the grood stuff

All That Possessed Us

2010-03-19T09:01:00.000-07:00

Bobcat sits crouched on a flat granite rock,
Un-curles its yellow haunches and springs.
The little girl screams.
Bobcat, with a crown of tyrone berries recently gleaned,
stalks Indians with rocks, crushing acorns and
berries bursting with poisonous white powder.
She circles the teepee where it stands; a pyramid skeleton
of long sticks covered with dollar-size leaves.
There are tunnels full of pale crumpled foliage
Where we two lie, suffocated and swelling with
pink warpaint from breastbone to widow’s peak, and consider
all that drew us.

Pray becomes predator, with red half-moons on her
pale forearms.
Let’s go down, she says, to the fence
and walk through that tunnel we should stay away from,
and dig in the big anthill until we turn orange.
We’ll duck under the bushes until we come to that
green chapel with the tree that fell over
and climb on its flailing octopus limbs, high over
our heads. We feel them rising and bucking, and we wonder over
all that's moving us.

A hillside is for sparring bobcats
with plenty of daffodil prey
and crocus prey, and stickers that choke our socks
and give us thoughtful pause.
We lay,looking up, and feel ourselves falling
endlessly forward and Drowning. We snake our way
along the un-mown grass and slide through the
tearing underbrush, until we find that pine,
that massive trunk that towers like babel,and
soon we see above the green canopy. We look down,
far, far down, and for the first time, question
all that possessed us.

Recovery

2008-03-02T20:34:00.000-08:00

Walk like a bird of paradise.
Rowdy hips cause the stirring eyes
pain. It goes unnoticed. Belt it
as the poppy pods well up, to
blast their kernels far. A blue
sound can’t be lost in a crowd. Sit

on a thousand-foot ledge, dangling
bare longings. You lost that knee-high
when breezes took you, a starling.
Blusters lift wisps of hair as you try
to rip that breast open, scatter drops
to melt the winds that never stop.

Jalapeno evenings fizzle
and steam in the citrus drizzle
of cumulous mops passing themselves
back now, over ruddy vistas.
You’re itching. You stoop low and delve,
and get your hands red. You’ve kissed a

wolf before; his black lips curled out
showing yellow bone splinters, stuck
there in his eely gums. So shout
jubilant songs to turn your luck.
Tuck red feathers behind your ear
and wait for pumice dust to clear.

Anaethema

2008-03-02T20:29:00.000-08:00

Anathema

Take me up to the top of the hill
and set my heels in rifts
so wide with chancing, white with thrill
-ing. Mine looks down on faultless drifts.

My knees bend aching to be clean
in razor arcs. I know
a muddled track, a soil ravine
is always as I go.

Let wilding ice floods powder me
and bury to the knees
my jailbird boots. Please, I would be
migrant feathers in the trees.

Set blue peaks, slow moving, immense
to shadow weak flesh from
the rising heat that burns against
my shivering frame. Then let it come;

I’ll lance away my stagnant breath
with stabbing frost. I’ll wake
and freeze my doubting eyes to death
for his great white eye’s sake.

2007-12-19T03:53:00.001-08:00

I walked three miles with Ghandi
along the silk road that runs
so respendantly around the city's shopping center.
Like the pictures in my history book He had a face
like a library, stilt-legs
and eyes shaped like peach nuts.

I asked him, just because he was there,
and I was there, and I had already bought my
falafel, wheat-bread and soy milk:

what do you think
a soft, blond person can
offer? I cannot braid or weave in
bright tapestries of beads, mud, or twine, or
jump and dance as the gymnast.My body
is made for sitting, my mouth for humming
my eyes for staring at a screen
my hands for picking up some socks or possibly
brewing a nice, radiant vat of Maccaroni.

My mind; too— I cannot remember a word
that my Great-Gradmother spoke. I cannot think
like a haiku poem; the words in between
are my crutches. What then, can I offer;
Me? With my silver-white hairs
and freckles and dish-red hands?

