Poetry Blog: "A Work Day in Hard Times"

I wrote most of this post in Washington DC while attending the American Catholic Colleges and Universities annual meeting. I grieved Stock’s absence just days after he died.  One of the Province Jesuits came to pack his final effects and leave his room in the Jesuit house empty.  I spent 5 hours in his room that day, tasting the harsh and tender fragrance of his years of ordinary living there.  I carry the memories with me still and will into my future life.

Posted on February 1, 2016

“Detroit Metro Airport, 7:23 am Saturday. I’m heading to Washington DC for the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, an annual ritual right after my university’s January Board of Trustees’ meeting. Lots of attendees, some close friends, some I’ve not met. I stay at the Jesuit community, Leonard Neale House, about a 25 minute walk from the conference’s Ritz Carlton hotel. Gerry Stockhausen lived here; most of the Jesuits in the house work with one or another national Jesuit office. Stock was Executive Secretary of The Jesuit Conference, where he worked with Tim Kesicki, President of the Conference. While I was packing this morning I realized that it will take some grace to take in and be welcomed into Gerry’s absence — for me and the 10 men with whom he lived.

Monday will be busy and I had some time in Detroit Metro this morning so I fished around in Garrison Keilor’s “The Writer’s Almanac” and found a poet new to me. Raymond Carver’s “At Least” freshens this travel morning. So does the note just below the poem where GK recalls for his readers that today is the birthday of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: three short FDR sayings.

john sj

Today’s Post “At least”
by Raymond Carver

I want to get up early one more morning,
before sunrise. Before the birds, even.
I want to throw cold water on my face
and be at my work table
when the sky lightens and smoke
begins to rise from the chimneys
of the other houses.
I want to see the waves break
on this rocky beach, not just hear them
break as I did all night in my sleep.
I want to see again the ships
that pass through the Strait from every
seafaring country in the world—
old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,
and the swift new cargo vessels
painted every color under the sun
that cut the water as they pass.
I want to keep an eye out for them.
And for the little boat that plies
the water between the ships
and the pilot station near the lighthouse.
I want to see them take a man off the ship
and put another up on board.
I want to spend the day watching this happen
and reach my own conclusions.
I hate to seem greedy—have so much
to be thankful for already.
But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.
And go to my place with some coffee and wait.
Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.

“At Least” by Raymond Carver from Where Water Comes Together With Other Water. © Vintage Books, 1986. Reprinted with permission.

Monday, February 22

I read Judith Viorst’s poem late last night and, rare for me, wrote 3 poetic lines that the poet’s cadence teased out of some wellspring in my memory.

“Sometimes a poet has to cut the reader loose so she can run wild
and light the whole world with fountains of laughter,
even on a work day Monday morning”

Best to read this cluster of poetry out loud, with pauses.  Have a blest work week.

john sj

Post #1:  Wild Thing

I went for a walk in the sun without wearing my sunscreen.
I went out of town without making a reservation.
I placed my mouth directly upon a public drinking fountain, and took a sip.
I didn’t bother flossing my teeth before bedtime.
I pumped my own gasoline at a self-service station.
I ate the deviled egg instead of the cauliflower with low-fat yoghurt dip.
I bought, without reading Consumer Reports, a new dryer.
I left my checking account unreconciled.
I know that the consequences could be dire
But sometimes a woman simply has to run wild.

Judith Viorst
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Viorst

Post #2:  The Return of the King

In the wizard’s face he saw at first
only lines of care and sorrow;
though as he looked more intently
he perceived that under all there was a great joy:
a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing
were it to gush forth.

J. R. R. Tolkien
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien

“Lent” – –  originally the word simply meant “Spring” (as in the German language “Lenz” and Dutch “lente”).  It derives from the Germanic root for “long” because in the spring the days visibly lengthen.

The English spoken in the United States originated in England as a blend of Anglo-Saxon (German roots) and French (from the Norman Conquest of 1066).   In Detroit’s climate, you might say that “Spring” means the season when trees and shrubs and flowers and grass look dead and only very gradually tell the careful observer that they are coming back to life… very gradually.  For some years, I’ve followed a ritual to remind myself about how slowly Spring happens:  I look for a large shrub or a low-hanging tree branch somewhere along a campus pathway that I walk.  I stop nearby, close, so I can look at one twig on its branch from a distance of 6 to 8 inches and look at the twig for half a minute or so, paying attention to signs of rebirth.   I try to remember to stop there three to four times a week.

