Monday, March 14  –  “This is not the time to chastise.”

Through most of March, UDM’s Theatre Company is partnering with The Matrix Theatre Company to produce Robin Bradford’s play, Low Hanging Fruit.  Yesterday, I went with two friends: an unflinching and tender experience of homeless women who brought PTSD back from war.  In the post-performance conversation, several vets in the audience asked the actors if any of them had served in combat.  None had.  The vet told them, “you are very good at what you do; you got this right, it feels real.”

A close friend and Detroit Mercy grad has educated me over 10 years about the lives of veterans who carry the cost of war in their bodies and dreams. Today’s post is a Work Day/Hard Time list shout out to veterans and the women and men who care about, and write about the ragged edges of Post-Traumatic Stress.  I found this piece, “For Veteran, poetry complements PTSD treatment” (http://www.blogs.va.gov/VAntage/20745/poetry-compliments-ptsd-treatment-veteran/) on the USVA’s blog “VAntage Point.”

Have a blest day.

john st sj

Today’s Post  “Poetry complements PTSD treatment”  (two poems without titles)

I began writing poetry when I was hospitalized in an inpatient psychiatry ward at the Palo Alto VA Hospital. It actually started as a form of journaling the thoughts and emotions I was experiencing upon entering treatment. As I transitioned into the PTSD inpatient treatment program, I began working more on my craft in order to truly convey my thoughts and emotions on paper. I found that writing my thoughts down was easier than finding words to speak in the moment:

Morbid, desolate, grim, and bleak.

Feeling so depleted, fatigued, and weak.

Can’t find the proper words to speak.

So on this paper my pen will leak.

Writing has also complemented my PTSD treatment by allowing me to reflect on and process events as they occurred in treatment.   For example, I wrote the following poem after receiving some tough feedback from peers:

I’ve lost all of my comrades and allies.

So I’m planning my final demise.

This should come as no surprise.

I’ve crumbled right before your eyes.

This is not the time to chastise.

Just come to say your final goodbyes.

I like to compare the writing process to the process that an artist may experience when beginning a painting. In art, the artist typically has a theme or concept that he/she wants to transfer onto a blank canvas. However, if during the process that concept changes, the artist is still able to express him/herself without the confines of following rules. This is what I particularly enjoy about writing poetry; I am able to express myself freely and am still create something that may possibly resonate with others.

Besides the tools that I learned while in the PTSD program (5 column, distress tolerance and mindfulness), writing has been one of the most integral tools in my treatment in regards to helping me examine my thoughts. I think that the VA should invest more money into creative arts programs for Veterans who are in treatment because art is a great avenue to channel emotions and thoughts.”

***************************

Laticia Brown is a 31-year-old Air Force Veteran, who receives care at the Menlo Park, California VA medical facility.

Editor’s note: Each year, VA and the American Legion Auxiliary host the National Veterans Creative Arts Festival (NVCAF). The festival serves as not only a celebration of Veteran artists, but the culmination of talent competitions in art, creative writing, dance, drama and music for Veterans treated in the VA’s national health care system. Find our more about the festival at http://www.va.gov/opa/speceven/caf/index.asp

Location: Boll Family YMCA Theatre, Detroit, Mich.

***************************

The UDM Theatre Company will be artistically partnering with The Matrix Theatre Company to produce Robin Bradford’s play Low Hanging Fruit, which uses the self-imposed circumstances of four homeless women struggling to survive in a makeshift encampment under a freeway in Los Angeles. The women in this play are veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraqi Wars, each with physical and emotional scars. Issues of familial and emotional abandonment, homelessness, drug abuse and sexual exploitation rise to the surface, threatening the stability of the fragile stateside “unit” they have managed to patch together. Their stories, struggles and deferred dreams are painful reminders of the women we have neglected after having served their country in often inhumane conditions.

With grant funding pending, we have developed a multi-stage project surrounding the production. If funded, this project will include additional post show discussions, a Veteran’s Job Fair, a Veteran’s Clothing and Goods Drive, and a Restaurant Partnership Fundraising Drive for local Veteran Shelters.

Order your tickets online on the UDM Theatre web page.

Fee: See UDM Theatre web page

Wed of Spring Break,  March 9  “poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping.”

Last night I sent friend who lives in San Francisco a NYT piece “In San Francisco and Rooting for a Tech Comeuppance” and asked how it read to her.

She responded:

“SF is ground zero for the clash between young, affluent techies and San Francisco’s famously diverse communities. The Airbnb controversy epitomized the conflict as rental properties are taken off the market in favor of higher-priced, short-term Airbnb rentals…which only serves to further exacerbate the lack of affordability. The article has a lot of truth to it.”

I wrote back:  “I only know SF as it has evolved from what I read (with one exception).  2 Decembers ago The American Experience producers of “Thomas Edison” flew me to SF for a couple hours on camera as a talking head.   I stayed in boutique hotel a couple miles due east of USF.  I was confused by the neighborhood.  It felt as if it had been a neighborhood  w close to the ground long rooted people.  Didn’t feel much that way now.  I looked for a place to eat with plain earthy people and waitstaff and food.  Took two days to find one.  That said, your few lines confirm my take.  SF has long been shaped by its fixed, relatively small, perimeter which, like a piston’s cylinder cycle, generates power by compression.   Feels, though, like its gotten out of hand.”