Ghandi turned then, and I smelled the sweet
scent of peaches. He waited for me, and I
walked up beside him. He placed a
liquid palm on the nape of my neck.
The round glass goggles hid his eyes. With his voice
full of dates, honey, and camel fur, he said:

Jehovah, with his golden limbs,
and his fire-blue eyes; his linen
face and hair like the black lamb's skin;
Jehovah himself, (for God's sake)
though he taught on the salt lakes of Abyssinia
and will one day stand on the tip of Megiddo

Even He, addressing those
with wide blue stripes at their hems;
claimed nothing more than that his fingers
were strong enough to divide bread and fish,
His eyes good to see those who touched his garments.

And his body, Ghandi said, was lean like
a scholar's and wanderer's (then, glancing at his own
railroad track of ribs)
A body of flesh and blood, and breakable bone
and stretchable sinew. It could stand no more than
six hours of hanging. Six hours, and no more.

Hallelujah: a sestina (not by me)

2006-09-22T11:16:00.000-07:00

a few websites of interest

2006-06-19T09:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/
http://www.theonion.com/content/index
http://www.engrish.com/
http://www.petoffice.co.jp/catprin/english/
http://www.homestarrunner.com/
http://www.davesite.com/humor/top10/000.shtml

Favorite song lyrics

2006-06-13T09:17:00.000-07:00

Hallelujah (Rufus Wainwright version)

I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Maybe I've been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

There was a time you'd let me know
What's real and going on below
But now you never show it to me do you?
Remember when I moved in you?
The holy dark was moving too
And every breath we drew was hallelujah

Maybe there's a God above
And all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It's not a cry you can hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Amazing (Aerosmith)

kept the right ones out
And let the wrong ones in
Had an angel of mercy to see me through all my sins
There were times in my life
When I was goin' insane
Tryin' to walk through
The pain
When I lost my grip
And I hit the floor
Yeah,I thought I could leave but couldn't get out the door
I was so sick and tired
Of livin' a lie
I was wishin that I
Would die

[Chorus:]
It's Amazing
With the blink of an eye you finally see the light
It's Amazing
When the moment arrives that you know you'll be alright
It's Amazing
And I'm sayin' a prayer for the desperate hearts tonight

That one last shot's a Permanent Vacation
And how high can you fly with broken wings?
Life's a journey not a destination
And I just can't tell just what tomorrow brings

You have to learn to crawl
Before you learn to walk
But I just couldn't listen to all that righteous talk, oh yeah
I was out on the street,
Just tryin' to survive
Scratchin' to stay
Alive
[Chorus]

Show Me a Little Shame (Ben Harper)

You, youve been looking at me just a little too long, now I can never look the same
Blindness and kindness, theres no difference in the two when I can no longer see the good in you

So wont you show me a little shame

Now cause im, Im a gentleman, lookin for a gentlewomen, so-called ladies keep breakin my heart
Show me a house, show me a home, show me how it could all fall apart

So wont you show me a little shame

cause now i wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through crying and Im sadder then before I wept
I get through thinking and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speaking and I cant remember not a word that I said

You change your mind so many times, I wonder if you have a mind at all
And Id rather be by myself than to have your lonesome company come to call

So wont you show me a little shame

Stuck in a Moment (U2)
I'm not afraid
Of anything in this world
There's nothing you can throw at me
That I haven't already heard
I'm just trynna' find
A decent melody
A song that I can sing
In my own company

I never thought you were a fool
But darling, look at you. Ooh.
You gotta stand up straight, carry your own weight
'Cause tears are going nowhere baby

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment
And now you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better
Now you're stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it

I will not forsake
The colors that you bring
The nights you filled with fireworks
They just left you with nothing
I am still enchanted
By the light you brought to me
I listen through your ears
Through your eyes I can see

You are such a fool
To worry like you do.. Oh
I know it's tough
And you can never get enough
Of what you don't really need now
My, oh my

I was unconscious, half asleep
The water is warm 'til you discover how deep
I wasn't jumping, for me it was a fall
It's a long way down to nothing at all

And if the night runs over
And if the day won't last
And if your way should falter
Along this stony pass

It's just a moment
This time will pass

The Wind (Cat Stevens)
I listen to the wind

To the wind of my soul

Where I'll end up well I think,

Only God really knows

I've sat upon the setting sun

But never, never never never

I never wanted water once

No, never, never, never

I listen to my words but

They fall far below

I let my music take me where

My heart wants to go

I swam upon the devil's lake

But never, never never never

I'll never make the same mistake

No, never, never, never

Home Again (Carole King)
Sometimes I wonder if I'm ever gonna make it home again
It's so far and out of sight.
I really need someone to talk to, and nobody else
knows how to comfort me tonight.
Snow is cold, rain is wet,
chills my soul right to the marrow.
I won't be happy till I see you alone again,
till I'm home again and Feelin' right.