From day to day not much new happens.  Little by little, though, attention at close range gets a chance to surprise the looker.  Stopping and looking is a form of Lenten prayer and helps more than giving up candy or beer.  Stopping and looking at a twig on a shrub can become a metaphor for close watching other parts of life and waiting there in hope — a child growing up, a city laboring through its rebirth, an angry country turbulent and contentious, a university teeming with people trying to learn, trying to teach, trying to renew our day-to-day operations — Beauty all around us.  Fasting from gloom, stopping and paying attention to a nation short on hope, the Lenten prayer invites the pray-er to wait for the season’s improbable signs of new life.

The growing length of daylight during Lent comes to about 3 minutes more light each day.

Have a blest week,

john sj

Today’s Post:   – “God’s Grandeur”    Gerard M Hopkins, sj

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins
28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889

Monday,  February 15,   “I used to want to be this bad at a job.”

I hadn’t posted a poem from Detroit poet Jamaal May in a while.  He writes “Shift” with the subtle density of language that characterizes his poetry.   “Shift” asks a reader to stay with a complex poem that is surprisingly subtle; in no place is it overdone rhetorically.  It’s worth the 2nd and 3rd read, out loud with pauses.

Have a blest week,

john sj

p.s. In Detroit we are a couple hours into the beautiful stillness that often accompanies a snow storm with only a little wind.

Today’s Post:  “Shift”

Acting on an anonymous tip, a shift supervisor

at a runaway shelter strip-searched six teenagers.

Mrs. Haver was taping shut the mouths

of talkative students by the time she neared retirement,

and Mr. Vickers, a skilled electrician in his day,

didn’t adapt when fuses became circuit breakers,

a fact that didn’t stop him from tinkering

in our basement until the house was consumed by flame.

I used to want to be this bad at a job.

I wanted to show up pissy drunk to staff meetings

when the power point slides were already dissolving

one into another, but I had this bad habit

of showing up on time

and more sober than any man should be

when working audio/visual hospitality

in a three star hotel that was a four star hotel

before he started working there.

When the entire North Atlantic blacked out,

every soul in the Hyatt Regency Dearborn flooded

the parking lot panicked about terrorists and rapture,

while I plugged in microphones and taped down cables

by flashlight—you know, in case whatever cataclysm

unfolded didn’t preempt the meetings. Meetings,

before which I’d convince a children’s hospital

to pay fifteen dollars to rent a nine dollar laser pointer.

Thirty-five bucks for a flip chart,

extra paper on the house. Is it good to be good at a job

if that job involves pretending to be a secret service agent

for Phizer’s George Bush impersonator? I don’t know

if it’s better to be good at a bad job or bad at a good job,

but there must be some kind of satisfaction

in doing a job so poorly, you’re never asked to do it again.

I’m not saying he’s a hero, but there’s a guy out there

who overloaded a transformer and made a difference,

because in a moment, sweating through my suit,

groping in the dark when my boss was already home,

I learned that I’d work any job this hard, ache

like this to know that I could always ache for something.

There’s a hell for people like me where we shovel

the coal we have mined ourselves into furnaces

that burn the flesh from our bones nightly,

and we never miss a shift.

BY JAMAAL MAY

1982-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaal_May

Tom Florek, s.j. has long served as a rich source of powerful poetry, primarily from Central American and Mexican poets; he sent this to me over the weekend.   Exquisite, as I read it.  I am inclined to run Tom’s cover paragraph as is.

“Greetings from Chicago where I’ve begun my work with the Catholic Migrant Farmworker Network (CMFN) and Milwaukee’s Casa Romero. –  –  –   “I’ve recently received this poem from a CMFN board member whose parents were migrant farmworkers in Arizona.  The attached poem came from the niece of the president of CMFN, Teresita Kontos, who has given permission to share this great poem.

Enjoy,
Tom”

Tom, we are in your debt one more time.

