Poet Bill Arthrell's "Ukranian Heart: The Land This Tortured Beauty Through the Eyes of an American Poet"

 

By chance, I found a beautifully moving book of poems at the library while browsing a shelf of local writers; the poetry collection is titled, Ukrainian Heart: The Land, This Tortured Beauty, Through the Eyes of an American poet. I have been reading a poem a day all October. Or sometimes two, when the poems are extremely short. I end up re-reading the intro and back pages of the author's background story probably about every three poems or so--meaning every few days. The sentiment in this book is sweetly sad, sadly intense, and real. It seems to be not contrived for any sake of commercialism; in fact, these poems did not come out and about this year in 2022 during Putin's Russia's current war on the Ukraine that we keep seeing on the news and dropping tears over as more bombs and bullet shells are 

dropped; these poems are the result of many years of many wars on the beautiful bread basket of Ukraine, as it seems most everyone has at one time or another coveted its grain. 

I was so surprised to find this book and then see that it was published in 2019. Arthrell is pictured on the back cover posing with two Cossack fighters in Ukraine, which he felt inspired to visit on account of the Maiden Revolution. Arthrell is a retired high school history teacher from Cleveland, Ohio, local to me and the local library because Cleveland is a one-hour hop and skip and jump down the road East from me and the state's Huron Public Library. He is also pictured on an inside page of the book standing with "The Holodomor Girl" which stands at the Holodomor Victim's Memorial in Kyiv, Ukraine. The name means, "Death by Starvation." The Ukrainian people were forced to starve. Any real-life girl or person would be shot to death for holding the five stalks of wheat the statue holds and be blamed for "theft," Arthrell explains. Ten million Ukrainians were starved to death deliberately in 1932-33 and also by Russia two other times, in 1946-47 and back farther in 1921-22. At the time of the publication of this book Russia was invading the Ukraine much as it is now. 

In Part One of this book, the poet shares his experiences in the Ukraine, which he portrays as a land of great beauty such as of the "farms so large--/so much bigger/than dreams," he describes in the very first poem in a "Rapid Gallop/to the horizon/where eternity begins" (p. 16), where the large farms lead to eternity. 

I remember a day when my daughter was little, an afternoon in which my husband and I finished digging and tilling a new backyard garden, one that was rather large for our large-enough yard; our kindergarten-age daughter ran to the middle of the garden, exclaiming, "Oh, Mommy, this is just like a dream!" She was filled with glee over how big it was under the sun above and all the things we would grow in it. That is how the poem I described above, called "Ukraine" made me feel in regards to its large farm image.

Part Two of the book is called "A Nation of Survivors" and the poems in it discuss the horrors of war and the dead, yes, but then those that survived. Those that survived, survived in cities of streets lined with "veins and marrow" (p. 66) like concrete sorrow into the hope of a

better tomorrow. Part Two is filled with historically political facts about all the fighting for the land of the Ukraine and the Ukrainian people's  frequent dire struggles. Time and time again, they have had to defend themselves against other nations wanting to take them over, such as, we now know, Russia, though also "the Mongol Horde, to the Ottoman Turks; from Poland to the German Nazis" (p. 120).

Part One is a nice, easy read; Part Two is a tough read for those who feel others' pain. How could one not become empathetic, however, after reading these poems, how could the terribleness of what some humans do to other humans not be felt when you read about children being killed? What mother or father or sister or brother or grandmother and grandfather can read these poems and not cry? 

Yes, I have been reading one poem a day.  

Source

Arthrell, Bill. Ukrainian Heart. 2019. ISBN #978-617-7777-43-3.

Indian Summer: Hearing a Song by That Name at That Time of Year (Or This Time of Year, September 2-7, 2022)

September 2, 2022, with editing September 7, 2022

https://youtube.com/watch?v=oE38psKkcNM

When summer is passing and seems but a dream, there is that memorable afterglow of warmth and yet the light still much remains. At the end of August the night air got chillier and the daytime sun felt a bit more distant, as if not as direct somehow. This leads us into the dream of autumn that we fall into before deep winter sleep. The song "Indian Summer" by Michael Jones and David Darling from their album Amber aptly captures that feel of Autumn's Indian Summer in the woods or along a country road, one in which it is so easy to feel, even if a tad bit chilly, cozily ensconced. We feel yet the warmth of the color amber as if a teardrop of the sun like a piece of liquid sunshine falls upon the ground as the leaves turn yellow to orange.