Where Do the Children Play (Cat Stevens)

Well I think it's fine, building jumbo planes.
Or taking a ride on a cosmic train.
Switch on summer from a slot machine.
Yes, get what you want to if you want, 'cause you can get anything.

I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?

Well you roll on roads over fresh green grass.
For your lorry loads pumping petrol gas.
And you make them long, and you make them tough.
But they just go on and on, and it seems that you can't get off.

Oh, I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?

Well you've cracked the sky, scrapers fill the air.
But will you keep on building higher
'til there's no more room up there?
Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry?
Will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die?

I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?

The Girl With The Weight of the World in Her Hands (Indigo Girls)

She won’t recover from her losses
She’s not chosen this path
But she watches who it crosses
Maybe move to the right
Maybe move to the left
So we can all see her pain she wears
Like a banner on her chest
And we all say it’s sad
And we think it’s a shame
And she’s called to our attention
But we do not call her name
The girl with the weight
Of the world in her hands

Cause we’re busy with our happiness
And busy with our plans
I wonder if alone she wants it
Taken from her hands
But if things didn’t keep getting harder
She might miss her sacred chance
To go a consecrated martyr
The girl with the weight
Of the world in her hands

I wonder which saint
That lives inside a bead
Will grant her consolation
When she counts upon her need
It makes us all angry
Though we feign to care
But who will be the scale
To weigh the cross she has to bear
The girl with the weight
Of the world in her hands

Is the glass half-full or empty
I ask her as I fill it
She said it doesn’t really matter
Pretty soon you’re bound to spill it
With the half logic language
Of the sermon she delivers
And the way she smiles so knowingly
At me gives me the shivers
I pull the blanket higher
When I’m finally safe at home
And she’ll take a hundred with her
But she always sleeps alone
The girl with the weight
Of the world in her hands

American Hymn (as sung by Placido Domingo)

I have seen a summer day
that slowly opens like a rose
along a quiet road that wanders by
And I have smiled and wonder'd
Where it goes

I have stumbled through the night
Alone as any man can be
Then found a silent canyon full of stars
And in my heart I heard them telling me
I was home

The gentle winds, the rains that fall
The tallest trees, and I'm part of it all

I've seen the silver mountain tops
And golden prairies on my way
Now everywhere I go across the land
I stand so proudly in the sun and say
I am home

I've dreamed of eden all my life
I find it more and more each day
Now everywhere I go across the land
I stand so proudly in the sun and say
I am home.

Border Song (Elton John& Bernie Taupin)

Holy moses I have been removed
I have seen the spectre he has been here too
Distant cousin from down the line
Brand of people who aint my kind
Holy moses I have been removed

Holy moses I have been deceived
Now the wind has changed direction and Ill have to leave
Wont you please excuse my frankness but its not my cup of tea
Holy moses I have been deceived

Im going back to the border
Where my affairs, my affairs aint abused
I cant take any more bad water
Ive been poisoned from my head down to my shoes

Holy moses I have been deceived
Holy moses let us live in peace
Let us strive to find a way to make all hatred cease
Theres a man over there whats his colour I dont care
Hes my brother let us live in peace

In Hetero

2006-06-11T17:10:00.000-07:00

The proboscoed thing.
The needlenozzle, ballooning on
a skein of techno grass; and
the electric-blaring bibble-horn.
O, Caligula;

you, then, bested by a lepidottero,
are twittering on the brim of
all that Electro, Magneto, Resono,
will never describe with details.
The Gaius along the edge
of a pick-end (white matter
suffused with mucosa); see it agitate.

Welcome me, Gaius. No more of
those particles, prescriptions,
or steely wands.
Shiver me Lunar. I see the face
there, the blue chin
clockwise of the eyeless features.
Come, Rabid Cuculidae;
land on my own face.

