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Jeanne Lohmann

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This morning, feeling busy and harassed (and distracted by the poetry reading at 4 p.m.), I thought I’d phone it in with a favorite poem by Jeanne Lohmann (1923-2016). Instead I found myself rereading all of her 2001 book, Flying Horses (Fithian Press).

She Who Travels Alone

No, not in Bristol or in Galway will I find him,
not Minneapolis or Sioux City. Though I am brave
and go as far as Antarctica, he does not
ride the ice floes or swim under frozen water.
He does not live with sheep in the Midlands
or walk the abandoned cloister. He
is not to be found on the benches in pubs
or the next seat at the theater. His shadow
does not hang on a thornbush or darken
the lost emerald lake in British Columbia.
The greenest of fields in Africa will not revive him,
or castanets in cantinas south of the border. He
does not rake stones in the Japanese garden,
sit silent and patient with open eyes in the zendo.
He does not lift luggage into the car or insist
on the open window. Though I am a tireless traveler
I cannot search out his face or bring him to bed.
The last kiss was goodbye, God be with you
most trusting and hopeful of prayers
for each restless departure,
each solitary coming home.

—Jeanne Lohmann

This is a book that I reread every so often. I love her praise poems and have several copied out in my commonplace book. But each time I read Flying Horses I’m caught by a different theme, or one poem I’ve overlooked leaps out at me. Today I’ve noticed how Lohmann plays with language, and draws other poets and writers into her poems–Dickinson and Whitman, John Donne, and D. H. Lawrence, Shakespeare, Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Sea Song Out of Beowulf

Dree me to nim the swan-road, breast-hoard, suffer me
to hole the sea’s storehouse, thole and take hold
of the bone-house, body-box, dree the skeleton store,
all the way suffer and endure the body walking light on the sea,
the body walking and the swan-road a-sheen, the body’s trunk
walking on the sea shining. Thole the breast-hoard,
nim the bone-house, seize the body-box, suffer
the store of thoughts and feelings home to the sea,
dree the skeleton all the way to the sea, the swan-road a-sheen
in the morning, the sea shining and singing in the morning.

—Jeanne Lohmann

I have been struggling with creating a new manuscript of poems, daunted at the task of choosing a smaller number of poems out of the cacaphonous 120 or so in my notebook and calling it “whole.” But Flying Horses takes numerous motifs—horses, the death of her parents and friends and especially of her husband, births of children, travels, all she is reading—and weaves them into a tapestry. (One poem, “Across the Warp,” seems to speak deliberately to this: “This rough underside, this is where we work / against the threads’ resistance, the tangled / colors.”)

Lohmann is often identified as a Quaker poet, and in many of these poems the spirit is present, shimmering. In a late poem, “Wasp in the House,” she writes about the trick of catching the wasp in a drinking-glass. She concludes: “As when tired of words / and the world, I am able to befriend / some small humming complexity / and let it go.”

 

 

 

 

Anita K. Boyle

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Anita K. Boyle is an artist and poet, the author of several books of poetry, including the one in my hands this morning: Why Horses (MoonPath Press 2020).

If you don’t already know Anita through her Egress Studio, “where inspiration becomes tangible,” you should hop over to the website immediately. (Tours of the actual studio are available.) Definitely browse her books page, but also the blog which at present features the reproduction of a cookbook used by homesteaders on the Olympic Peninsula. The photos on this website, book covers, descriptions of ponds and handmade papers are well worth a long visit.

Briefly, Why Horses is Anita’s second MoonPath Press book, after What the Alder Told Me (2011). Earlier books are Bamboo Equals Loon, Sanctuary Poems, and The Drenched. She has also written several collaborative poetry chapbooks with her partner, James Bertolino.

I asked Anita if she could share her process in assembling a poetry book. Specifically, I asked if she imagines the book’s theme or title and writes into that, or do the poems come first?

The easy answer is the poems come first. Often a poem is written as a one-off, and isn’t directed by any other poem. But just as often, I write poems that refer to themes, or are addressing content from other poems.

