doctoral candidate in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication
Archive for July, 2006
the shot
05 years ago
by dawn
in the early years
I realize I haven’t written in a while. This is a difficult blog to write.
I read this today and felt that it was applicable to the sentiments that I write here.
The Shot
Ted HughesYour worship needed a god.
Where it lacked one, it found one.
Ordinary jocks became gods –
Deified by your infatuation
That seemed to have been designed at birth for a god.
It was a god-seeker. A god-finder.
Your Daddy had been aiming you at God
When his death touched the trigger.
In that flash
You saw your whole life. You ricocheted
The length of your Alpha career
With the fury
Of a high-velocity bullet
That cannot shed one foot-pound
Of kinetic energy. The elect
More or less died on impact –
They were too mortal to take it. They were mind-stuff,
Provisional, speculative, mere auras.
Sound-barrier events along your flightpath.
But inside your sob-sodden Kleenex
And your Saturday night panics,
Under your hair done this way and done that way,
Behind what looked like rebounds
And the cascade of cries diminuendo,
You were undeflected.
You were gold-jacketed, solid silver,
Nickel-tipped. Trajectory perfect
As through ether. Even the cheek-scar,
Where you seemed to have side-swiped concrete,
Served as a rifling groove
To keep you true.
Till your real target
Hid behind me. Your Daddy,
The god with the smoking gun. For a long time
Vague as mist, I did not even know
I had been hit,
Or that you had gone clean through me –
To bury yourself at last in the heart of the god.In my position, the right witchdoctor
Might have caught you in flight with his bare hands,
Tossed you, cooling, one hand to the other,
Godless, happy, quieted.
I managed
A wisp of your hair, your ring, your watch, your nightgown.
family reunion
05 years ago
american life in poetry: column 067
by ted kooser, u.s. poet laureate, 2004-2006
One in a series of elegies by New York City poet Catherine Barnett, this poem describes the first gathering after death has shaken a family to its core. The father tries to help his grown daughter forget for a moment that, a year earlier, her own two daughters were killed, that she is now alone. He’s heartsick, realizing that drinking can only momentarily ease her pain, a pain and love that takes hold of the entire family. The children who join her in the field are silent guardians.
Family Reunion
My father scolded us all for refusing his liquor.
He kept buying tequila, and steak for the grill,
until finally we joined him, making margaritas,
cutting the fat off the bone.When he saw how we drank, my sister
shredding the black labels into her glass
while his remaining grandchildren
dragged their thin bunk bed mattressesfirst out to the lawn to play
then farther up the field to sleep next to her,
I think it was then he changed,
something in him died. He’s gentler now,quiet, losing weight though every night
he eats the same ice cream he always ate
only now he’s not drinking,
he doesn’t fall asleep with the spoon in his hand,he waits for my mother to come lie down with him.
Reprinted from “Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced,” Alice James Books, 2004, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2004 by Catherine Barnett. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
memories
0
What childhood memory still makes you laugh, even today?
One of the memories that my brothers love to tease me about is the first time I made pancakes on my own.
Our parents were out and I was babysitting (if you could call it that) my two brothers. I don’t remember where they had gone but I remember that it was my responsibility to make dinner for the three of us (this is before our little sister was born).
We decided we wanted pancakes. I had made them with Mom before and new the basics of making them.
I didn’t realize, however, that there is a time limit on how long they should stay in the pan.
I tossed and tossed, never burning them. But what came out of the pans was, basically, frisbees. In fact, my brothers flew them around the house until they cracked and fell apart and our dog ate up the hard pieces.
Even now, 30 years later, it’s still a joke between us. I’ll probably never live that down.
in memoriam
0
This year has been a tough one in the College of Arts & Letters at my university. We have lost some incredible people.
Today I heard that an English professor at my university passed away this week. He was an amazing instructor and a talented poet. He was the driving force behind the master’s degree in creative writing.
In honor of him, I’m going to post one of his poems.
Take It Back
Maybe it’s different
with you.
How I grew up
there was always some kid
bigger than me, some lug,
some stupe, some Ronnie Boone
with fuzz over his lip
and those muscles you get
squeezing tennis balls,
skulking on the playground
before homeroom or glued
behind some trees somewhere
I have to pass alone
and-boom-he’s on my chest
like a stump,
slapping me daffy, his knees gouging
gopher holes in my arms
as he croons take it back,
so soft and close and sweet
he could be telling me
a secret or kissing me on the mouth, take it back
if you know what’s good for you.
Some things I did I didn’t
take back. I could
say one, embarrass us for all time. Then you
could take your turn, then
somebody else, until
the bullies inside us
get bored and go home;
till we’re each of us smack
on his back by himself
in the same stupid life,
and we do it again-
the whole thing pathetic
as a push-and-go-round
where I stick to my guns,
and stew, and spin-the same
tune repeating itself,
the same verse, the opus
of Ronnie Boone: take it
back, take it back if
you know what’s good for you.
Which I don’t though I do.
Jim Simmerman
Moon Go Away I Don’t Love You No More
Miami University Press (1994)
Go in peace, Dr. Simmerman.
happy birthday, u.s.a.
0
With all of the recent dryness and fires, fireworks were cancelled in Flagstaff this year. It’s not the first time this has happened and it probably won’t be the last but it does seem to take away from that feeling of celebration – at least in the evenings.
Flagstaff has a wonderful tradition of a 4th of July parade. Each year it is very different. We can always count on the muscle cars and the marching corgis but what comes in-between those entries are a delight.
If you just sat on the corner of a street in downtown Flagstaff, watching a parade go by, you could imagine yourself anywhere in the country. It is lush greens and big, beautiful victorian and edwardian style houses. It is friendly smiles and “how do you do’s”. It is people stopping to let a pedestrian cross the street.
It’s apple pie.
And baseball.
And americana.
This is when Flagstaff shines and lets her voice be heard.
And with the prominent politicians who showed up (the governor and the state’s attorney general, no less), Flagstaff’s annual 4th of July parade has become a local and statewide favorite.
Cool weather, the smell of pines, happy faces and “hellos” from the participants to the crowd and back make this an event that is worthwhile.
the copper beech
05 years ago
american life in poetry: column 066
by ted kooser, u.s. poet laureate, 2004-2006
Some of the most telling poetry being written in our country today has to do with the smallest and briefest of pleasures. Here Marie Howe of New York captures a magical moment: sitting in the shelter of a leafy tree with the rain falling all around.
The Copper Beech
Immense, entirely itself,
it wore that yard like a dress,with limbs low enough for me to enter it
and climb the crooked ladder to whereI could lean against the trunk and practice being alone.
One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell
darkening the sidewalk.Sitting close to the center, not very high in the branches,
I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy,watching it happen without it happening to me.
Reprinted from “What the Living Do,” W. W. Norton & Co., 1997. Copyright (c) 1997 by Marie Howe. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.