Wake

2006-06-04T16:36:00.001-07:00

The day june had to iron Gram's lace curtain

came unexpectedly— stealthy fall,

with the gutters creeping full of rotty

five-fingered leavings, along with a

bower of tufty dandelions that were

Grandma’s wearing confinement

while bending over laundry— not june’s plan

for that autumn, the shaky old sheltie

nipping her heel as she shook out the

lace curtains' webby Irish lace (two months

in the making) with no telltale pricks

of red, not one knot slipshod, june knew that

young, Gram was never still—she sped, she ran

in tennis shoes which june had found, quite filthy

with dust in the photo box, the tea-rose squares

etched mustdardly with faces from the 60’s—

Portland, Salem, ‘Naam, an armchair

with bordeaux wine stains on the armrests, still

sitting, staring, june recalled uncle Dan,

his crowy eyes a shrine in Gram’s old belly

with the eyelets and the hooks, the floes of

Kenmare drifted with the falling

leaves, a window in- between a shadow (lace)

a reflection (leaves), june stood

on the pane slipping hoop over rod.

Kamadhenu

2006-06-04T15:27:00.000-07:00

I heard there was a sacred cow

That stood nicely for its owner

And mooed without making any real noise.

Her dung was a sacred relic,

enshrined along with phalluses

and pear-shaped bidets.

What a sacred mooing, moue-ing, statute—

The one that describes a barefooted,

bare-bottomed infant who can squat

beside a ditch as soon as he can walk;

who can ride a golden calf

further than his parents said he ought.

Mama pours butter on the phallus

and it erupts and faces east while papa

attends to Sukey of the consecrated urine.

A soft sound, that moo—

A soft tinkling sound. A way around

The muddy intersection

On the bristly back of the baby:

The mother’s extra son, the one that could be sent

(If it were not so sacred)

to the block for the purpose of

Hamburgering, or Jiaozi-ing. Or milking,

if the mood were right.

And standing still, by order of the owner:

a Mother cow. Poor, sad, cow-- barefoot,

unbarren, and too sacred for touching.

Li Young Lee

2006-03-23T10:32:00.000-08:00

Li-Young Lee is just two years younger than my mom. Which makes him seem pretty young to me.

His dad was Mao Tse Tung's physician. The family lived in Indonesia afterward for a while, until they had to flee because of anti-Chinese sentiments. According to some bigoraphies, the flight involved 5 years of moving to various places in Asia before they finally immigrated and settled in Pennsylvania. Lee grew up there, and attended a few prestigious universities in various parts of the US. Now, he is known for his poetry. He has published three books of poems, which have recieved many awards. His poems have been included in "the best of" anthologies.

He came to speak at BYU. I remember that he wore a soccer shirt with a suit coat over it. He looked so young, to me: just about as young as a college student. And yet his melancholy voice inflections and measured speech patterns made me look again-- examine those prominent cheekbones to see if he might be seventy at least.

One attractive trait of Lee's is that, contrary to the impression I had formed by viewing the artistically craggy, brooding-faced portraits of him, Lee does not take himself too seriously. He talked about how being a poet is sometimes incompatible with the interactions of daily life. One anectode he related began with his son taking piano lessons. His son's piano teacher gave him the "every good boy does fine" heuristic in order to memorize which musical notes rest on the lines of a musical staff. The boy was excited about what he had learned. He approached his dad (Li-Young Lee) and told him about his lesson that day.

Lee shook his head and said, "no, son; it goes like this: every wise child is sad." His wife, or a neighbor, or someone of the sort overhearing this scolded Lee, asking him how he could possibly tell a child such a depressing thing. Lee was puzzled. He hadn't thought it particularly depressing.

In addition to this, Lee joked that he likes to try to come up with greeting cards for hallmark, but for some reason they never use his ideas. To his surprise, death is not a popular subject for greeting cards.

Some say that the reason why Li-Young Lee' s poetry is so fluid has to do with his delight with the sounds associated with the English language, which were unfamilliar to him for a while. He plays with the sounds of words, making them work for him better than one who has become habituated to English and its beauties because it is the status quo- what we have learned from birth. Many of his poems are about this very subject-- foreignity. Many are also about his father, and his childhood. My favorite two poems:

A Story

Sad is the man who is asked for a story
and can't come up with one.

