Poetry Blog: "A Work Day in Hard Times"

Monday, November 26
“and yet there are chances that come back”

A friend introduced me to the poet, W. S. Merwin late in 2014;  all sorts of recognition for his poetry.  It me wonder how I’d  missed him for so long.  Wikipedia’s short bio concludes:  “In June 2010, the Library of Congress named Merwin the seventeenth United States Poet Laureate to replace the outgoing Kay Ryan.  He is the subject of the 2014 documentary, Even Though the Whole World Is Burning.”

How many times have I noticed —- remembering something that I had missed the first time around  — something, hindsight now tells me, that was already important, and then becomes important again in a later remembering?   Remembering, teaches St. Ignatius, can reweave the fabric of a life.  “Attention should be paid to some more important places in which I have experienced understanding, consolation, or desolation.” (Spiritual Exercises  Par. 118)   Noticing matters.    Best to read the poet out loud, with pauses.

This last Monday of November features light snow dancing on the wind;  astonishing play.  Have a blest day.

john st sj

p.s. The University’s blog management system reports that today is poetry post # 625.

Today’s Post  

W. S. Merwin –“Turning”

Going too fast for myself I missed
more than I think I can remember
almost everything it seems sometimes
and yet there are chances that come back
that I did not notice when they stood
where I could have reached out and touched them
this morning the black shepherd dog
still young looking up and saying
Are you ready this time

W.S. Merwin
(1927 – )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._S._Merwin

Wednesday, November 21 —  last day before U.S. Thanksgiving

This delicate and demanding Hopkins poem is beautiful; these days of less and lesser sun make  a sweet time for Gerard Manley Hopkins’ brilliant, understated poem about soft paced sorrow, and beauty, and the griefs of 2018, another year that, with its gusts of wind and chilly temperatures,  salutes its ending days.

However, not every day is gloomy, not by a long shot.  Here’s a look at morning sun rising above our snow dusted courtyard.  That the rising sun pours into my west window — after months when the late afternoon light showed off the glory of summer days — reminds us that these are shorter days (today’s Detroit: sunrise to sunset — 7:30 am – 5:05 pm; in Stockholm, home of Nina, one of my Swedish soul friends, the days are already much shorter, nearly 2.5 hours shorter — 7:55 am – 3:10 pm).

                                                       Morning sun rising
                                                      November 20, 2018

Have a blest day,

john st sj

Today’s Post “Spring and Fall”

to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

For an audio version, please visit: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44400/spring-and-fall

1844 – 1889
G.M. Hopkins Bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins

Monday, November 19    “The mineshaft of passion” <—->  “the well of grief”

About midnight last night I opened my window to say goodnight to 6 Mile and Livernois, and the city.  Astonishing.  After some days of damp and pretty dark, a nearly full moon lit up the night.   This morning, softer light on traces of snow, with my iPhone promising little icons of sun 4 days of this Thanksgiving Week.  Grief requires stillness, but it is surely helped along by unexpected  surprises, delicate beauty.

A thought about the news lately:  fire and anger and fear do best when I can bring them to stillness, when their source in grief becomes accessible to me.   There’s lots of anger in the land these days.  Here are two poets who frequently grace this list, writing their way into holy sorrow.   Try reading them, perhaps not both right in a row, with pauses in between to let the poets’ words seep into your day.

Have a blest day.

john sj

Post # 1   David Whyte  “The Well of Grief”

Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief,

turning down through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe,

will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,

nor find in the darkness glimmering,

the small round coins,
thrown by those who wished for something else.

Risking Everything

David Whyte b. 1955

Post  # 2  Denise Levertov  “the Mineshaft of passion”

And the poet–it’s midnight, the room is half empty, soon we must part–
the poet, his presence
ursine and kind, shifting his weight in a chair too small for him,
quietly says, and shyly:
“The Poet
never must lose despair.”

Then our eyes indeed
meet and hold,
All of us know, smiling
in common knowledge–
even the palest spirit among us, burdened
as he is with weight of abstractions–
all of us know he means
we mustn’t, any of us, lose touch with the source,
pretend it’s not there, cover over
the mineshaft of passion
despair somberly tolls its bell
from the depths of,

and wildest joy
sings out of too,
flashing
the scales of its laughing, improbable music,
grief and delight entwined in the dark down there.

Denise Levertov
b. October 1923  d. December 1997
“Conversation in Moscow” in Freeing of the Dust

from my window looking west, this morning, November 19, c. 8:00 am

Friday, Thanksgiving break is peeking around the corner

A close and dear friend, Thane Kreiner, came to visit for two days.  When a good friend comes to stay, I like to leave a note on the community bulletin board.  This is what I wrote yesterday.