Best to read the poet out loud,  with pauses.  Have a blest new work week.

john st sj

Today’s Post:  LAS MANOS

I’ll never forget the scent that perfumed Abuelita’s hands
Palmolive dish soap with a hint of Cloro
Scrubbing
everything from countertops to toilets and showers
Wringing
mops to clean up spills of children that were not always her own
Holding
onto her faded rosary from several mornings and evenings spent
Praying
for the forgiveness of the heavy pecados of the whole world.

Abuelito’s hands were heavy.
Thick and calloused from the years he spent working in the labor picking
anything from
cotton in Tejas to sugar beets in “Meechigan.”
When Abuelita asks him to bring in nopales from the yard so she can make
some nopalitos
con frijolitos for dinner, he’d go out and pick them
with his bare manos,
unable to feel the needles of the nopal pierce his worn russet skin.

These were the manos that raised and fed me,
the manos that helped feed a nation who acknowledged their existence with
words and
phrases like “wetback” or “beaner” and “Speak English, you’re in America,”
with signs on restaurant windows and gasolineras that read “No dogs or
Mexicans allowed.”
A nation who worked them to exhaustion, treating them as a commodity to be
exploited.

Viewed as cheap, hired extra hands
Estas manos worked tirelessly so my hands
could hold a pencil and write
“important” things
so my back could carry a backpack filled with libros and a head full of sueños
so that I could be seen as worth more than just my hands
so that I could be seen as a person.

So eventually these manos, my manos,
would have the opportunity to hold a diploma with my name on it.

Maybe my hands have never known the sting that comes from repeatedly
sticking my hands
in Cloro or the developed layers of protection needed in order to be numb to
the world
around me unwilling to acknowledge my humanity.

Pero when I look at my hands,

I see all the pain and the sacrificio it took for them to look that way.

Karina Varela

We usually save this space for what we call “contextual paragraphs”  —  short essays which we try to connect with something from the day that “wants our attention”  – –  e.g., the weather, some striking crisis, the season of the year, etc.  Today’s offering does not take the form of such an essay,  we found the “Ghosts of Segregation” photo series; its photo images and captions we find transformative and we are proud to offer them to the Poetry List’s c. 2,500 readers.

Have a blest weekend,

john sj

African Americans looking for day jobs frequently congregated along this wall on the 7 Mile side hoping to get a day job from someone who would by drive by and pick them up.  It was frequently taken to be an image of African American men standing “idly” so that the wall became a racist image of African American laziness.

REDLINING WALL – DETROIT, MICHIGAN

When the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was founded in 1934, the process of “redlining,” the act of denying loans and financial services to black neighborhoods while granting them for white neighborhoods, was codified. The Detroit neighborhood of Wyoming was a redlined black neighborhood for nearly a decade until the early 1940s, when developers wanted to build a white development in the area. They were denied by the FHA because their plan placed the white neighborhood “too close” to the black neighborhood. Thinking quickly, the developers responded by building a half-mile long wall directly between Mendota Street and Birwood Avenue for a full three blocks. This was enough to be given the nod of approval from the U.S. government. The wall, now known as 8 Mile Wall, was the official racial divider for over 20 years, until the Fair Housing Act supposedly abolished such racist policies in 1968.

PHOTOGRAPHED: 2018

NEGRO LEAGUE STADIUM – HAMTRAMCK, MICHIGAN

Built in 1930, Hamtramck Stadium was home to the Negro National League Detroit Stars in 1930-1931 and again in 1933. The field was also home to the Detroit Wolves of the Negro East-West League in 1932, and to the Negro American League Detroit Stars in 1937.