His five-year-old son waits in his lap.
Not the same story, Baba. A new one.
The man rubs his chin, scratches his ear.

In a room full of books in a world
of stories, he can recall
not one, and soon, he thinks, the boy
will give up on his father.

Already the man lives far ahead, he sees
the day this boy will go. Don't go!
Hear the alligator story! The angel story once more!
You love the spider story. You laugh at the spider.
Let me tell it!

But the boy is packing his shirts,
he is looking for his keys. Are you a god,
the man screams, that I sit mute before you?
Am I a god that I should never disappoint?

But the boy is here. Please, Baba, a story?
It is an emotional rather than logical equation,
an earthly rather than heavenly one,
which posits that a boy's supplications
and a father's love add up to silence.

-- Li-Young Lee, ©1990.

Early in the Morning

While the long grain is softening
in the water, gurgling
over a low stove flame, before
the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced
for breakfast, before the birds,
my mother glides an ivory comb
through her hair, heavy
and black as calligrapher's ink.

She sits at the foot of the bed.
My father watches, listens for
the music of comb
against hair.

My mother combs,
pulls her hair back
tight, rolls it
around two fingers, pins it
in a bun to the back of her head.
For half a hundred years she has done this.
My father likes to see it like this.
He says it is kempt.

But I know
it is because of the way
my mother's hair falls
when he pulls the pins out.
Easily, like the curtains
when they untie them in the evening.

-- Li-Young Lee, ©1986.

His Bibliography:

Lee, Li-Young. 1986. Rose (Brockport, NY: BOA Editions, Ltd.)

Lee, Li-Young. 1990. The City in Which I Love You (Brockport, NY: BOA Editions, Ltd.)

Lee, Li-Young. 1995. The Winged Seed: A Rememberance (NY: Simon & Schuster)

vehicle

2006-03-19T22:49:00.000-08:00

Vehicle

Call us another taxi, and we'll go

haring off somewhere, on some street where the

lights run in long lines along the silty pavement.

Pavements that are only blue powders, all

shaded differently in sandy spirals of

light and dark, bloom and brighten in the

rain. The spotty saturation seeps through azure,

which becomes ultra; indigo, which

becomes midnight.

"Blue as the moon,"

the image so overused and passed about

like raffle tickets- blue like cheese, a blue-cheese

moon. A blue-balled lottery winner, waving

a golden ticket. It blew us away,

so blue, that lost blue of Bleus, as in cordon,

as in sacred. They all run together,

blue-black mud slopping tires, pedestrian pantlegs.

And the Bleu whorl of stars, above the zaggy, dark

shapes- towers and church bells impinging damply

upon the clear canvass- There! A belfry

full of sparkling golden bats, all whirring

and swirling up around the sickle-blue

crescent. While we have an awful tendency

to stare down wells, looking for blue faces and

giant dippers, above us a bear may

chase a bowman in a cacaophony

of flutterings.

We stare and lean over

further, grasping the hairy rope, the

shadow tunneling our faces and

furrowing our brows. A moon that is Bleu-

a grappa-colored catwalk, built by the

handless. Don't look- it's the wing, the

fusilage, the nose of our vehicle

that frightens, that fails us. Just stare

and stand with body tilted forward-

on the nose, the very nose- nose to nose

with starry cold explosions, with the

startling Bleu grimace- the serenity

of that iris. Face to face with ice

and moonrocks. Head up, in the oxygenless

air; a soft, needly, breezeless calm.

No need to look down. It's the size of it all that

brings the fear. It's the line of blue-meets-Bleu-

land and sky. It's the haziness of lines

that you know are roads, of bugs that scamper-

the mites and motes on

the misty, grey-blue surface-

The Bleu surface.

Butterfly Bob

2006-01-31T13:38:00.000-08:00

Robert Michael Pyle is an entomologyst-turned-creative-nonfiction writer. His books and essays are unique because his style is unique. He has been said to resemble Jerry Garcia, but when I see pictures of him I imagine a butterfly net in his hands rather than a guitar, or any other item so redolent of pop-culture.