Here is what strikes me as I hear the fingers striking the keys and the strings of the piano and the oboe, about this music being successful in describing this time of year:

At the very beginning of the song, the music fades in, like a fade-in of a movie; this can sound to the listener like a past continuous action (action verb!), the way a recurring scene within the mind's memory, going over and over a place in time. It is like then the afterglow of the warmth of the summer. 

Some patterns emerge like more and more leaves dropping upon the scene--I love this. Then, both the instruments themselves--the piano and the oboe--and those patterns of notes begin to layer themselves upon one another like bunches or clusters of leaves falling into layers or piles upon the ground. I love how music can depict nature, can mirror it. 

So much of music is inspired by nature. Go to YouTube and search for the titles of the songs on the album Amber by Michael Jones and David Darling. Also recall Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" and Claude Debussy's "Claire de Lune" mirror the moon, and how "The Blue Danube" waltz was inspired by the river of that name. 

Oh, Horrors!

😨h, horror. 

 Oh, sure I loved Stephen King and Lon Chaney  when I was growing up and I loved Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum and yes of course I loved The Wizard of Oz which has its evil witches and mean come-to-life trees and oh the flying monkeys;  but then in my 30's something not so scary gripped me: I stopped reading scary books and watching scary films. Isn't that odd? Yet, I still write horror. Why would this be so?

Oh, I do imagine the back cover bio blurb on my very first published horror novel will begin with, "Even though she hates reading and watching horror in real life,  she loves to write it." 

To the above, I could (natch) add, "especially late at night."  

Over the years I have written horror both in poetry and in fiction. I ate Count Dracula for breakfast and Dark Shadows for my after school snack. Previously, when even younger, I enjoyed Scooby Doo and Casper the Friendly Ghost. 

There are two films or TV shows (not sure which) I have been looking for all these years that I saw when I was probably around age 10: One is about a group of shipwrecked people who start turning into rocks until finally the last woman is standing, sitting in front of a mirror and pulls the front of her dress down off her neck and sees the stony formation growing on her neck and the other has something to do in the credits with High Noon and in the last scene an older women seems to be getting buried alive while a bunch of family members and "friends" are looking on and a young girl reaches down into the coffin and pulls off the older woman's wedding ring--or something like that. Like a distant dream, I cannot remember anything else, but it haunted me for years. Some people have suggested to me that the film about the stone people island must be Attack of the Mushroom People, but I did re-watch Mushroom People and it does not ring the same. If anyone reading this has an idea about the titles of these two films or TV episodes (such as from Twilight Zone or Night Gallery) please message me on my Facebook page(s) at:

https://www.facebook,com/bencivengo.mary

facebook.com/author.mBenci

Now I as an author will leave those in the depth psychology field to write about horror if they feel so inspired. I intend to finish the edits on my horror novels, not write about horror itself--in other words, I write horror, not usually about horror. However, I did include horror in some of the fairy tales such as  "Hansel and Gretel" and "Ashputtle" in some of the library programs I did on fairy tales. The fairy tale program events were at The Sandusky Library in Sandusky, Ohio; the program was called, Beyond the Fairy Tale. You can find some of the talks I gave on the Sandusky Library YouTube page.

Finally, I think that the reason I write horror sometimes but do not like to read or watch it much is because I like the old-time horror that leaves things to the imagination more than the contemporary more graphically explicit horror. 

This blog entry is copyrighted as all my other blogs are, so if you paraphrase or quote me, include the source. Copying the material of others without acknowledging the source is a very grave matter.

(Image by Pexel on Pixabay)

          Mary Ann Bencivengo

Note: This blog entry was edited on September 1, 2022 and first written at least one month prior.