Last evening, talking about the poetry list, Thane introduced me to a new poet,  Marge Piercy.  I love it.  A fringe benefit of one friend traveling to see another friend’s city.  A poem rewards reading it outloud, with pauses.  Have a blest end of week and weekend.

john sj

Today’s Post  –  “To be of use”

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Marge Piercy

b. 1936

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marge_Piercy

Thursday, November 15   —   a work day as days get shorter

“ .  .  .  To break our logic in too long a flight,
And ask us if our premises are right.”

In The Spiritual Exercises  St. Ignatius teaches various methods of prayer.  One of the most important he calls “Repetition.” (“Attention should be paid to some more important places in which I have found understanding, consolation, or desolation.” Sp Ex # 118).   The principle: “I know more from my experiences than I think;  go back and savor and be surprised.”   For some reason this morning I went back to the workday posts from the beginning of October in the 2nd month of the 1st year of the Work Day post and found this one about longer nights and shorter days.

Here it is again, posted with no changes from its Oct 2 original form.  Good for the deep darkness of January.

Have a blest day.

john sj

From: john staudenmaier sj <staudejm@udmercy.edu>
Subject: a work day as days get shorter
Date: October 2, 2013 7:07:56 AM EDT
To: “employees@listserver.udmercy.edu” <employees@listserver.udmercy.edu>

Hard times —  a Congress locked in venom and contempt for those with whom one must negotiate,  “partisan” is a common adjective for elected officials at the national level;   Detroit city caught in uncertainties about bankruptcy that stir mistrust and fear for the future;   UDM negotiating a McNichols faculty contract turned acrimonious and hurtful.

This morning reminded me that I like getting up while it is dark outside.  It helps me recognize a balance of light and dark.  The descent of the sun toward December solstice doesn’t just cheer me up because autumn colors start to replace the dreadful pollens of ragweed season (asthma).  Early dark opens awarenesses that hustling along in the light I sometimes miss.   I once got in a fight at MIT when I gave a talk about the West’s coupling the emergence of Western scientific methods with a devaluing of Europe’s mystical disciplines.  A friend, Leo Marx got upset with that talk and some other MIT-Harvard types got angry and insulting that I would  call the dark “holy” and celebrate mystery and mysticism at MIT.   But it was Leo who introduced me to this piece with which the published paper now ends.

Have a good day.

john st sj

Today’s Post

A poem for days of diminishing light

Here come the stars to character the skies,
And they in the estimation of the wise
Are more divine than any bulb or arc,
Because their purpose is to flash and spark,
But not to take away the precious dark.
We need the interruption of the night
To ease attention off when overtight,
To break our logic in too long a flight,
And ask us if our premises are right.

Robert Frost “The Literate Farmers and the Planet Venus”

Tuesday November 13   “Now is the time to sit quiet”

Back from my annual Jesuit retreat, on the border between southern Massachusetts and northern Connecticut.  Breathing time and time for stillness & beauty.   The Work Day/Hard Time poetry posts took the time to refresh its imagination too.

Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali # 5  reminds me  why stillness and  beauty and unhurried breathing can restore me body and imagination and spirit.   Have a blest day.

Blessings,

john st sj

Today’s Post   

I ask for a moment’s indulgence to sit by thy side,
The works that I have in hand
I will finish afterwards.

Away from the sight of thy face
my heart knows no rest nor respite,
and my work becomes an endless toil
in a shoreless sea of toil.

Now is the time to sit quiet,
face to face with thee
and to sing dedication of life
in this silent and overflowing leisure.

Tagore 5

Rabindranath Tagore  –   রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর

May 1861  – August 1941

A serious November snow — November 22, 2015

Thursday,  November 1
“Could crowd career with conquest”

I’m posting All Saints Day like a Jesuit Homie –  three Jesuits: one with whom I lived here in Detroit for years before he died, Art McGovern.  The second,   St. Alphonsus Rodriquez, lived a barely noticed life in the 1500s and was named a Saint according to Catholic practice in 1888.   The third saint is familiar to the list’s readers: Gerard Manley Hopkins, another non-famous person during his life.   Hopkins’ poem in honor of Alphonsus, whose feast was yesterday, is a tribute to a compelling human being and the wonder of his seemingly un-noteworthy life as a college door-keeper hundreds of years ago.

I’ll begin my annual retreat tomorrow with some airport help,  so the ordinary Friday post stepped ahead by a day.