PHOTOGRAPHED: 2019

For more images, please see: https://www.ghostsofsegregation.com/gallery.html?folio=GALLERY&gallery=IMAGES

For detail about the photographer, Rich Frishman, please see: https://www.ghostsofsegregation.com/content.html?page=5

“The Murder of Emmett Till”   (PBS Feb 2, 2021)  Last night I stayed up late to watch the PBS documentary account of the torture and murder of the now-infamous young black boy, Emmett Till and his white killers in Mississippi.   I had not watched Emmett Till for some years;  PBS’s account will stay with me for a long time; today’s post will stay too — Emmett and his fiercely brave mother; she insisted on her son’s mutilated body be carried — in a deliberately open coffin by thousands of mourners.  Those thousands not only carried Emmett’s bod;   they carried his story across the nation.   PBS tells us that Mrs. Rosa Parks soon after began and led the Montgomery Bus Boycott that broke open the deep south’s segregated public bus system and began to open Alabama to revolutionary change.  Mrs. Rosa Parks discovered that no one would hire her — white punishment.   Soon after, however, Mrs. Parks was invited to move to Detroit by John Conyers who connected her to the city’s strong African American community.  She lived in Detroit until, at her death, the whole city in their many thousands, and the nation, mourned her passing.

Have a blest week,

john sj

p.s.  No wonder I am very tired this morning; best to read the post out loud with pauses.

Today’s Post – February 3, 2021

David Grubin to john jstsj

“I’ve been telling the story of Tamara Lanier’s lawsuit against Harvard  for control of an 1850 daguerreotype of her great-great-great grandfather, an enslaved man named Renty. The daguerreotype was commissioned by a celebrated Harvard professor – Louis Agassiz – to prove that Africans are a biologically inferior species. It’s in Harvard’s Peabody Museum now, and Lanier, appalled by its stated purpose, thinks of it as a family photo that she wants back so she can donate it to the African-American Museum in Washington.

We call the film Free Renty: Lanier v. Harvard.

The film is in essence the story of an African-American woman’s struggle to reclaim her heritage, and dives into the explosive issues roiling all of us right now: white supremacy, the legacy of slavery, and reparations.  Because it’s a developing story – I’ve been following it for 18 months – I’ve had to stop until I can film again on the other side of the pandemic, whenever that may be. (I’ve edited the first 75 minutes of the film, and waiting now to see how it will end).

This has made me think of a poem that appeared recently in the New Yorker. Although it is right for this moment, I don’t know if you’ll feel it’s right for your blog. Nevertheless, you might be as moved as I was by the way in which this Hispanic poet who went to Yale articulates the contradictions that she has learned to embrace without reaching for any easy conclusions. It’s called “‘A Failed Essay on Privilege.’”

Monday,  February 1  –  Jane Kenyon

I first learned of Jane Kenyon’s “Happiness” from my favorite “American Experience” historical film producer, David Grubin, some years ago.  On this snow-covered Monday in February with its off-tune noises of intemperate, clashing political shouting seemingly everywhere, Kenyon’s “Happiness” sounds tone-perfect.  The poet writes in language full of surprises and bravery.

Best to read Kenyon’s words out loud, with pauses.   I post this in honor not only of the poet Jane Kenyon, but also of my long friendship with David Grubin and my resilient friendships alive in the list’s c. 2500 readers.

Finally, I also honor my Lakota daughter, Mary Tobacco (“akicita wiyan”), who dares to speak for and care for some of the poorest elders and children on U.S. 18 along the western slopes of The Black Hills in Pine Ridge South Dakota.

Wanblee Ska  –  john st sj

Today’s Post:   “HAPPINESS”

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

Jane Kenyon (b. 1947 – d. 1995  {leukemia} )

In 2018 for The Climate Reality Project and riffing off of the iconic photo of the Earth rising over the surface of the Moon (taken by Apollo 8 astronauts), Gorman wrote a poem called “Earthrise” about the climate emergency and the action we must take to end it.

Best to read “Earthrise” out loud, with pauses.

Have a blest, beautiful, and demanding Wednesday of this week.

john st sj

Today’s Post  From the text of the poem: “Earthrise”

Where despite disparities
We all care to protect this world,
This riddled blue marble, this little true marvel
To muster the verve and the nerve
To see how we can serve
Our planet. You don’t need to be a politician
To make it your mission to conserve, to protect,
To preserve that one and only home
That is ours,
To use your unique power
To give next generations the planet they deserve.

We are demonstrating, creating, advocating
We heed this inconvenient truth, because we need to be anything but lenient
With the future of our youth.

And while this is a training,
in sustaining the future of our planet,
There is no rehearsal. The time is
Now
Now
Now,
Because the reversal of harm,
And protection of a future so universal
Should be anything but controversial.

So, earth, pale blue dot
We will fail you not.