 

 

 

I Dream My Father's Origins (Posting for Father's Day, written in March 2022)

 

I Dream My Father's Origins

Everything glows golden

until the olives age. Then,

sage bushes burst

into myriad branches of

deep dark greenery's

fragrance in the rain.

 

The bumblebee flees

to its hive to hide and stay dry. 

It's a simple swoosh of thought 

that ought to make us want to hug

the sun we must not fly too close to, 

lest we lose the Tuscan castle

 

stones of  Castelvecchio.

 

and then flee back to Greece.

 

Almost light, almost heaven, yet oddly

somewhat dark, is the noon sun

 

  hidden, though not unknown

 among the path of alley shadows,

 

not quite high enough is 

 

the castle tower that leans to look

down to its babbling brook 

few ever heard or drank from.

 

 

Cascading down the mountain

 

comes the history of my father/s father,

 

a land almost forgotten and untouched

 

by contemporary hands that stand

aside the other lands from whence the gladiators came

 

 and settled. One, two, three and three hundred survivors,

 

that say, We have arrived well, in wellness,

 

so very not many, says the legend, molto no,

 

that welcomed one another: Benvenuto!

And to this day when welcomed 

 

at my father's door or table, and it is usually both,

with deep red wine, with light yellow-sounding song,

 

my father's eyes smile wide and happy and sad.

 

Hello, Joe! Someone is always joyfully arriving.

 

Yes the Tuscan sunflowers shine

so golden yellow in the sun, 

and so rich the food 

and rich the Tuscan arts of Florence,

 

things movies are made of, 

 

a place to which some people escape,

 

most  forlorn but still hopeful.

 

Those who know the history of

 

the town seldom speak of it

 

outside the little Ten Castella.

 

But they are very funny

 

and they tell a lot of jokes.

 

I must go meet my cousins!  

 

O, auguri, mia Castelvecchio,

mia alto città I amore, 

 

mia affascinante castello.

 

 

Bennisimo, dal Benci's è Bencivenga's,

 

è Bencivengo's, my grandfather's people. 

 

Un girasole è un girasole è un girasole

 

(a sunflower is a sunflower is a sunflower)

 

  con qualsiasi altro nome

 

(by any other name).

 

*

 

 My father died with an enlarged heart

 

as did his mother before him

 

because his heart grew too big for this life in this world. 

 

 

--M. Bencivengo, March 2022

mbenci.writes@gmail.com

I Beg Your Pardon, Who are you Calling a Deaf Leopard?

 Dear Readers, Be Ye Many or Few,

 

Today will be a typing day regardless of the blurry white cloud before my eyes. Starting shots in my eyes again soon to help heal the veins behind my retinas. Still I thank God and all my angels, and lucky stars God placed in my path of my orbit that I still have vision enough. What I have is enough and I accept that but I am also open to accept healing. Somehow, healing. 

 

Now I know what my mom went through all those years when my dad and I had to be her eyes, and my cousin Sandy often too. I read to her, read her grocery list to her at the store, drove her to her appointments of all kinds and her grocery shopping, read the labels and prices to/for her, wrote out her recipes for her in large enough for her to read, and once PCs came out on the market I typed recipes for her to print in large font, and I kept her address book for her in large print or often wrote and read to her her correspondence. My mom could not read or drive anymore by the time she was about 50-52 and considered legally blind. 

 

My eyesight is still okay enough to read even if sometimes difficultly and even though it takes me longer than it used to when it us s large text. Ever since the cloudiness developed, it us now easier to read on a computer or phone screen than anywhere else if a text is dense. I used to love to read, and still will again once I get started with talking books. Or, e books since I can enlarge a computer screen yet it takes so long when enlarging the font due to it not all fitting at once then upon the screen and going left to right to left again to read well what else the lines that normally fit in the margins of a page. For this and other issues I am faced with these days, I find myself thinking about my age lately quite a bit. In the next month I have 6 more different doc appointments coming up for pain management in shoulder with severe degenerative joint issue. I joked with people the other day that when we are young we used to say, "Oh there they go again" when the older people complained about their pains or foods upsetting them, but now we have turned into those people we used to say oh no about. Haha, so the other day I had just a tad of rice with red hot chili spice in it because it is so hard to never eat spicy foods and peppers, and a day later my throat and gut feel a bit off. But how do I go without eating the hot peppers and all that?!?! Well, again, Say LA vie, all in the name of aging. But it us good to be aged, because it means I did not succumb yet to the alternative, !

