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Poetry

Bird Bazaar

We were iced in for a bit last week, although thankfully not for long or as intensely as much of the rest of the country. Photography was restricted to what was available out of the windows, ample traffic given the cold. All those birds made me think of my unhealthy preoccupation with the demise of the bird app: TWITTER.

Nuthatches galore (Kleiber)

Scold me all you want (you know who you are), my time spent on that medium was not preoccupied with “doom scrolling.” It has been a source of information about politics I care about that would have been – is – otherwise unavailable. A lot of the European news are behind paywalls, and some not published in the main media at all, as for example a lot of the discussions among young, progressive Jewish voices in Germany. A lot of Black voices opened new horizons not easily accessible otherwise.

Twitter has been indeed a platform that allowed marginalized voices to communicate and to be heard, internationally it was the choice for many movements that were able to organize this way and get the news out. With the arrival of Emperor Musk, as many call him, although I prefer Elmo, the safety of those voices is endangered. Next to the monopolized print press in large parts of the world, a platform that allowed new collectives to form has now become the plaything of yet another oligarch, his whims defining the rules.

Plaything is too harmless a word – the site is now a weaponized tool that can wield large influence, not least over the upcoming 2024 election in this country. But it can also wreak havoc abroad. Major investors in Musk’s take-over of the company are Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the Quatar Investment Company and Binance, the massive crypto finance company founded in China. They have been given special access to confidential company information. (Ref.) There is a huge worry that so far anonymous voices of dissidents will be outed, leading to their persecution. In Saudi-Arabia alone, 40% of all citizens are on twitter, anonymously.

As owner and CEO, Musk has removed the entire human rights team, as well as the team dedicated to disabled users, and the old content curation team which dealt with fighting disinformation. His next move was to ban the accounts of people publicly critical of him, journalists included. The re-admission of previously banned, extremist sites en masse has of course led to explosions of lies, racist and anti-Semitic tropes and disinformation, much to the satisfaction of the owner who encouraged voters to choose far right candidates during the mid-term elections. Just yesterday he tweeted, once again, a word that squarely panders to the extremist belief system that nefarious Jewish powers plan to replace the white US population with Brown people.

Flicker (Goldspecht)

Wren (Zaunkönig)

Importantly, and that is why I think I am so preoccupied with it all, there are no mechanisms that could curb the whims of an emperor. Maybe the financial chaos, with advertisers leaving as well as the important content providers, will lead to bankruptcy. But given that there is a network of unimaginably rich individual and state entities across the world that support his political ambitions, I don’t believe lack of money will be the downfall. Unfathomable riches of a few allow manipulation of public opinion and elimination of critics, quite literally.

Likely a hermit thrush, I learned, an unusual bird here at this time of year (Drossel)

Here is one of my favorite political reviews of the year that speaks to the choices the powerful have, reminding us of and analyzing a biting poem by Browning in this context, no less. Greg Olear’s column Prevail has been a recent discovery for me and a source of pleasure. So are the birds, to which I will now return, hidden behind the window frame, camera in hand.

Robins (Rotkehlchen)

My Last Duchess 

BY ROBERT BROWNING

FERRARA

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands

Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said

“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read

Strangers like you that pictured countenance,

The depth and passion of its earnest glance,

But to myself they turned (since none puts by

The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

How such a glance came there; so, not the first

Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not

Her husband’s presence only, called that spot

Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; perhaps

Fra Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps

Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint

Must never hope to reproduce the faint

Half-flush that dies along her throat.” Such stuff

Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough

For calling up that spot of joy. She had

A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad,

Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,

The dropping of the daylight in the West,

The bough of cherries some officious fool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

She rode with round the terrace—all and each

Would draw from her alike the approving speech,

Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked

Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

In speech—which I have not—to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse—

E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose

Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet

The company below, then. I repeat,

The Count your master’s known munificence

Is ample warrant that no just pretense

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;

Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed

At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go

Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

Chickadee, Towhee and Junko (Meise, Winterammer, Grundammer.)

