Bottom Dweller

Bottom Dweller

 

You are a bottom dweller of the deepest kind,

hidden away behind dark glass, scales and eyes,

where the air hugs your skin in balmy gloom.

This is black Atlantis in a basement room:

flickering jeweled bodies under secret light and

your love swimming with them amid hollow castles

and breaths of air that rise to the surface as pearls.

 

And I am no fisherman, but you are the trophy-fish of lore,

the dream that ancient Ahab could not stop searching for,

ghostly beautiful but battle-scarred, slipping slow

between veins of algae and mud-slicked stones.

Living somewhere between deep silence and earth,

because those are the biggest parts of you.

What else is there?

 

Oh, if you would surface, I would show you the sun

so it would peel away your slimed olive skin,

and you would breathe the air again.

And somewhere there would be what is real,

the father I know you used to be,

who held a little girl’s hand because she was afraid

to follow you into that monstrous myth, the silent sea.

Sunday is a Day for Waiting

Sunday

 

The church bells ring under a gentle

Sunday sun.

The farmer’s family arrives late,

slipping not-so-silently into the pews

with the toddler restless

and the sister crying over her stained dress.

They sit in stuffy silence,

fans slowly slicing the air above their heads.

 

The priest in his black soutane

clutches a worn Bible behind the pulpit,

and all of these faces are turned towards

a broken man’s drooping head,

all blood and teeth and spit

masquerading as grace.

 

And he is thinking that a man with

blood on his palms cannot possibly

care enough about an empty bank account

or sick dairy cows and dying corn,

or a fourth baby on the way.

 

He holds out his own calloused palms,

lets grace sit in his mouth,

swallows.

Blessed are those who wait.

Quotes the Dead Know.

Some of my favorite quotes from literature and poetry are about death.  That may sound morbid, but we often face the question of whether or not there is life after we die, another world to which our souls will flee and remain for eternity.  For some writers, death is something terrifying, to be dreaded in its finality.  For other writers, it is simply a curiosity, to be studied, or even a fact that brings hope rather than despair.

What do the dead know?  And what can our characters learn from the dead?  Here are some beautiful quotes by admired writers concerning death:

“And what of the dead?  They lie without shoes in their stone boats.  They are more like stone than the sea would be if it stopped.  They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.”

Anne Sexton, “The Truth the Dead Know”

Anne Sexton

“They were greeted by the same monotonous scenery as before.  Maguey and cactus stood stiffly like abandoned tombstones on the parched earth. “

Shusaku Endo, The Samurai

“Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in.  It had, perhaps, served often as a pall for the dead.  Now it was to hide something that had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death itself—something that would breed horrors and yet would never die.  What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas.  They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace.  They would defile it, and make it shameful.  And yet the thing would still live on.  It would always live.”

 Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray  

“I walk through the churchyard

to lay this body down;

I know moon-rise, I know star-rise;

I walk in the moonlight, I walk in the starlight;

I’ll lie in the grave and stretch out my arms,

I’ll go to judgment in the evening of the day,

And my soul and thy soul shall meet that day,

when I lay this body down.”

W.E.B. Du Bois, Negro Song in “Of the Sorry Songs”

“Death opens a door out of a little, dark room (that’s all the life we have known before it) into a great, real place where the true sun shines and we shall meet.”

C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

“A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet. Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it.”

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, “Carmilla“

The Mystery of Trees

The woods behind the fields are guarded by a crumbling stone wall and a maze of pricker bushes with thorns an inch long.  It takes a bit of maneuvering to navigate a path, and it’s quite difficult to do with a dog who insists on following you on your adventure.  Still, we eventually made it through into the trees’ shadow-filled world.

They instantly reminded me of a favorite book from my younger years, The Lost Years of Merlin, and how the trees have their own language.  The wind moaning, branches creaking and shifting…it isn’t hard to imagine them speaking to each other, wondering what intruder has entered their canopy of twisting vines and groping roots.

Poetry Exercise: Word-Substitution Poem

Exercise taken from Creating Poetry by John Drury.  Page 26, exercise 2:

Choose a poem that interests you.  Using a fresh sheet of paper, write down new words to replace each word of your model.  Substitute your own words for those of the other poem, making sure you keep the same arrangements of parts of speech.  That is, substitute nouns for nouns, verbs for verbs, and so on.  You can write down opposites or antonyms if you like (“hot” for “cold”), but don’t feel restricted by that possibility.  The idea is to keep the other poet’s syntax (or arrangement of words) while providing your own building materials, your own vocabulary.