 

Thus all the waxing poetic about aging. I only know I have no choice in the matter physically, but I will try to do it gracefully. As grace can be a key to art, so can graceful living be key to growing older, to handle yourself with care. 

 

I am an old classic rock-n-roller, among other things. I am glad that I was born when I was born. 

Here is a link to Def Leopard, "Rock of Ages." 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sk5aeUoOjw

 

 

 Sincerely,

Mary Ann

P. S. I also have been practicing the piano an hour or two every day lately--it is hard to re-learn songs by reading the sheet music or musical score if you can barely see it. Yet I am doing it. I can't not do it. I need these songs and I need to know I. Still. Can. Play. It is not like I never played at all in the last decade or two, it is just that I seldom played other than when sitting at the piano with my granddaughter to teach her beginning things which of course by now are easy for me. Thank. God. Too. I. Can. Still. Hear. The. Music. (I always see people doing these things on Facebook with a period after each word for emphasis, and I have never wanted to try it until now. I think by now it is cliche and that I did not enjoy doing that at all, by the way. Similarly, I don't much like reading this sort of thing when other people do it. Did Nike start it with its "Just. Do. It?" I can't remember how it all began by now. I must be losing some of my memory too, haha. 

FOR POETRY MONTH: Poets Nikki Giovanni and Maya Angelou, and the Teen/Young Adult Novel

 

Back in Black History Month (February) I mentioned I would write about some of my favorite Black American poets such as Nikki Giovanni and Maya Angelou. All through Black History Month of February and Women's History Month of March, I was reading the poems of these two poets, among others. Now here we are in National Poetry Month of April in the U.S.A., and the life and biographies of Giovanni and Angelou span the themes of all these most recent three months. I add the book Speak into this post because Maya Angelou is mentioned frequently as a key personality in this important novel in which a teenage girl who has experienced trauma learns and manages to find her voice--finally. 

 

Nikki Giovanni and Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea

 

Giovanni emerged during the times of the Civil Rights Movement and Women's Movement to become "one of the most celebrated" poets in America. I suggest getting her later of poems called Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea from a local library and reading not only the poems but the front and back flap covers for a remarkable description of her work. It is always good to remind your students to read the front and back covers and dust jackets/flaps to get more information about the book and its author--even with children's books, then children who will grow up to be artists can at that young age learn that their talents are important too and not just the author's or writer's. I will highlight here that it says she is both political and intimate or personal. She does this with great finesse. I am sure if you read this book of poems that you will find examples of that. 

I love the first poem in the book entitled, "Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea" after which the book itself is titled. The subtitle of this poem is "(We're Going to Mars)". We can see in this poem how eloquently the poet combines the world-at-large goings-on with our own personal lives and this is regardless of our skin color. In this poem, she compares the idea and goal of going to Mars with the Black American experience when first brought to the North American continent; we all hear we are going to Mars and maybe colonizing it someday and we all are alien in that sense, imagining what it might be like to be the strangers in a strange land and how will we survive the atmosphere and terrain,.

This idea of going to Mars being an alien race like an African brought here to America takes me back to the film The Green Book in which a professional pianist who happens to be black, upon his tour to the southern United States, is given a Green Book which lists the hotels in which a black person is allowed to sleep and so can sleep safely and the restaurants in which the black person can eat and stay safe. The tension that results in this film is emotionally gripping. And there is Jung's theory of opposites in the tension and then the transcendence and meeting of minds and friendships made between black and white Americans, namely a Black man and an Italian man then in the end also the Italian man's family. The Italian man was the Black man's driver (through the musician's performance tour down South. I found this quite refreshing. At one point the Italian man is chided for working for (/with--it comes to pass they work together very well) a Black man and being his friend.