Music, staying with the topic, is Beethoven’s Emperor Piano concerto Nr. 5, played by the incomparable Ashkenazy.

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What are the Chances?

“What are the chances…” was the beginning of a sentence that cropped up with astonishing frequency this week.

“What are the chances, seriously, that more people voted for Walker than the Rev. Warnock?” was me fretting half-way through the evening when election statistics had the former ahead of the latter for a short amount of time. Still in disbelief after all these years in this country that it could even come close. The good guy won, eventually, but the margins were too close for comfort.

***

“What are the chances that Sinema leaves the Democratic Party before Manchin?” High, it turns out. Her voting behavior cost us higher minimum wage, extended child tax credits, and voting rights protections. Seems there is little variability in her moral compass – it’s stuck on amoral.

***

“What are the chances, that I would find myself in any way connected to one of the right wing extremists arrested in Germany during a nationwide raid this week?” Low, really an outlier. 25 people (with more assumed to be associated) are accused of plotting a coup to overthrow the state with armed attacks, former members of congress and military and ex-military para-trooper members among them. Many are now in pre-trial detention, suspected of forming a terrorist organization. The defendants are closely linked with the Reichsbürger movement, who believe that the 1871 borders of the German empire are still in effect, tend to be far-right extremist, do not accept the legality of the Federal Republic of Germany, and, according to the prosecutor, “followed a conglomerate of conspiracy myths consisting of narratives of the so-called ‘Reichsbürger’ as well as QAnon ideology.”

New “head of state” was supposed to be Heinrich VIII Prince Reuss, a 71 year-old of aristocratic lineage, and one of the purported ring leaders. Here’s where six degrees of separation makes an appearance, however: as an 18-year old I was invited to visit a branch of the Reuss family for Easter. For the life of me, I can’t remember why I scored the invitation or why I accepted it (certainly no romantic involvement) from Heinrich IX Prince Reuss (must have been a cousin), they all get the same name, just numbered in succession…

We drove south in a car from Hamburg to his parents’ castle (literally) near Frankfurt. Arriving too late for dinner, we were led to our rooms. I appeared, starving, the next morning, Good Friday, in the breakfast hall. The horror! I was not dressed head-to-toe in black, mourning garb required for this Holy Day, apparently, in arch-conservative households. Back to your room, have the maid rummage for a fitting outfit! Well, it was off to a train station for me.

***

“What are the chances“, I thought, when following the complicated Supreme Court hearings about the Independent State Legislative (ISL) theory on Wednesday, “that I’ll be able to write about that in ways that get the legal details and importance of the Moore vs Harper case across?” Slim, as it turns out, even with the example of an iceberg….

In a nutshell, the case is about extreme gerrymandering, the possibilities (or not) of stopping excesses, and, more generally, the power of state courts and/or legislative bodies to shape aspects of federal elections. SCOTUS heard plaintiffs’ arguments that under the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution, state legislatures retain exclusive power over federal redistricting and election rules, while state constitutions, state courts, governors, or voter-approved ballot measures have no power to check, balance or even review those laws. Yup. -. It is, as legal observer and author Elie Mystal pointed out, all about trying to take power away from non-partisan state actors and putting it solely into the hands of partisan state actors.

That’s as far as I can go – the rest of the arguments, delivered in detail, clarity and with focus on the implications to what remains of our democracy, can be found in VOX, the Atlantic, Mother Jones, the NYT, and the National Review. Take your pick – any one but the last helped my understanding of the matter.

And since we’ve landed on the topic of relative probabilities, we might as well end the week with my favorite poem about Statistics. Chances are, you’ll like it, on average.

A Word on Statistics

Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.

Unsure of every step: almost all the rest.

Ready to help,
if it doesn’t take long: forty-nine.

Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise: four — well, maybe five.

Able to admire without envy: eighteen.

Led to error
by youth (which passes): sixty, plus or minus.

Those not to be messed with: four-and-forty.

Living in constant fear
of someone or something: seventy-seven.

Capable of happiness: twenty-some-odd at most.

Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds: more than half, for sure.

Cruel
when forced by circumstances: it’s better not to know,
not even approximately.