His butterfly net is named Marsha. His old white honda is named Powdermilk. He bathes in streambeds sometimes and comments on his floating genitalia. He is, in short, a hippie in the real sense- outdoors, unconventional, quirky and not becuase it's how he's expected to be.

His writing reflects this. I have really enjoyed getting to know Dr. Pyle through reading what he has written. This is the most enjoyable aspect of reading his works- you get to know the writer, who is an interesting individual and a brilliant enough entymologist that he makes insects into something fascinating and terribly important with little effort.

He is founder of the Xerce's Society, an organization focused on the preservation of nearly-extinct invertebrates.

BOB

JERRY

Here is his biblio:

Published Books:

The Butterflies of Cascadia: A Field Guide to All the Species of Washington, Oregon, and Surrounding Territories.
2002. Seattle Audubon Society.

Nabokov’s Butterflies.Edited and annotated by Pyle and Brian Boyd, with new translations from the Russian by Dmitri Nabokov.
2000. Beacon Press.

Walking the High Ridge: Life As Field Trip. 2000. Milkweed Editions.

Chasing Monarchs: A Migration with the Butterflies of Passage. 1999. Houghton Mifflin.

The Thunder Tree: Lessons from An Urban Wildland. 1998. Lyons Press.

Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide. 1995. Houghton Mifflin.

Insects: A Peterson Field Guide Coloring Book. 1993. Houghton Mifflin.

Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. 1992. Houghton Mifflin.

Wintergreen: Listening to the Land's Heart. 1987. Houghton Mifflin.

Butterflies: A Peterson Field Guide Coloring Book. (With Sarah Anne Hughes and Roger Tory Peterson). 1983. Houghton Mifflin.

The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies. 1981. Knopf.

Chapters or other contributions in books:

Wild in the City (2000). Oregon Historical Society.
(Introduction, "No vacancy," and chapter, "Bright Butterflies, Big City.")

Nature's Fading Chorus: Classic and Contemporary Writings on Amphibians
(2000). Island Press. (Prologue, "Reflections in a Golden Eye,"
and chapter, "Waterproof Wildlife.")

Facing the Lion: Writers on Life and Craft (1996). Beacon Press.
(essay "Secrets of the Talking Leaf")

Words From the Land, Volume II (1995). University of Nevada Press.
(essay "A Grand Surprise")

The Norton Book of Nature Writing (1990). Ed. J. Elder, R. Finch. Norton.
(essay "And the Coyotes Will Lift A Leg")

Butterfly Gardening: Creating Summer Magic in Your Garden
(1990; new edition, 1998). Xerces Society/Sierra Club Books.
(Afterword and chapter "Butterfly Watching Tips")

The Art of the Butterfly (1990).
Chronicle/Marquand. (Afterword)

Works about Pyle:

Kuhlken, Robert. 2002. Robert Michael Pyle. In Roger Thompson and J. Scott Bryson, eds., Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume
275, Twentieth-Century American Nature Writers: Prose, pp. 261-270. Detroit: Gale.

Pearson, Michael. 1996. Robert Michael Pyle. In John Elder, ed., American Nature Writers, Volume2, pp. 733-39.
New York : Charles Scribner's Sons.

Slovic, Scott. 2000. Robert Michael Pyle: A Portrait. In Pyle, Walking the High Ridge: Life as a Field Trip, pp. 119-146. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions.

And here is a link to the Xerces Society's webpage:

http://www.xerces.org/

the best poetry

2005-06-20T02:55:00.000-07:00

Hallelujah: A Sestina

A wind's word, the Hebrew Hallelujah.
I wonder they never gave it to a boy
(Hal for short) boy with wind-wild hair.
It means Praise God, as well it should since praise
Is what God's for. Why didn't they call my father
Hallelujah instead of Ebenezer?

Eben, of course, but christened Ebenezer,
Product of Nova Scotia (hallelujah).
Daniel, a country doctor, was his father
And my father his tenth and final boy.
A baby and last, he had a baby's praise:
Red petticoats, red cheeks, and crow-black hair.

A boy has little to say about his hair
And little about a name like Ebenezer
Except that you can shorten either. Praise
God for that, for that shout Hallelujah.
Shout Hallelujah for everything a boy
Can be that is not his father or grandfather.