“A Dream of Jealousy” by Seamus Heaney

Walking with you and another lady

In a wooded parkland, the whispering grass

Ran its fingers through our guessing silence

And the trees opened into a shady

Unexpected clearing where we sat down.

We talking about desire and being jealous,

Our conversation a loose single gown

Or a white picnic tablecloth spread out

Like a book of manners in the wilderness.

‘Show me,’ I said to our companion, ‘what

I have much coveted, your breast’s mauve star.’

And she consented.  Oh neither these verses

Nor my prudence, love, can heal your wounded stare.

Model

Skating with you and only you

under hushed snow, the fallen flakes

rested their bodies on our woolen caps

and the clouds turned into a misty

hollowed sky when we looked up.

I think the grayness of the day excited us.

We laughed over ice and being cold,

our voices a warm smoky apparition

or a lost baleful spirit held out

like a flag of white in the breeze.

‘Tell me,’ I said to your cheek, ‘what

I have often wondered, your heart’s true want.’

And you answered.  Oh, neither this frost

nor your pretense, love, can hide your empty gaze.

What I think:

This exercise helped me think about word placement and parts of speech–I couldn’t just choose anything and hope it made sense.  They had to match the ones in Heaney’s poem.  It’s a good exercise for writers who tend to just throw words together rather than stop and think “Why am I choosing this word?  Does it establish the meaning I’m trying to get across?”  It definitely took more patience than free-writing.

That being said, I adore Seamus Heaney’s poetry, and I don’t feel my exercise could even stand in the shadow of his work…but the point was to try and emulate a good writer’s work, which can only lead to better writing for me.  Eventually 🙂

Never eat a banana on a boat…

Because apparently, it spells D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am terrified of boats (mainly because of sea monsters.  Yes, for real).  Unfortunately, my brother is getting married on a cruise come August, so I have no choice but to attend the ceremony…I’m tempted to just say “Screw you,” and run away, but apparently being present at your brother’s wedding kind of a big deal, so I’m putting my life in danger, instead.  At least I’ll have a room without a window so I can’t look out and see the giant tentacles trying to tear the ship apart.

We can't say we weren't warned...

Anyway, it’s important for me to know what superstitions sea-faring folk believe in, because I can’t make any mistakes on this trip.  So I read up on them a bit, and found some of the usual ones…a woman on a fishing trip is bad luck (unless she’s naked.  Then she’s actually good to have around), dolphins are good omens, never start a voyage on a Friday or you’re doomed, never kill an albatross…you know, the normal stuff everyone knows.

Then I read this title in a book:  “The Evil of the Banana.”

That's a lot of evil.

Apparently having bananas on a ship has been a big NO since the early 1700s.  This was when Spain’s South Atlantic and Caribbean trading empire was big, and “nearly every ship that disappeared at sea was carrying a cargo of bananas” (Pg. 195 of Breverton’s Phantasmagoria).  It was also thought that bananas on slave ships would ferment below deck and give of methane gas, killing anyone who breathed it in.  The scariest reason (for those with arachnophobia), is that a certain poisonous spider would nest in the bananas.  If a sailor was killed by a spider bite while bananas were on board, all of those bananas might be thrown to the sea because of the bad omen.

So the next time you’re on a cruise, tanning on deck and about to enjoy that strawberry-banana smoothie…think about the danger you’re putting yourself in.

If you’re interested in reading other sea superstitions and making yourself too paranoid to ever step on a boat again, click here.

Poetry Exercise: Rise of an Avocado Day.

Exercise taken from Creating Poetry by John Drury.  Page 19, exercise 14:

Write a poem that’s all sound, a babble of word music, letting vowels echo and consonants repeat, not worrying much about what it means.  Savor the sounds.  If this seems hard to begin, try listing as many delicious words as you can, words you can taste (and proper names too), like “crush” and “deliquescent” and “Susquehanna.”

Rise of an Avocado Day

Silver’s gossamer evanescence slips down a cherrywood banister,

whispers a phosphorescent dawn.

This is an avocado day, the sky jade over the sea, so

our lips hover over taste in hope.

This is morning that knocks on your cellar door like cymbals,

crashing, open, but listening, glistening, freshening the sun.

Dew like clear pearls between grass blades, our toes curling

under chestnut earth, the delicate doves gray against green.

Wings slicing air like jazz in a hazy room, fog like

cigar smoke hovering above water.