Wise in hindsight: not many more
than wise in foresight.

Getting nothing out of life except things: thirty
(though I would like to be wrong).

Balled up in pain
and without a flashlight in the dark: eighty-three, sooner or later.

Those who are just: quite a few, thirty-five.

But if it takes effort to understand: three.

Worthy of empathy: ninety-nine.

Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred — a figure that has never varied yet.

BY WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA  from Miracle Fair. Translated by Joanna Trzeciak.

***

Photos today from Frankfurt and environs, in honor of another weird episode in the life of Heuer, filed under Frequency Distribution.

Statistics? No Problem. (Sorry for the annoying ads interrupting today’s music, could not find an alternative.)

Chances that this photograph relates to today’s text? Nil. I just love it, the matching colors, the symmetry and patterns of vertical lines, the contrast of work boots and fur jacket, this stranger’s strutting towards the center of the gate posts in completely empty space. It happened to be shot near Frankfurt.

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Kestrel at Rest

The sonnet below was written 135 years ago, and none, none of the beauty that it describes has changed – a kestrel on a fall day, surrounded by the blues and golds of a blazing landscape.

The kestrel I photographed had his soaring and striding already behind him – I had been standing under trees dropping leaves and watching, when s/he came to rest. I don’t share Hopkin’s religious fervor – he was a Jesuit priest and actually dedicated this poem to “Christ our Lord” – but feel in complete agreement when it comes to embracing the beauty of fall.

I leave it with you for the days to come – I’ll take a break for Thanksgiving week and hope to return with more images of blue and gold-vermillion.

The Windhover

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple – dawn – drawn Falcon, in
his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl
and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, –the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1887)

And here is the sonnet set to music.

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Hoping for Grace

In Praise of Craziness, of a Certain Kind

On cold evenings
my grandmother,
with ownership of half her mind-
the other half having flown back to Bohemia-

spread newspapers over the porch floor
so, she said, the garden ants could crawl beneath,
as under a blanket, and keep warm,

and what shall I wish for, for myself,
but, being so struck by the lightning of years,
to be like her with what is left, that loving.

by Mary Oliver

from New and Selected Poems: Volume Two

This is probably one of the poems I love most, for so many reasons. The way it shifts between description and evaluation, the former showing an outsider’s perspective, the latter a relationship to another human being as well as a yearning for some form of grace. The tenderness with which a seemingly “crazy” act is put into perspective, disambiguated as a form of loving, is striking. We so often, scared to death by the perceived reality of losing our minds, rather distance ourselves from crazy behavior, instead of finding some remaining value in it. Oliver also acknowledges that we cannot count on (or control) a particular way of aging, but might be blessed – either avoiding dementia or finding a light within. A frightful admission and her unswerving insistence on finding hope, as in so much of her work.

There is a German saying that age brings out either the cow or the goat in women. The former is supposed to be a hefty, placid, friendly, not particularly flexible form of being. The latter has more the qualities of what English speakers would call “catty” a nervous, snippy, mean and often stubborn crone. Folk wisdom like this is wrong as often as it is right, or contains at least partial kernel of truths, as all stereotypes do. Fact is, despite an explosion of research into aging across the last decades we, as scientists as well, know very few things for sure.

We do know that the brain parts that regulate inhibition of behaviors are affected early on. The subsequent disinhibition might be relevant for becoming “a goat,” bitterness and anger now more expressed.

There seems to be overall agreement, that although personality traits remain relatively stable across the life span (UNLESS dementia occurs, which can completely change your personality without your fault) some traits seem to get a bit stronger age, and others diminish. Of the “Big Five” personality traits, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability seem to be getting a lift with maturation. Two other traits do decline with age – a general openness to experiences, and both facets of extraversion, social vitality and social dominance. (Ref.) Personality and aging interacts – some of us have an easier go accepting the hardship of aging than others. Personality resources such as self-esteem, perceived control, self-efficacy and resilience shape the person’s response to adversity in later life, not surprisingly.