November chills and strong leaf colors, blessings as you go.

john sj

1)    Monday November 2 – a saint who lived with us,  Art McGovern, sj

On All Saints Day Art McGovern seems to come and find me. Yesterday was, in the R Catholic calendar, the feast of all the saints.  He who died at 70 in May of 2000.  Art lived close to the ground — at home with play (“health food is the kind you like so much you feel good while eating it:  my 3 are pretzels, ice cream, and bacon.”) and grief, at home with losses and wins, at home  leading difficult committees, at home with impeccably prepared classes laced with kind teasing and learning (“Fr. McGovern is like feathers; he makes you laugh while  you think hard.” said a student one time).  If someone can be a world class scholar, a beloved teacher, a rabid Ohio State football fan and a kinsman day in and day out . . . .  well, no surprise he came to mind this morning.

2 & 3)  Gerard Manley Hopkins has never lost his capacity to knock me flat when I read him out loud, with pauses.  His encomium for Alphonsus  Rodriquez whose  feast was yesterday, is no exception.   Sure, on this gray November day, out loud with pauses can bless us with surprises.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonsus_Rodriguez)

Today’s Post:

G. M. Hopkins

“In honour of  St. Alphonsus Rodriquez, 
Laybrother of the Society of Jesus”

HONOUR is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.

Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.

Hopkins, painted 24 July 1866

Gerard Manley Hopkins  28 July 1844 – 8 June, 1889 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins

this is not a poem, but it’s a great story.  These tiny houses sit just west of The Lodge Expressway

john sj

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/tiny-houses/?hpid=hp_hp-visual-stories-desktop_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

originally posted January 23, 2017

Perhaps this Denise Levertov poem came to mind because I flew into JFK Saturday, braved Long Island’s expressways with their too tight turns matched by slightly-too-narrow lanes, to spend time with a lifelong soul friend, Sr. Consuela de Biase, csj.   Connie has become frail, like the ancient poet in today’s poem.  She misses nothing, I realized, but you have to lean in close to hear;  worn with fatigue, she whispers, and pauses to breathe.  We visited three times  (c. 90 minutes,  25 minutes, and 4 or 5 when we said goodbye before I headed back to JFK early Sunday).  I love it that the 40 mile drive on the parkway was wearing;  it reminds me that those miles and our 3 conversations are of a piece with decades of mutual listening, the fabric of Connie’s life.  She whispered her last words to me,  “you do so many beautiful things.”  I whispered back, “I love you Connie.”

In today’s poem Denise Levertov writes of an ancient poet whose frail strengths remind me of Connie.   Today is the last day of October, “The Day of the Dead and the Eve of All Hallows” {i.e., Halloween} might tempt you to open your window or step outside so you can read “In Love” bathed in beauty, breathing a little too.

Have a blest day,

johns sj

Today’s Post   “In Love”

Over gin and tonic (an unusual treat) the ancient poet
haltingly —            not because mind and memory
falter, but because language, now,
weary from so many years
of intense partnership,
comes stiffly to her summons,
with unsure footing —
recounts, for the first time in my hearing, each step
of that graceful sarabande, her husband’s
last days, last minutes, fifteen years ago.

She files her belongings freestyle, jumbled
in plastic bags — poems, old letters, ribbons,
old socks, an empty picture frame;
but keeps her fifty years of marriage wrapped, flawless,
in something we sense and almost see —
diaphanous as those saris one can pass through a wedding ring.

Denise Levertov  1923 – 1997

Connie laughing,  smiling,  contemplative  August 2006

p.s. many pictures and a few objects from artists on & around the closet door in my room — some of the pics are old,  some are recent, to me all are alive with beauty

Monday, October 23 — “ Summer ends now, now
barbarous in beauty the stooks arise around”

Today, in southeast Michigan, the sun rises at 7:53 and sets at 6:39: each day a little shorter and the sun a little lower in the sky, sunrise a little farther to the south. This is a season when how far north or south you live can get your attention. I love it that we have a large open space in the north east corner  of the McNichols Campus (a large parking + LaCrosse & Soccer field)  and that McNichols Road (aka 6 Mile) makes our northern boundary a true east-west survey line, keyed to 8 Mile road (which dates to the 1789 Northwest Territory survey mapping project). All that makes it easier to locate the campus against the majestic march of sunrise all through the year.   It can remind us, too, that Detroit has been around a while. Do I go a little nuts in autumn? Sure do. You?

19th century Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, loved autumn also (see today’s poem just below). Even more than most great poets, GMH rewards investment in the sounds of his language. Best to read out loud, with pauses, several times and, maybe, enjoy the sky? (p.s. “stooks” in line one? “a group of sheaves of grain stood on end in a field.”)

Have a blest day.

john sj

Today’s post — “ Hurrahing in The Harvest”

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—

These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

g m hopkins, sj
July 1844 – June 1889