Our breath is just an undercurrent of the breeze,

slender as invisibility

but grasping everything with the strength of a titan.

My love,

we go free with this daybreak,

we rise like robins,

rove like gypsies under mauve morning.

And we won’t return even when the moon steals the sky.

By:  Janessa Barrette

What I think:

I enjoyed this exercise because it allowed me to free-write with words that feel like honey on the tongue.  I found myself writing with a hunger for how the language sounded, not necessarily what it meant.  That’s for later revisions, not for the initial exercise.  I like “avocado day” and “wings slicing air like jazz in a hazy room.”  I think the end became a bit cliche, but I’m not too bothered because I was just going with the poem’s feeling…I think there’s something to work with, here.

The Resplendent, Relaxing Rabbit

Notice the hairdo? No product needed.

Because no bed is complete without a real rabbit shedding all over your pillows.

The Hobbit, with illustrations by Alan Lee

A couple days ago I received my newest copy of The Hobbit, which I purchased off Amazon.com.  Amazon is a dangerous site for me to peruse, as there is always a book I want to buy…anyway, I say “newest” copy because this is the fourth version I own.  I also have: The Annotated Hobbit, annotated by Douglas A. Anderson, the 1966 edition with its original cover and artwork by Tolkien, and a Houghton Mifflin paperback copy that goes with a Lord of the Rings box set.  (By the way, I do not suggest buying the Mifflin paperback copy because it has an unnerving amount of typos.  Usually I’m happy with Mifflin’s editions, but not this time).

The Hobbit I just received was published in 1997 and is a handsome hardcover with illustrations by Alan Lee.  I have to say, this is a beautiful edition to buy if you would like to own multiple copies of The Hobbit.  I’ve been a fan of Alan Lee’s artwork since I purchased his Lord of the Rings Sketchbook years ago, and when I found out he’d illustrated The Hobbit, I decided to give it a go.  I’m not disappointed.

I know, nothing can ever replace Tolkien’s own artwork in the original edition.  But take a look at Lee’s Gollum:

Note: Colors have been changed a bit to make the picture clearer

Tell me he is not creepy.  Though not as creepy as Gollum from the 1977 animated The Hobbit.  That gave me nightmares as a child.

Anyway, I admire Lee’s art because it has a roughness to it–it isn’t all perfect lines or extremely bold colors.  It has that fairytale quality that I love.  And in this edition, there are plenty of pictures to illustrate the scenes.  Not so many that it feels like you’re just looking at pictures all of the time, but enough to make you happy to see the work come alive while you read.  My one complaint is that there’s no picture of Beorn, whom I love, but alas…you can’t have everything.

I haven’t completely read through this edition, yet, so I don’t know if there are typos…I’m really hoping there aren’t, because it’s so beautiful 🙂

Are there any books of which you own multiple copies?

The Problem with Poetry

Note:  I am not a published poet, though hopefully I will be, someday.  These are just my thoughts on what good poetry is and what it should not be.

Okay.  I took a poetry writing class in college with Dr. David Craig–quite a brilliant man, by the way, and hilarious– and I learned something.  (Surprise!)

Poetry is work, damn it.  You cannot just throw words together and call them a poem, which is what many people do (and I used to do).  This:

My heart

is bleeding at your feet

and I cannot

breathe.

Life.

Death.

Hopelessness.

By:  Hopefully nobody.

Is not a poem.  It is a cliché image scattered over an open space.  I am guilty of doing this (though not to the degree of the above example).  So are many beginning poets, I think.  And there’s nothing wrong with starting somewhere.  An excellent poem may come from an exercise where you just write random words and images.  But that initial rambling should not be your final work.

While taking the poetry class, I had to revise each poem at least seven times for my final.  And let me tell you, they had changed a lot by the time those revisions were done.  There were times I would go to revise a poem and think:  “How can I possibly revise this masterpiece?  It’s perfection!  I’m frickin’ T.S. Eliot!”

Dr. Craig would then kindly stick a pin in my ego, and I would quite rapidly deflate and scuttle back to my keyboard.

So what is the problem with poetry?  People think it’s easy.  They think it’s just jotting down haphazard thoughts and cutting them to pieces to form shorter lines and stanzas.  But it’s so much more than that.  It’s dissecting those words and trying to figure out what you’re really trying to say, then completely changing everything.  Over and over again.  Sometimes you may not need many revisions, but most of the time the poem will unrecognizable from what it began as.

And that, my friend, is a good thing.