What else do we know? Some of our long-held beliefs – for example that older people display a positivity bias and are better at emotional regulation compared to younger ones – are now questioned. New insights have found that contemporary old people are cognitively much better off than their peers who were born 20 years earlier, when tested at the same age. This is not because we somehow managed to delay the onset of age-dependent decline or because we decline more slowly across the years. Rather, we have been overall, across our lifespan, cognitively strengthened with better education, technological use, wider access to information, and that overall improved performance is giving us some slack to cover up the early signs of decline with age.

Here is a short list of the questions that are currently asked in the field (NIH/National Institute of Aging.)

  • There is a whole enterprise exploring the biology of aging to help with prevention, progression and prognosis of disease and disability. It is a two way street – aging is a risk factor for developing chronic disease, but diseases also hasten aging.
  • There is a body of work dedicated to better understand the effects of personal, interpersonal, and societal factors on aging, including the mechanisms through which these factors exert their effects. Research is looking into the interaction between behavior (lifestyle)social, psychological and economic factors, as well as the timing of intervention during critical periods in a person’s life span where the course is set, and the effect of place (there are geographic aspects that impact aging.)
  • Researchers are interested in looking a population differences, to see where disparities need to be tackled, and also how we can improve our understanding of the consequences of an aging society to inform intervention development and policy decisions.

They got their work cut out for them. Whether potential answers enable us to improve our empathic responses to people living with dementia, or help us to prepare better for our own decline, I cannot tell.

May what is left be loving.

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We Must Risk Delight.

Two weeks ago I spent an afternoon at a gray, empty beach. Associations to the metaphoric bleakness of the world at large were hard to avoid. Nor was the thought about how perceptually the world seems increasingly gray, compared to what it once was.

Just look at cars. So many more are white and gray now. (Understandably, given that white cars are cheaper than the rest, since they don’t charge for that coat of laquer otherwise added.)

Or look at interior design. Neutral colors, shades of beige and gray, dominate the domain, with gray carpets being preferred over every other hue. 2023 color of the year for walls prediction, for example, is something called Blank Canvas, to be combined with the shades below.

It is the successor to the 2022 winner Evergreen Fog, a subtle greenish-gray hue which was supposed to be paired with this:

And before you worry, “Oh no, another lament coming up,” rest easy – it’s going to end on a positive note! Hah!

Some of the most soothing houses I know have a gray-scale palette and look smashing. Today is not about judging color taste, it’s about documenting change across time – and wondering why we don’t select strong saturated colors to combat am increasingly bleak world, instead of nesting in neutrals, as calming as they are supposed to be.

Some people have looked at the ways colors are distributed across time, from a scientific perspective. Here are data from an analysis of objects from the British Science Museum Group Collection, searching objects and archives from the Science Museum, Science and Industry Museum, National Science and Media Museum, National Railway Museum and Locomotion.

(As a basis for comparison I added the template below.)

7000 photographs of objects across 21 categories were computer analyzed for shapes, color and texture. The most common color found? Dark charcoal gray. Here is a graph of how colors have changed over time. The most notable trend is the rise in gray over time (just look at the upper right corner.)

Part of that has to do with the materials used. Wood, early on, obviously provided reds, browns and beiges. Metal and plastic, now prevalent, tend toward black and grey. Earlier materials also had a tendency to decay, and attempts to prevent that led to interesting colors. Gold pocket watches, for example, had screws that tended to rust. A procedure called “blueing screws”, basically heating them up, stopped the decay and added a blue tinge to the screws/watches.

There is hope, though. Fashion’s darlings black or charcoal gray and white are predicted to be replaced this fall by this:

Of course, there is always a fall-back option for the less daring….

And then there is this – I guess we can delight in platypus-type boots replacing high heels. The short videoclip is strangely amusing.

Let’s return to my beach perceptions, though. Before giving in to the desolate notion of a washed out world, I reminded myself of Jack Gilbert’s call (bolded by me in the relevant stanza below.) We must risk delight. Can’t go on with just wailing. So I directed the camera at every speck of color found or provided, grateful to nature (and my sneakers) that they came through for me, once again.