Amanda Gorman’s inauguration poem, read from the steps of the White House (cf. Washington Post)

For a poetry post, “the hill we climb” runs longer than most of our offerings.   Still, as I read and listened to what she said, my conviction grew that “the hill we climb” wants to be listened to by the many people gathered on those steps, to listen and to let surprise wash over us.  Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses.

Have a blest new work week,

john sj

For the poem as presented in the Washington Post:

“On Wednesday, Joe Biden may have been inaugurated as president for the next four years, but 22-year-old Amanda Gorman crowned herself as a voice for the ages — by so emphatically reminding us of Audre Lorde’s declaration: “Poetry is not a luxury.”

And what a gorgeous crown it was. The national youth poet laureate wore a bright yellow coat and a red headband atop crochet braid twists pulled into an updo, the strands adorned with mini gold cuffs — a bold move in an America where Black women and girls face discrimination over wearing their natural hair, twists or braids. Gorman’s vibrant yellow and red were also a visual nod to the 1972 campaign materials of Shirley Chisolm, the first Black woman to run for president. Gorman communicated her truth and took her place within the political tradition of Black American women before even uttering a word.

Then Gorman spoke. And we listened, stunned.

Her inaugural poem, “The Hill We Climb,” opened with a question about the human condition writ large. “When day comes we ask ourselves / where can we find light in this never-ending shade?” But immediately Gorman dove deep into our America, both this troubled moment and hard moments past — into, as she said, “the belly of the beast.”

The young Harvard grad was sharing a stage with leaders multiple times her age, leaders who have steered this country into and out of disasters of monumental consequence, often in the name of American exceptionalism. Gorman spoke her commanding truth to all that power — that healing the wounds of the past should become part of the American identity. Let’s unspool the lines as she recited them:

The hill we climb

If only we dare

It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,

it’s the past we step into

and how we repair it

America loves to celebrate the first and the young. Here was the youngest U.S. inaugural poet in history, reciting to mark the occasion of Kamala D. Harris becoming the first female, Black and South Asian vice president, who was sworn in by Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina Supreme Court justice. In a coronavirus-stricken country starved for celebration and ritual, it felt so good to applaud Gorman and all she represented.

But she was not a luxury. The purifying power of poetry has existed as long as humans have wielded words. And for women especially, as Lorde said, poetry “is a vital necessity of our existence.” Biden’s inaugural words about unity and coming together were good and helpful and presidential. But it was Gorman’s truth that was the necessary one.

Necessary for Black women in America. In a country that so loves to profit from our political, cultural and emotional labor, Gorman reminded those of us who live at the intersection of sexism and racism that we do not have the luxury of settling for hollow #BlackWomenWillSaveUs platitudes. Not when this country is unable to save us from discrimination, police brutality or dying in childbirth.

Necessary for the young. Gorman and her generation simply cannot afford the luxury of designer political rhetoric accompanied by empty actions. Yes, America prizes youth, but older generations still ignore young people’s cries for a better future. In our moment of peril, they gaze out over an inheritance poisoned by climate change, lies, greed, bigotry and discrimination.

Necessary for all who want to see democracy endure. In an interview with CNN’S Anderson Cooper on Wednesday, Gorman said that she revised her poem in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, taking to Twitter (another medium that knows the power of brevity) to see what people were saying about the attack. “Wow, this is what happens when people don’t want to share the country with the rest of us,” she told Cooper. So she put it into her poetry: “We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation / rather than share it / Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.”

Gorman is a source of pride, but her words are also a source of pain, a reminder that we — and young Americans like her in particular — still must contend with the dark, generations-old forces we told ourselves that we had defeated.

But, at the same time, her words were an elixir to a nation in critical condition, pure truth poured into an ocean of lies and division. May they help guide us to a better place.”

America ‘needed’ Amanda Gorman’s words, her teachers say. She delivered.

Jennifer Rubin: It wasn’t just the speech. There were plenty of big moments at Biden’s inauguration.

E.J. Dionne: Biden’s speech was a commitment to a new democracy

Dana Milbank: A president replaced. A nation redeemed.

Karen Attiah: AOC’s brief, poetic moment to shine — and plant a big flag