The Sound of Silence

"The Sound of Silence"

The only lines I can remember to the
Simon and Garfunkle song
that never really leaves my mind.
Usually, humming it at inappropriate moments.


Like walking along Hennepin Avenue
during the first snowstorm of the year, watching
police cars line up outside the Basilica.
Pausing for a moment in the cold doorway
and watching a thousand officers
listen to steady silence of a funeral mass.
Discovering, for the first time, that the silence wasn't from
the funeral rites, but from the people themselves.


I realized then why my mother
didn't cry at her brother's graveside,
and hasn't cried at a funeral since.
Because the silence of a church, a snowstorm
a sick room, the garden the morning, blots out
everything else.


I'd like to be my mother
and never cry at a graveside, a birth, a favorite song.
Instead, to wait for the moment after the chatter and tears
and sit with the silence. When it alone
is deep enough, then the grief, the despair,
the unbridled joy, no longer matter.

At the moment you'd most like to speak,
pause an instant longer
and listen for the sound of it.

* * *

Well, there we are. My very first attempt in this endeavour. I think that this is easily one of the hardest poems I've ever written. Rather than wait around for the the pome to "come" to me, so to speak, I sat down and tried to pull together disperate experienes in to one coheisive whole. Eeep. This was difficult, and I find myself unable to revise much, because I don't like it in the first place. However, I wanted to begin with something difficult, and I certainly did. Note to self, if you want to have an easy first go at something, don't try to emulate something with which you are already totally in love. You won't live up to it.

So, was it successful? It was challenging, and a good way to start. I think that I have a better idea about how well this project is going to go than when I conceived it awhile ago. I'm glad I set the bar high in the beginning, even if I didn't quite achieve exactly what I wanted.

All right, so the poem for tomorrow: "Blue" by Ron Koertge. Why: Whenever I reccomend this poem to someone they are astounded that I like it. I love the fact that it turns piles and piles of preconceptions on their head and makes you reconsider something different. The last line is the strongest in the poem, and I want to work on having killer last lines. The Goal: take preconceptions I have and try to re-view them. Make the last line the strongest in the poem.

* * *

"Blue"
Ron Koertge
The director changes the sheets
himself, tucks in a fitted bottom,
turns back the top one, and sighs.

"This is a threesome," he says, "so
it's you over here, Suzanne. You down
there, Bob. And Meg, wherever, okay?"

It's pretty early, but we try hard.
Once it was cops and jail time. Now it's
Aids and all that stuff.

But if you're careful it pays the bills
and then some. It's almost never as
sick as the stuff you see on TV,

and every now and then it's really
lovely, one of those kindnesses
nobody understands.

Genesis

To begin, credit where credit is due. John actually used this title as the title to the very first post in another blog in which he and I particpated. I liked it so much that stole it. Thank you, John.



Well, here's my project for the next month (and maybe beyond.) I intend to write a poem a day. This struch me as a good idea for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is I need to get into a disciplined habit of writing. S. Mara once said that the way to learn about a poet you love is to try to write like them. Another writing professor (Jim) said that the only way to learn to write by discovering how the writers you love write. Hence the following rules to the game:

1. Each day will begin with the poem from the day before. Author commentary will follow, describing why the prompt was selected, what the poet hoped to achieve by emulating the seed poem, whether or not they felt as though they were successful


2. The poem prompt for the next day will follow. (Suggestions from readers are encouraged)


3. The poem must be posted in whatever form it is in by 10:30 PM CST

If anyone is at all interested in particpating, even if it's just on the occassional day when the seed poem strikes your fancy, please drop me a note and let me know. I'd be glad to make this a communal project.

Feedback is always appreciated.

The Poem for tomorrow is "Light, At Thirty-Two," a poem with which I've been mildly obsessed since December. The reasons for choosing it:

I like the idea of starting with someone else's words and following them through reflection. I like the structure of the poem: Abstract-ish idea, explanation of that idea, memory, conclusion about the reality of the abstract, conclusion of the poem.

I really, really like the idea of struggling to make something abstract and personal into a reality which the poet can share with the reader. I want to start the project with something that's outside my comfort zone stylistically (longer than I'm used to) and at the same time dealing with the concrete and the abstract in one wonderous ball of complexity.

Without further ado:

Light, at Thirty-Two
Michael Blumenthal

It is the first thing God speaks of

when we meet Him, in the good bookof Genesis. And now, I think

I see it all in terms of light:

How, the other day at dusk

on Ossabaw Island, the marsh grass

was the color of the most beautiful hairI had ever seen, or how—years ago

in the early-dawn light of Montrose Park—I saw the most ravishing woman

in the world, only to find, hours later

over drinks in a dark bar, that itwasn’t she who was ravishing,

but the light: how it filtered

through the leaves of the magnolia

onto her cheeks, how it turned

her cotton dress to silk, her walk

to a tour-jeté.

And I understood, finally,what my friend John meant,

twenty years ago, when he said: Love

is keeping the lights on. And I understood

why Matisse and Bonnard and Gauguin

and Cézanne all followed the light:

Because they knew all lovers are equal

in the dark, that light defines beauty

the way longing defines desire, that

everything depends on how light falls

on a seashell, a mouth … a broken bottle.

And now, I’d like to learn

to follow light wherever it leads me,

never again to say to a woman, YOU

are beautiful, but rather to whisper:

Darling, the way light fell on your hair

this morning when we woke—God,

it was beautiful. Because, if the light is right,

then the day and the body and the faint pleasures

waiting at the window … they too are right.

All things lovely there.

As that first poet wrote,

in his first book of poems: Let there be light.

and there is.