But then, before you know it, he is a father
Too and passing on his brand of hair
To one more perfectly defenseless boy,
Dubbing him John or James or Ebenezer
But never, so far as I know, Hallelujah,
As if God didn't need quite that much praise.

But what I'm coming to - Could I ever praise
My father half enough for being a father
Who let me be myself? Sing Hallelujah.
Preacher he was with a prophet's head of hair
And what but a prophet's name was Ebenezer,
However little I guessed it as a boy?

Outlandish names of course are never a boy's
Choice. And it takes some time to learn to praise.
Stone of Help is the meaning of Ebenezer.
Stone of Help - what fitter name for my father?
Always the Stone of Help however his hair
Might graduate from black to Hallelujah.

Such is the old drama of boy and father.
Praise from a grayhead now with thinning hair.
Sing Ebenezer, Robert, sing Hallelujah!

-Robert Francis

One Art

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.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

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.

— 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

I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed menLeaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glassI
n our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --
Not that final meetingIn the twilight kingdom

III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

-TS Elliot

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
-Dylan Thomas

Kingsolver

2005-06-19T23:26:00.000-07:00

"Let me back up and say that I am breathless with gratitude for the collisions of choice and luck that have resulted in my being able to work under the full-on gaze of mountains and animate beauty. It's a privilege to live any part of one's life in proximity to nature. It is a privilege, apparently, even to know that nature is out there at all. In the summer of 1996 human habitation on earth made a subtle, uncelebrated passage from being mostly rural to being mostly urban. More than half of all humans now live in cities. The natural habitat of our species, then, officially, is steel, pavement, streetlights, architecture, and enterprise—the hominid agenda."

-Barbara Kingsolver, exerpt from one of the essays in her collection, Small Wonder.

Barabara Kingsolver's fiction is widely read. Most people know her these days by one of her newer novels, Poisonwood Bible, which is a story about a protestant preacher and his family who go to the African Congo to do missionary work. The things I like best about Kingsolver's writing are her imagery andthe way she incorporates nature into her story line and descriptions. She makes apt and illustrative comparisons between human beings, animals, and plants in order to explore humanity's relationship with nature. She can also write a great story plot, and her character development (in my opinion) is fluent.

Here is a clip from the audiotape. It is Kingsolver's reading of my favorite of her works, prodigal summer.

http://www.kingsolver.com/audio/prodigal_summer.rm

Here is her biblio.

Novels:
The Bean Trees (1988)
Animal Dreams (1990)
Pigs in Heaven (1993)
The Poisonwood Bible (1998)
Prodigal Summer (2001)

Nonfiction:
Holding the Line: Women in the Great ArizonaMine Strike of 1983 (1989)
High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never (1995)
Last Stand: America's Virgin Lands (2002)
Small Wonder: Essays (2002)

Collections:
Another America (1992)
Homeland and Other Stories (1999)

Quammen

2005-06-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

David Quammen is one of my favorite nature writers. A hard-core proponent of Darwinism, he writes beautifully about our evolving environment and the interactions of organisms within that environment. Quammen is especially good at discussing the intriguing connection between environmental conditions and phenomena, and the people and culture who live among them. In his writing he discusses politics, cultural history, and especially the history of man's interaction with animals and plants in the environment. Here are portions of a lecture that Quammen did at Dartmouth.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~envs/events/quammen/quammen_into.mov http://www.dartmouth.edu/~envs/events/quammen/quammen_mus.mov http://www.dartmouth.edu/~envs/events/quammen/quammen_alien.mov

Here is his biblio.
Bibliography

Quammen, David. The Flight of the Iguana: a Sidelong View of Science and Nature. New York: Delacorte Press, 1988.

Quammen, David. Miracle of the Geese. Words from the Land: Encounters with Natural History Writing. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1988.

Quammen, David. Natural Acts: a Sidelong View of Science and Nature. New York: Schocken Books, 1985.

Quammen, David. The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions. New York: Scribner, 1996.

Quammen, David. Wild Thoughts From Wild Places. New York: Scribner, 1998.

Quammen, David. Boilerplate Rhino: Nature in the Eye of the Beholder. New York: Scribner, 2001.

Quammen, David. Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind. New York: Scribner, 2003.