.: The NY Times and the Washington Post. We can also read the local commentaries for the logic of their arguments, the kinds of sources (like Minnesota's Senator Amy Klobuchar) they cite, and the rather sensible conclusions they reach.
It's been a shattering handful of days for those of us who love order, quiet, a safe and secure future. Not only have 17 students been shot in a Tallahhassee school by a gunman with a weapon powerful enough to rain bullets, but the report from special prosecutor Mueller has identified 13 Russian inviduals as well as 3 Russian "entities" that wormed their way into U.S. "social media."
Note: a few other developments bear on this too, though not so obviously: the State of Minnesota has plans to outlaw the use of "handheld devices," aka smart phones, by anyone driving an automobile. Yes, the smarty phone can be fixed on a dashboard, but the driver's hands must rest on the wheel. This leaves unacknowledged what will happen when the driver's eyes flit to identify the latest caller. I anticipate crashes, fender benders, veering out of lanes--things already damaging the rest of us. As long as smart phones are allowed to be displayed while a driver maneuvers a car, there will still be crashes and deaths of drivers desperately keeping their eyes on the road and their hands on the wheel.
FLASH: The one time I tried using my less-than-smart phone while I was driving, I found it so distracting that within three minutes I pulled over and shut the damn thing off.
This country, with its hightest standard of living in the world (I'll let that pass for now) and the most advanced technology (a huge part of the problem), is slowly unraveling. I'm here to tell you that in many ways, most of us are aiding and abbetting. (Just in case you don't do much with cloth, to unravel means that the warp and woof separate, revealing NOTHING, aka, a VOID.)
We already have evidence of VOIDIDITY in its most blatant form: Facebook has refused to bend to appeals for those hoping to protect children from becoming chained to a screen, and will soon inaugurate a FACEFULL FOR CHILDREN.
It seems that with the recent evidence of tampering, FACEFOOL Biggies have acknowledged there simply haven't been protections enough. Just at Mueller's investigation discovered, the Russian YUCKS have been drooling all over FACEFOOL, and prejudicing viewers who can't help themselves, we will how be educating our children, not just young adults, full adults, and senesant adults to work the stupidity of FACEFOOL.
Why, you ask, am I so against the FOOL of a FACE? Maybe six or seven years ago, my Facebook account was hacked. How did I figure this out? Some Troll posted junk that didn't originate with me. As quick as I could, I sent that FACE FALL into the dustbin of history. But there are far more dangerous infiltrations to a FACE FULL account: messages masquerading as coming from real people, messages that tilt certain truths far from what should be self-evident.
WE ALL NEED TO BECOME MUCH, MUCH SMARTER. We need QUIET TIME to absorb what we see and hear; to think about implications and ramifications. We need NOT TO BE SO BUSY LOOKING INTO A SCREEN'S VOID.
So now, I can ask, with a rather clear conscience, WHY do we need FACE FOOL? If we have any sense at all, we will get our news from reliable sources--like the Minneapols/St Paul Star Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the New York Times, the Washington Post. One way we can tell if a local paper is rather reliable is whether it publishes wire news and commentary from the two best newspapers in the U.S.: The NY Times and the Washington Post. We can also read the local commentaries for the logic of their arguments, the kinds of sources (like Minnesota's Senator Amy Klobuchar) they cite, and the rather sensible conclusions they reach.
Saturday, February 3, 2018
Winter Solstice - The Cathedral, a poem from my chapbook
Winter Solstice - The Cathedral
It is the year's dark, when memories
arrive, opening to swarms
of swallows above ancient fields,
vines strung among the corn, sheep
belling an ancient Roman bath.
Dry sun anoints a pear tree,
my father's last denizen
which new owners soon will fell.
It is the year's dark.
From the dome, a turquoise
eye regards us. Our famil's spire
has crumpled, heaving up
ghosts who flit here like shy bats.
There's my uncle, impish and cancer-ridden.
Our tiny aunt in blue pillbox--her daughters
soon will join her, sending spirals
of laughter to incite the higher-ups.
My mother's dog who stopped
her demented barking--
poor beast, she went gladly
to the earth, mound
of collar and bone,
reminder of the exoskeletons
we once were.
My two grandmothers, with tiny wings,
flutter eagerly toward higher warmth,
while their husbands, below, still swirl
in necessary lubricant,
becoming ready to glide
toward the celestial realm,
this haven for lost souls,
half-living, half-returned
through the shill,
darkening air.
(From The Heart Beat of Wings, copyright 2017, Red Bird Chapbooks)
It is the year's dark, when memories
arrive, opening to swarms
of swallows above ancient fields,
vines strung among the corn, sheep
belling an ancient Roman bath.
Dry sun anoints a pear tree,
my father's last denizen
which new owners soon will fell.
It is the year's dark.
From the dome, a turquoise
eye regards us. Our famil's spire
has crumpled, heaving up
ghosts who flit here like shy bats.
There's my uncle, impish and cancer-ridden.
Our tiny aunt in blue pillbox--her daughters
soon will join her, sending spirals
of laughter to incite the higher-ups.
My mother's dog who stopped
her demented barking--
poor beast, she went gladly
to the earth, mound
of collar and bone,
reminder of the exoskeletons
we once were.
My two grandmothers, with tiny wings,
flutter eagerly toward higher warmth,
while their husbands, below, still swirl
in necessary lubricant,
becoming ready to glide
toward the celestial realm,
this haven for lost souls,
half-living, half-returned
through the shill,
darkening air.
(From The Heart Beat of Wings, copyright 2017, Red Bird Chapbooks)
Monday, January 15, 2018
This is the cover of my beautiful new chapbook of poems, published by Red Bird Chapbooks in St. Paul. The book has been in the world for about six months. Slowly it's found readers or I've read from it to various audiences. Now, a poet friend, Margaret Hasse, has written a stunning review. I am dazzled and deeply grateful.
Margaret begins: "I am writing a fan letter to you for The Heart Beat of Wings. It is a very beautiful book with astonishing connections, images, turns of phrase.
"The voice in the poems is reflective, grateful, curious, and quiet. Each of the poems grows large, like a small bird that opens its great wings of flight.
"The book's tone, like life, is a mingling of somberness and bright new awareness and understanding. I liked the contrast between the black blood of the inner body and the red blood when air finds it. The raspberry poem is sensuous and hinted in both a quick reference and the color of the berry toward other poems in the book where the subject of heart-health is more direct.
"The way the 22 poems in the chapbook work together is extremely satisfying. The themes intertwine as in a piece of classical music: homing, where the heart is and how the heart is hurt (literally and figuratively), spirits that fly, birds that fly, a narrator at home and with her ancestors in Italy. The holiness of happy and sad occasions in the cathedral. Death and presence after death of the father, the mother.
"The style is beautiful--airy, yet concrete, rich with images and unusual turns. I liked the slim shift many of the poems are dressed in. The short lines showed off the spare beauty of the language. In the epithalamium, "o my dears," was a perfect call to those being wed, but also to us, the readers. I felt, as a reader, dear to Margot's intimate, confiding voice throughout the book.
"Some of the many delightful things and lines: birds! and more birds! Snow geese, pigeons, redwings, doves, finch, jay; the mother swimming away in water and in death; the hand of the father like a hand broken off a Roman sculpture; the unc fly; "it takes only one hillside/turning its muscled/side to gold," "its spill of joy"; gold and golden--and many more."
What author wouldn't love such a rich panoply of references and appreciation. Thank you a thousand times, dear Margaret Hasse.
To order a copy of the book directly from the publisher use this link:
https://www.redbirdchapbooks.com/content/heart-beat-wings
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