When I gather the poems together, it’s like weaving, sometimes as a story progression or a collection of similar themes. Arranging a book works best if the poems have a theme of some sort that runs through them, even loosely. I mention weaving because the texture and color of the poems matter, too, and I think that may be why my latest book became longer than planned. A few of those poems were written many years ago and ended up sitting next to a much newer one. Locating similarity through contrast creates a kind of music, and can potentially end up as a really good book. The transition from writing a poem to the poem being part of a greater whole is intriguing. One poem here instead of there can change a whole book sometimes.

As a publisher, I enjoy a book manuscript with surprising twists in it, one with poems I can see as I read them, and one whose poems support a trajectory from the opening poem to the final stanza of the last poem. The arrangement counts on those. Currently, I’m not doing any publishing in the foreseeable future, and when/if I do that again, it may be in a different form than I was doing before.

Because I’m in the middle of pulling together my own poetry manuscript (and helping with a couple others), I also asked her how she knows when a book is “done.”

As an artist and a poet, I am absolutely positive that no piece of art anywhere is ever “done.” But we all ask that question. I would guess that even Michelangelo may have walked past his famous sculpture David, and thought about making a little change here and there. But you do reach a point of satisfaction that becomes the finishing point. Is it easier to know when a book is not done than when it is?  Maybe that’s a good test. As a publisher, I’d suggest that a poet should put together a manuscript until they think they have it right. And then ask another poet, that he or she respects, to read the entire manuscript. Any comments made by that other person are worthwhile considering, whether notes on typos, comments on order, or practically anything. See what happens when you follow the direction of others, but don’t necessarily accept them as final. Sometimes, a minuscule revision can greatly enhance an area that once stuck out enough to be commented on.

I knew a little about Anita’s writing group, and asked her to tell me more:

It’s a privilege to be part of my writing group of five: James Bertolino, Judy Kleinberg, Jeanne Yeasting, Jennifer Bullis, and myself. We’ve met for well over ten years, and must have written far more than a hundred poems in that time. I also am part of an art group of thirteen women, where we share our projects, plans for the future, techniques, and other information. One of the best ways to refine your art as it nears “completion” is to hear what other people have to say about it, which makes a writers (or art) group crucial to the creative process. Whether a poem or a painting, sometimes, the intent of the artwork may seem completely lost on others. Of course, complete clarity isn’t always necessary in a work. But often there’s a little detail, a word or a line break, a comma, that can be adjusted to make all the difference, or a rearrangement, or a division, or some other suggestion from the group that will truly improve the poem. This can be cathartic!

I condensed a bit from Anita’s generous response, but wanted to draw out and emphasize one line that especially spoke to me:

One thing to remember about poetry (and all art) is that readers are experiencing the words we translate from our own imaginations, and to hear their immediate and thoughtful responses is no small gift.

Why Horses, itself, is “no small gift,” but a bounty of poems. Many of them are about nature—ponds and owls, mosquitos and horses (of course)—and also about Anita’s childhood, “hard, dark pews,” sunburns and fifth grade teachers. In a short poem, “Arguing with Rumi,” she writes: “The soul is a heavy river, / a wide and muddy river”–and concludes her argument: “But the soul working,  / and working, / with elation and deep sorrow, / becoming its own truth.” This is a book filled with such truths.

Here’s one poem, just to whet your appetite:

There Are Horses in Heaven

This is a secret you mustn’t repeat:
There are horses in heaven.

They have been there always.
Even while here, they are aware of there.

Have you noticed how the horse
sleeps upright and ready, and seems

to be elsewhere? There are horses
in heaven who feast upon the golden sheaves.

They come to earth on the darkest nights:
The flapping of wings hushed like the owls’.

They stay with us, as though held in a palm:
think of a roughened hand curled around the reins.

They sometimes grant us wishes. They
relieve us of labor and sorrow. The horse

was in heaven before Adam met Eve.
When these firsts were evicted from the garden,

a horse took them to another.
The horse lives in heaven

wherever she goes. This is
confidential and true.