A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies 
are not starving someplace, they are starving 
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. 
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants. 
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not 
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not 
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women 
at the fountain are laughing together between 
the suffering they have known and the awfulness 
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody 
in the village is very sick. There is laughter 
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta, 
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay. 
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, 
we lessen the importance of their deprivation. 


We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, 
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have 
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless 
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only 
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

 
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, 
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. 
We must admit there will be music despite everything. 
We stand at the prow again of a small ship 
anchored late at night in the tiny port 
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront 
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning. 
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat 
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth 
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

by Jack Gilbert

from Refusing Heaven ( 2005)

And here is another message to the soul – in E major!

 
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L’Shana Tova (5783)

Friderike Heuer The Cook and Pomegranates (From the Series Tied to the Moon – 2018)

The birthday of the world

BY MARGE PIERCY

I begin to contemplate
what I have done and
left undone, but this year
not so much rebuilding

of my perennially damaged psyche, shoring up eroding
friendships, digging out
stumps of old resentments
that refuse to rot on their own.

No, this year I want to call
myself to task for what
I have done and not done
for peace. How much have
I dared in opposition?

How much have I put
on the line for freedom?
For mine and others?
As these freedoms are pared,
sliced and diced, where

have I spoken out? Who
have I tried to move? In
this holy season, I stand
self-convicted of sloth
in a time when lies choke
the mind and rhetoric
bends reason to slithering
choking pythons. Here
I stand before the gates
opening, the fire dazzling

my eyes, and as I approach
what judges me, I judge
myself. Give me weapons
of minute destruction. Let
my words turn into sparks.

Marge Piercy, “The Birthday of the World” from The Crooked Inheritance.

***

Sparks they shall be, my words as well. May 5783 bring more justice and peace, and more acceptance of scientific data regulating pandemics…rationality, in other words. A Happy New Year to all who celebrate.

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Unexpected Wonders

Walk with me. I’m systematically doing the rounds of all my special places that will close certain hiking loops after September 30th, to protect migrating birds. Wednesday I was at Tualatin River National Wildlife Refugee.

Fall already visible in the colors. Oaks turning red, yellow poplar leaves dropping, ponds green with duck grits, the whole landscape begging for water colors. Henk Pander, Erik Sandgren, where are you when we need you?

I had come expecting a few straggling flowers and was not disappointed. You have to imagine them bathed in strong smells of wild Thyme, Camomile and something quite sour, hinting at fall.

The usual suspects were still hanging out or taking off for a spin:

Cedar waxwings were stocking up in the Hawthorne,

And then there was this guy, out of the blue, having me stop in my tracks. An adult male harrier, otherwise known as a “gray ghost”, my learned neighbor told me when I asked for help with identification.

You know how during fire works they wait until the end for one final mega explosion? I felt that nature was celebrating the end of summer with a similar display – the pelicans flew over my head, landed in the water, circled and then spread out. Likely on their way down south. Just a stunning sight, and auditory experience, with their wings flapping so close to me.

Anyone with a tendency to anthropomorphize would swear he was grinning at me…

And yesterday off US Hwy 30, some mix and match of the traveling parties, ibises looking on :

The muskrat decided to get out of the way fast, camouflage and all.

Squirrel, on the other hand, was unperturbed, just watching the pelican show while nibbling.

I felt reminded by nature – and in turn want to remind the many people who are dear to me and having a rough time right now – that we aren’t done yet! Change is in the air.

Music is about the Equinox (9/22/2022,) the mood fit.

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Delaying in the Dahlias

The only reason that you luck out with all these busy bee (or other insect) photos today is that I needed to counterbalance an account of an anything-but-busy writing routine that I – surprise! – found quite familiar.

