Believe
Learning to believe in god is a lot
Like learning to fall asleep. My Japanese friend in college who was transformed into a True Believer by campus evangelists told me. At first you say prayers and it feels like you are talking to an imaginary being. It feels ridiculous and you feel like a fraud. Then after a while it doesn’t seem so imaginary and then suddenly without realizing it, you believe. When you fall asleep you close your eyes and relax, feigning sleep, trusting that eventually you will be transformed. You slow your breathing consciously and at some point you slip over the border that divides sleep and sleeplessness. You cease to pretend and enter the land of dreams. One friend I have is a chronic insomniac. He doesn’t know how to pretend. When he was a boy he would lie in his bed, eyes wide open, waiting tensely for sleep to overtake him. That’s where I am. Eyes wide open, waiting for God.
Sun Under Wood - Robert Haas
Reminds me a lot of a Japanese "I-novel" in which the poems are all personal and introspective and don't really have a central theme or anything that runs through all of them but the poet himself.
Happiness - a pleasant scene of togetherness on a December morning
Our Lady of Snows - Sadness and bargaining of a boy whose mother is alcoholic
Dragonflies Mating
1 - people who lived here before us
2 - Channel Island Indian story in a bar
3 - Fransiscan priests introducing new deadly illnesses to the New World
4 - Brief meaning of "mother" when used in poems
5 - Fear is a teacher now
6 - watching dragonflies who mate and then are done-- they don't dwell on childhood things
My Mother's Nipples - a poem seemingly written on a dare (Les nipples de ma mere)
Gardens of Warsaw - based on an old travel guide of Eastern Europe, very visually evocative
Layover - Stuck in anchorage, waiting for the invasion of Kuwait
Notes on "Layover" - what the poet could have said instead of what he did in "Layover"
The Woods in New Jersey - Brilliant colored birds in the grey of the woods
Iowa City: Early April - A whole menagerie of animals around the house in Iowa
A Note on "Iowa City: Early April" - The poet speaks to a raccoon, who remains silent
Sonnet - A man talking to his ex-wife on the phone
Faint Music - storytelling and the usual sequence: ego, pain and then singing
Forty Something - Threats of a lover not to leave, or else
Shame: An Aria - Elaborate story of nose picking in an elevator
Regalia for a Black Hat Dancer - Smoothness, emptiness, a really long poem that apparently has something to do with a shrine in Korea
Jarun Sacha - A singing like a golden bell ringing; title taken from an biological study station in the Ecuadorian rain forest.
Frida Kahlo: In the Saliva - "transcribed and translated from a manuscript in her hand"
English: An Ode - Political and economic problems through word definitions
The Seventh Night - Nonsensical conversation taking nature and turning it into a stage being struck
Interrupted Meditation - Mourning for self and the end of a love affair. Also someone else's remememberance of dropping food for Jews in hiding
Poetic Panic
I'm worried about getting enough poetry stuff put together for my mansucript. I also have no real concept of what form or structure the final project will take.
I have about 20 pages of solid poems about my family.
Then what?
3 poems based on terms from musical Italian
6 poems on how famous composers died
1 Hmong funeral poem
1 Abusive Japanese host father poem
1 Witness to an attack
1 Jesus poem
1 Attack on biblical literalism
These poems are all related to me, but not in any way that I think will make sense in a manuscript. They all deal with faith and language. The language of music, language of culture, language of religion. And in my faith is music, intercultural study, nonviolence and historical perspective.
It is clear to me that I can't make things hang together with what I have so far. There are big gaps and I'm not feeling clever enough to fill them right now. I think I'll just do my best to write some stuff while thinking about language, god, and other interrelated things.