—Anita K. Boyle

Maged Zaher

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The Consequences of My Body by Maged Zaher is a series of untitled lines and prose paragraphs that (sometimes) appear to be letters (once to “Z,” others to “X” and “Y”). Thoughts on love are peppered throughout—“I am a descendent of ‘Udhri:’ Arab love poets”—and thoughts on poetry itself:

Donald Hall once proved that a poet’s poetry—if it is any good—must contradict the poet’s poetics. This is not a metaphysical statement: poetry, executed by humans in language, is more complex than poetics. (109)

We live in a great era: poets are utterly useless, which is a cause for joy. (108)

Maged Zaher was born in Cairo, Egypt, but now lives in Seattle. He is a poet completely new to me, but I’m registered for another Hugo House class (this time with Deborah Woodard) and Maged is one of four Seattle poets on our reading list. So I hope to get to know him better. I am even more hopeful that I will get to know my own humanity and my own potential better, by exploring his work. I often go to poetry to, well, calm the heck down. Maged Zaher is not that poet.

For now, I found an interview at Entrophy with Joe Milazzo, where The Consequences of My Body is called a conversation. Among other things, the interview made me return to a single page of the book that is not translated. And I loved this statement from Maged:

I wrote this whole book as an admission of my own lack of understanding — actually that is harsh — it is more like an attempt at an understanding of the word “love” — I know fear well — I know desire — I think I was just trying to explore love — so I am sincerely reading the book over and over to know what I found in the process of writing it.

I am entranced by this image of the poet rereading his own book “over and over,” “sincerely.”

So here is a poem. I’m thinking that he sometimes reminds me of Julio Cortazar. I’m looking forward to learning much more.

As I am cutting and pasting this loneliness
Onto your image
We lose the city
The strangers are the dawn breakers
And the insomniacs
Getting empty notifications
About their lovers
You are burdened with growing
Into a tall tree
And with flowers
And kindness
These piled books are mine
In them
I read
My silence

—Maged Zaher

 

Rena Priest

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I couldn’t have been more thrilled to hear that Rena Priest will be our new Washington State Poet Laureate. I took a workshop with Rena at Chuckanut Sandstone in 2018, and have been happily singing her praises ever since. She is an exceptional poet and—you have only to meet her once to know this—a generous and kind teacher.

Plus, I had just ordered her book Patriarchy Blues, from Village Books so that I could include her in my blog line-up this April. Serendipity all over the place!

Patriarchy Blues was published by MoonPath Press in 2017, and received an American Book Award in 2018. Many (all?) of its 26 poems are about desire, specifically, the lopsided desire that comes of living in a patriarchy. Dedicated to “the subterranean homesick matriarchy,” the book holds up a mirror to the world and the world puts on its lipstick and dances. Scissors desire the thread and the moon longs to turn her face away. “Can you climb into a person’s / longing for you and float away?” asks one poem (“The Encyclopedia Britannica, Sunshine, a Mosquito”); another, “Is desire not acted upon a betrayal?” (“Creeping Out of Orbit”).  And, always, this lushness, the body nourished by drums and bells and honey.

This is the final poem in the book.

Quiet Children

I notice how bees keep flying
to the emptiness in the tree
where their home used to be.
They don’t disturb the children
playing in my driveway, oblivious
to the hovering above their ears.

I watch them from my steps
and listen to the green collision
of a million leaves, unsettled by a breeze.
A car staggers by, dragging along
a swarm of summer dust.
The children have all gone quiet.

They are in a circle, wiggling
and whispering about something
on the ground. I investigate, and see
a wrecked hive, the color of winter.
The older boys, in their cruelty
were at it last night with stones.

I shoo the children away, tell them,
“Go play.” The doomed larvae strive
and vibrate. I cringe, but can’t help
looking and looking, even days later,
at those starving conic bodies,
shimmering in their pale hexagon cells.

—Rena Priest

Follow this link to the Facebook page of Children of the Setting Sun to register for the Passing of the Laurels ceremony being held Wednesday, April 14, 2021:  https://www.facebook.com/ChildrenSSP/posts/2734324456692048.