This from Brian Bilston, the unofficial poet laureate of the Twitterverse, in an interview with Suffolk (UK) Libraries:

A typical day consists of the following:

7.30 - 9.30               Embrace the art of equivocation
9.30 - 11.00             Read a book on procrastination
11.00 - 11.30           Look up 'avoidance' in the dictionary
11.30 - 12.30           Dawdle, dither, delay continually
12.30                         Break for lunch
1.30 - 2.30               Ponder the intrinsic nature of work
2.30 - 3.30               Re-prioritise some tasks to shirk
3.30 - 4.30               Hem and haw, chew my jaw, lurch and wallow
4.30 - 5.00               Write new To Do list for tomorrow

All the insects were found in dahlias. These are showy flowers in general, and have been favorites for painters for centuries, most often bundled in huge, colorful bouquets. Although there are innumerable new varieties, the basic types and colors can still be found 100s of years later, as the photographs attest.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir Dahlias 1918

Some like it daintier (I can relate, but am torn – these flowers lend themselves to bunching.)


Piet Mondrian Dahlia – circa 1920-1925
Eugene Delacroix Still Life with Dahlias, Zinnias, Hollyhocks and Plums, 1835
Paul Gauguin Dahlias in a Copper Vase 1885
Emil Nolde Rote und gelbe Dahlien, Undated watercolor
Henri Rousseau Dahlia and Daisies in a Vase 1904
SALVADOR DALI The Dahlia , 1979

And the most recent one from local master Henk Pander:

Henk Pander Still life with Dahlias 2022

And one of my all time favorites:

Theo van Rysselberghe Dahlias (to Mme Madeleine E.R Bonnet) 1912

Here are some of the ones that caught my eye independent of remembered paintings, again on the daintier side.

All the dahlia photographs shown here were taken during a visit to the Swan Island Dahlia farm near Canby, OR, some weeks ago. The fields are open until the end of September – it is really worth a trip if you don’t go on a weekend, about 30 minutes from Portland.

Here is some pensive music for the fall garden.

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There is always beauty to be found.

“Ich will auch im Elend noch die Schönheit finden, denn die Schönheit ist es, die den Menschen Würde gibt. Es gibt immer Schönheit, immer.” – photographer Pierrot Men

(“I want to find beauty even in adversity, since it is beauty that confers dignity to human beings. There is always beauty, always.”)

Pierrot Men has been photographing in Madagascar for decades, and does indeed convey human strength in the depths of misery. I don’t necessarily agree with the first part of Men’s claim, however, since I believe dignity is completely independent of beauty, particularly since beauty is often defined within the context of a time or place. But I do believe it to be true that you can always find beauty.

I saw it when looking at the tree stumps exposed by drought-drained Detroit Lake, their skeletal forms so long submerged under water after the 1952 erection of the Detroit Dam along the North Santiam River in Oregon.

They were bleached to the shades of the surrounding earth, only the shadows from a glaring sun providing some 3-D information at times. But here and there some color popped, little signals of the life once held, not all completely calcified.

Beauty not linked to dignity. But beauty helping me to feel hopeful, which in turn helps to hold out.

As Octavia E. Butler said in the Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, # 1):

“That’s all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don’t know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won’t matter if we don’t survive these times.”

Holding out is also helped by poetry, particularly the sarcastically funny, metaphorically subtle poetry of one of Great Britain’s surrealist poets of the 1930s, Hugh Sykes Davies. Quite the character, as you can read for yourself if you click the link on his name. (It brings you to a long but exceedingly witty biographic sketch.)

A founding member of the London Surrealist Group, he was a man driven by boredom, risk-seeking, strong politics and opinions, always at the periphery of the many groups he temporarily attached to. Friend, then not, to Anthony Blunt, C.S. Lewis, C.P. Snow, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Salvador Dali and T.S. Eliot, among others. Married 5 times, with an equal number of bitter divorces.

Here is a poem from 1936, time of rising fascism and after a falling out with Eliot because of the latter’s religiosity and fascist leanings. Accompanied by my photograph of a stump not (yet) submerged.