The Green Book reminds me of a story my dad and mom once told me about what happened to them one year on their way to Florida for a vacation. They stopped at a restaurant and were stopped outside, refused to be let in, because my dad's skin tone was too dark. He tried to tell them that he was Italian, but he was told they didn't care, he was still too dark to be let inside, but they set up a table for my parents and their friends (my mom's cousin and his wife who was my mom's best friend). As she told that story, my mom often looked sad as she told it and sometimes gave a look of disbelief even though knowing racism and prejudice is real.

Maya Angelou: Walks in Live Performance as if with 

"Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes"--

She Walks in Strength!

Every book I read and every poem I read teaches a lesson. I never feel too old to learn. You can even learn old lessons in new ways as you age. I learned a great lesson in my 20s when I heard and saw Maya Angelou recite her poems live in an auditorium where I had an aisle seat at Bowling Green State University, many years ago. She was close enough to me that I could almost physically feel the power in her voice touch me and my being. She gave her poetry reading by heart--she knew all her poems by heart, from the heart and to my heart and the hearts of those in the audience who felt a resonance with her. I can still visualize her facial expressions during the reading also, full of convictions. It is worth mention that just as many men were there as women. She is a women poet but not just for women. What I learned while thinking about this over the years is that every time I think about it, including now in my twilight years as a grandmother, I still learn from her and from her strength in her voice in her poems. I have also watched some videos of interviews with her on YouTube. She is always worth hearing. And she teaches women how to speak up for themselves and honor themselves. (Much of this paragraph is borrowed from a post I already did during Women's History Month.)

Speak, by Laurie Anderson

This is a book I used to use in my Children's  Literature Class for college students who wanted to become teachers in early education through high school onto and through college. The class was also for parents and aunts and uncles or grandparents or any relatives or older siblings who wanted to share storytime with the children in their lives or who wanted to work with children perhaps as a babysitter or caregiver. My list of books extended to books for young adults.

 

Speak was a 1999 National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature.  

In this book a high school freshman named Melinda is made to be outcast for calling the cops at a teen party after she is sexually assaulted at the party. No one understands why she had to call the cops and report the party but she was afraid to speak up and tell anyone why. The boy who assaulted her is an upperclassman at her high school so she hides a lot in a janitor's closet where she works on her art. What helps her learn to use her voice and what helps teens and young girls who read this book learn howhow to speak up and use their voice are the posters Melinda taped on the closet walls of Maya Angelou's poems, an example of a strong voice and proud voice to be even furthermore proud of. The boy assaults her again but this time Melinda fights back, breaks her silence and gets a "degree of vindication." (I quote here from the article on "Speak by Laurie Anderson" in Goodreads, retrieved from  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39280444-speak) 

 

There is so much symbolism in this book of material things standing for abstract things like strength, finding one's voice, and virtues that it makes for a great educational tet for those wanting to learn more about writing for teens and young adults. It is another great way to introduce the use of symbolism to many a student new to literature of this genre or any genre for that matter. 

 

The poet in the closet image is priceless--being a strong and popular poet as Maya Angelou makes it even more dear. 

 

It is a perfect book for class discussion using these tools as prompts; however, sadly enough this book is sometimes banned in schools below the college level when it could actually be beneficial for high school students. If a high school allows sex education class, it should in my opinion allow this book in the curriculum. 

To end on a happier note, again, the posters of the poet in the closet is dearly priceless, or at least worth their weight in gold or diamonds for the soles of every girl's shoes. The irony and image is that this high school who was so quiet she was unable to barely speak at all so greatly admired Maya Angelou's voice. It serves as a beacon to her.

 

 

WHAT A WONDROUS MARVEL THE PHENOMENAL WORLD IS WITH POET MICHAEL MCCLURE!

(Image of poem retrieved from https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://paulenelson.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Screen-Shot-2019-10-20-at-9.46.14-AM.png&imgrefurl=https://paulenelson.com/2019/10/20/happy-87th-michael-mcclure/&docid=u-UEBxTXjdgn7M&tbnid=SX4t5o76wPIrkM&vet=1&w=356&h=667&hl=en-US&source=sh/x/im   and I have no claims to any copyright on this poem or Piper's Creek who posted it)

You see, he roars! The rebel lion roars in all CAPS!

Note his form. While e. e. ceased necessity of capital letters and other matters of formal punctuation, grammar, and form, thus breaking new ground in poetry on the page, Michael McClure often has fun being bombastic as he capitalizes words and phrases that would not normally be capitalized. Like e.e. cummings, he also plays around with the positions of the lines on the page and the words that would normally in prior times be all in rows of lines. But the shouting! The exclamations! It is there that McClure most emphasizes his sheer wonderment, delight, or surprise in this world! (It becomes thus in some ways too then like one's dream world in which there are many surprises and twists and turns of play or drama from out of one's psyche or dreaming mind!)*

Inside one of McClure's poems, it becomes an exclamatory phenomenal world! HOW MARVELOUS IS THAT???!!!! It is rather child-like, happy it's Saturday! Thus is it nice to study poetry and techniques lest we think this is a rude poem yelling at us in childish fashion rather than recognizing its intent in form in its technique played out in which he displays how content dictates form-- or as I prefer to say, how form takes dictation from content. Thus the poem itself becomes a SYMBOL of archetypal play (!) within the play of language (!) This discussion of it also points out the difference between being child-like and being child-ish, in poetry as in all things. Not all play is child's play, either, even when it is child-like. He is kind of aa Dr. Suess for poetry and adults. 

This post concerns the play of language. 

*

Snyder so visibly plays with the language also, in a different way. By Snyder I refer to Gary Snyder of course. 

Here in the following paragraph is a link to one of Snyder's poems which I think expresses the idea of word play by using it to reflect upon the goings-on in the natural world and what it has in common with poetry--or how it is mirroed in poetry. I particularly like the wordplay that reflects the wind playing in the second stanza about the "Air Poets" and how they work/write: The Air Poets/ Play out the swiftest gales/ And sometimes loll in the eddies./. Poem after poem,/ Curling back on the same thrust.// [...] Here is the whole poem:

http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/poetry/as4poets.html

*Which we see also in Snyder's twists and turns in the lolling eddies.

I envision McClure's poems to be shouted out at the opposite mountain walls across a wide stream. Some of the echoes loll in the eddies as they twist around in the wind, turning back upon themselves. 

Published on

4/13/22 5:54 PM

Upodated on:

 3/14/2023 7:05 PM

FOR APRIL 2022 POETRY MONTH: Anna Świrszczyńska, the Polish Sylvia Plath--and Plath

 

 

Anna Świrszczyńska (aka Anna Swir) (1909–1984) was a Polish poet whose poems are about her experiences during World War II, motherhood, the female body, and sensuality. (Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II)  I read about her way back in the 80s when I was researching Polish poets and also found that sometimes she was referred to as the Polish Sylvia Plath, or Polish Plath. I did then read Anna's poetry in the years that Sylvia's poetry was still fresh in my mind, and I did see the resemblance. 

Both had the WWII experience,  both had the horrors and bleakness of the war, both wrote of women's concerns and women's liberation in a time when people sought liberation from the war and Nazi Germany. Finding another Plath, I was absolutely fascinated.

In the meantime, before I had encountered Świrszczyńska, I did try to sound like Plath as so many young female poets tried. Many young female poets want to emulate Plath or at least try thrir hand at her type of poetry, and I wanted not to emulate Plath per say but to emulate her poetry. I must be clear and emphasize that I meant to master her poetic style, not to emulate her mental illness. Plath was known for her immaculate slant rhyme and line breaks, together producing a sort of sea-wave-crashing-upon-rock rocking rhythm, repetitively unsettling to the point of then eventually unnerving; and, all the while, her words yet flowed strongly and unceasingly as naturally as the waters of the sea-storm, unabashed by any feelings of discomfiting the audience. The impact struck me as brilliant insofar as craft. I felt persuaded or compelled to try the same. I too sought that discomfiture--not always, but often, to various degrees in various poems and short stories. Such was as follows: 

     bleakness:

1. the quality or state of being bare and inhospitable.

   "the bleakness of that destroyed landscape"

   • the quality or state of cold and miserable weather.