Poem (‘In the stump of the old tree…’)

      In the stump of the old tree, where the heart has rotted out, there is a hole the length of a man’s arm, and a dank pool at the bottom of it where the rain gathers, and the old leaves turn into lacy skeletons. But do not put your hand down to see, because

      in the stumps of old trees, where the hearts have rotted out, there are holes the length of a man’s arm, and dank pools at the bottom where the rain gathers and old leaves turn to lace, and the beak of a dead bird gapes like a trap. But do not put your hand down to see, because

      in the stumps of old trees with rotten hearts, where the rain gathers and the laced leaves and the dead bird like a trap, there are holes the length of a man’s arm, and in every crevice of the rotten wood grow weasel’s eyes like molluscs, their lids open and shut with the tide. But do not put your hand down to see, because

      in the stumps of old trees where the rain gathers and the trapped leaves and the beak and the laced weasel’s eyes, there are holes the length of a man’s arm, and at the bottom a sodden bible written in the language of rooks. But do not put your hand down to see, because

      in the stumps of old trees where the hearts have rotted out there are holes the length of a man’s arm where the weasels are trapped and the letters of the rook language are laced on the sodden leaves, and at the bottom there is a man’s arm. But do not put your hand down to see, because

      in the stumps of old trees where the hearts have rotted out there are deep holes and dank pools where the rain gathers, and if you ever put your hand down to see, you can wipe it in the sharp grass till it bleeds, but you’ll never want to eat with it again.

Hugh Sykes Davies, 1936

And here is a walk down memory lane with Jethro Tull’s Songs from the Woods.

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An Antidote to Heat

A friend sent me a recent poem by Alison Mandaville, someone new to me. So I explored, jealous to discover the poet grew up in Portland, Oregon, Turkey, Massachusetts and Yemen – just think about the exposure to different cultures and languages. She teaches English at Fresno State University and translates Azerbaijani writers, among many other things. Can’t wait to read more of her work, which has appeared in Superstition, Fifth Wednesday, Skidrow Penthouse, 13th Moon, Seattle Review, Off the Coast, Berkeley Poetry Review, Poets Against the War/Best Poems, Knock, and Magma, among other places.

In any case, the poem I received was thought-provoking, but also too close for comfort given a recent loss of a maternal figure, since grief for a mother was percolating through her lines. (Here is a link, for those interested.) So instead I chose one of her poems that is a perfect antidote to our current heat wave, and even more so a timely reminder that we are on borrowed time. The poem is set in Willapa Bay, located within Pacific County, WA.

Lunch on Willapa Bay

The tide regains its purchase on the land—an economics
of sand. And oysters in the far and distant mud. The land

is almost eternal. And brown. The grays can pass for blues
until I lay open the village egg to yellow. Or come upon

the orange broken float fluorescing in the wrack. The kelp
is not a color I’d paint my house. And I have to paint my house

soon. One egg was hard to peel. The other smooth
as the dead seal before it starts to rot too much. The dip

of salt and pepper. I don’t know what to make of things
I’m missing. A brief shift of birds turns sideways

to the sea water mixed with river water. They catch
the scant March sun. Become visible. Then turn

as one thing—almost—wings shuttered against sight.
The earth will be fine said my friend, the geoscientist.

We could hardly meet each other’s eyes.
If matter is conserved, it’s not as us.

By Alison Mandaville

***

I did not want to interrupt the flow of language by integrating photographs into the enjambment, so some archival images are offered below, in order of appearance in the text.

The incoming tide

The oysters,

The eternal land

brown/grey/blue

Until the yellow egg appears (ok, photographic license… some yellow is present)

The orange float (with avian contender associated with things wrecked)

The kelp, in shifting colors.

The dead seal

The missing things, most likely swept away

The birds turned sideways,

A brief in unison

The earth will be fine.

The anthropocene is but a passing phase.

***

If the heat doesn’t relent soon, you will likely hear a madwoman at the shore of the sea.

Charles-Valentin Alkan was an interesting composer, a Parisian Jew, friends with Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, who never quite made it. Myths about him abound, including the tale that he was crushed to death by a falling book case as he reached for a copy of the Talmud from the top shelf. Here is a perceptive and informative summary about the man and artist by Jack Gibbons, Alkan’s foremost musical interpreter who unearthed the music in the 1960s.

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