     "the bleakness of winter"
   • the quality or state of being hopeless, discouraging, or unlikely to have a favorable outcome.

     "this story is marked by unrelenting bleakness"

 (Retrieved from https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=bleakness)

A professor one day spoke of poems being of warm fire and/or cold fire. It was in that moment that I suddenly realized what I had been doing and rather liked the idea of being near warm fire much more than cold fire. I decided to pitch (get rid of) my Plath-like sales pitch (and wrote a poem about that later) and seek the warmth I once knew and generated in many of the poems of my high school and earlier college days like in my first couple workshops before encountering Plath. However, we do all ger sarcastic or bleak or moody or or or whatever sometimes. But I don't want to live there. 

Plath and Anne Seton and Adrienne Rich were friends. The three would meet for lunch or coffee and discuss suicide notes. Two out of three ended up following through and committing suicide--how bleak is that?!?! Pulitzer prize-winning Anne Sexton committed suicide at age 45. She was a confessional poet and one of the best-known writers in America in her time. From what I heard of Plath in my youth, she killed herself by sticking her head in an oven when she found out that her husband Ted Hughes had had an affair. And oh the poems of Ted Hughes, how I loved them, so I was so disappointed upon hearing this. No one is ever worth killing yourself over. Not in my (poetry) book! All three of these poets were feminists and felt oppressed.I think of how J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter wrote while on welfare in a laundry closet with kids at home. I wish I could beat those odds, but even if I can't, I cannot see killing myself, especially over another person. So in these three female poets, as in many poets, there is a strong lesson for today's girls and teenagers who feel bullied or stuck in a relationship that feels unfair to them. I just hope that teen girls and young adult women and poets do not want to identify with this.

Regarding that period of my life, many people would ask me if the things I wrote of in poems and in short stories actually ever happened. They happened, but not completely, and not always to me. Sometimes I would take a word of a phrase I heard and run with it into a poem, such as from a conversation I overheard at a bar or an image I saw while walking down the street and imagining the image. Sometimes one moment of a story would happen and then I would run with that into a short story and embellish it until the cows came home.

In defiant spirit of life's struggles, and yes, sounding a lot like cold-fire Plath, Anna Świrszczyńska wrote,

You will not tame this sea
either by humility or rapture.
But you can laugh
in its face.

From, The Sea and the Man, Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan

I hope to do another write-up on Plath, but the days and time for National Poetry Month blogs are running out fast with there being other work I have to do.  

I write this blog mostly for my granddaughter to read some day.

I am keeping a sort of journal online. 

If anyone else happens to read it, great. If not, so be it.

I need to blog less to get some other writing projects done. I always think that blogging will just be a quick warm-up before I go type my other articles, but it does not always work out that way. I think I will definitely stop posting this blog on my FB page so much.  

"Diving Into the Wreck" for Poetry Month ( A Poem by Adrienne Rich)

 

 

(Photo by M. Bencivengo, at Vermilion Lighthouse and Maritime Museum at Lake Erie)

 

One of my favorite old-time all-time poets and one of my favorite poems. However, I do not quite resonate with lines of seeing the thing itself and not the story or the myth of the thing itself, because I love mythology and folklore and for me it is the metaphor that leads to really seeing the thing itself. With the symbolic life, the mind reads and speaks in metaphors. Yet, I love this poem; as much as she says it is not the story or the myth but the thing itself, I think she is telling a story nonetheless and mentions the myth of the mermaid in taking a dive. She cannot seem to help but be a poet of story and the metaphor of myth even as she is looking for the actual "thing itself." I love the imagery in this poem and its description of going down into the deep. It also reminds me of depth psych, as I once posted on my old depth psych website.

 

But then there is how in the modern era the word myth is often used to mean anything/whatever is false in a popular cultural sense, like "Oh, that's not true: that's just a myth." And in that sense person could be looking for the truth to something in looking for "the thing itself." Perhaps this is also timely in a time when, in the news or on the streets, so many people are talking about people ignoring or denying the science of things.

 

Here is the link to Rich reading the poem:

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c03sWpt62vw