The metaphor of San Francisco as like an engine’s piston,  whose fixed cylinder wall and the tight fit with its cylinder, makes high compression possible.  The compression generates the power that makes the engine do its work.  But what happens with the pressure overloads the strength of the cylinder wall?  Boom!, like the 19th century river steam boats whose high pressure engine drivers sometimes raced each other down or up the river by hammering a shim into the pressure release valve to build more compression and greater speed.  Quite a few of those high pressure boilers blew up as did the famous Mozelle a few hundred yards out from Cincinnati’s wharf (c. 1838) and spewed tiny body parts all over Cincinnati’s harbor streets and out over the river.  [for a short historical account see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moselle_(riverboat)

All this led me to ruminate about the power of anger in US presidential primary voting.  And that led me to look for a good poem about anger for today.

Today’s Post

But while looking for an anger poem I found this hitherto-unread masterpiece.  It was love at first site.  For you too, I hope.  In an angry time really well written play and tenderness and wit can be like fresh clean air in the lungs.

p.s.
I’m on retreat the rest of the week.  Next post will be Monday March 14.

“Valentine for Ernest Mann”

You can’t order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two”
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, “Here’s my address,
write me a poem,” deserves something in reply.
So I’ll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn’t understand why she was crying.
“I thought they had such beautiful eyes.”
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Monday, March 7  —   “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things”

When students disembark for a week, their campus breathes in a more relaxed fashion;  lots of employees can turn from work-day jobs to their pile of longer term tasks that always form a backdrop to their “do this NOW” stuff.

It’s a joy, too, to wake to elegant, spring-like sunshine offering powder blue air all around.  Warmer too,  Weather.com says 59º this afternoon.

There may be no better poem for such an inviting morning than “God’s Grandeur.”  As with every strong poet, every word matters.  If you live in Detroit or any other place where the sun colors everything outside today, you might try reading this G. M. Hopkins, sj masterpiece from some place where you can see the sky.

Blessings on your week.

john sj

God’s Grandeur

Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844 – 1889

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, sj 1844-1889

Friday March 4  –   “(i do not know what it is about you . . . .)”

One of the deep satisfactions about writing this Work Day/Hard Times poetry list comes from the variety of strong poems waiting to surprise me.  There is a world of depth and play and grief and kinship waiting to be discovered or remembered and then offered to the c. 1900 readers of the list.   The last three poems have been new to me.  For this Friday in mid-winter (ok, late winter), I’m offering one of my longest places of beauty and wonder, a top five lifetime poem.    It’s a love poem.   The point of reading it out loud is that you slow down as you read, and that he hear the sensuality of the flow of the words.

I hope this winter day, that reading e e cummings makes you recognize your own beauty.

Have a blest weekend.

john  sj

Today’s Post   Somewhere    e e cummings

Somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience, your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

e e cummings

e e cummings 1953

Wednesday, March 2 “my grandma’s put it all in jars.”

Maybe it’s the winter season.  Women and men from the list have been turning my head with never heard, or heard of, poems.  Monday’s poet was a fifth grader.  Today’s comes from a folk singer, Greg Brown remembering his grandma’s Iowa canning cellar in winter time.   Near the time when my sibs and I were living our 100+ year old mother’s last months, someone got the idea to go down into her basement to the cellar up against the front foundation wall.  When we were kids, we’d be part of canning time in August, pitting cherries with hair pins, coring apples, and pears; and breathing in steam and heat coming from her great cooking/canning pots, ladling fruit into bell jars, getting the vacuum seal right. Carrying them down to the fruit cellar.  By the time she & we were done 3 walls of shelves were lined with glistening promises made to any number of winter suppers.  Magic.  When we went down to the cellar so late in her life, weren’t there still a few jars on shelves?  Not for eating anymore, age had broken the seals.  But for remembering childhood in winter.  It never occurred to me that someone might create a song about this particular childrens’ work and play.  But here’s the song.   A UDM colleague sent the print lyrics for about 40% of the sung version.  The lyrics are pretty cool all by themselves, but the sung version is worth the  13 minutes and 59 seconds audio s/he also sent.   Bet you’ll like it.  A great poem/song for the day after a tough winter storm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcs0oEz4QSE

Enjoy March and the mid-week.

john sj

Today’s Post  “Taste a little of the Summer”
Greg Brown

Let those December winds bellow ‘n’ blow
I’m as warm as a July tomato.

[chorus:]
Peaches on the shelf
Potatoes in the bin
Supper’s ready, everybody come on in
Taste a little of the summer,
Taste a little of the summer,
You can taste a little of the summer
my grandma’s put it all in jars.

Well, there’s a root cellar, fruit cellar down below
Watch you head now, and down you go

And there’s [repeat chorus]

Maybe you’re weary an’ you don’t give a damn
I bet you never tasted her blackberry jam.

[repeat chorus]

Ah, she’s got magic in her – you know what I mean
She puts the sun and rain in with her green beans.

[repeat chorus]

What with the snow and the economy and ev’ry’thing,
I think I’ll jus’ stay down here and eat until spring.

[repeat chorus]

When I go to see my grandma I gain a lot of weight
With her dear hands she gives me plate after plate.
She cans the pickles, sweet & dill
She cans the songs of the whippoorwill
And the morning dew and the evening moon
‘N’ I really got to go see her pretty soon
‘Cause these canned goods I buy at the store
Ain’t got the summer in them anymore.

You bet, grandma, as sure as you’re born
I’ll take some more potatoes and a thunderstorm.
Peaches on the shelf
Potatoes in the bin

Supper’s ready, everybody come on in, now
Taste a little of the summer,
Taste a little of the summer,
Taste a little of the summer,
My grandma put it all in jars.

Let those December winds bellow and blow,
I’m as warm as a July tomato.
[repeat chorus]

Ball 67000 Quart Wide Mouth Mason Jars, Silver Lids pack of 12 (32 OZ)

Monday, the last February day in 2016  “It can be your brain, your
fingers, your toes,
You can listen anywhere”

Poems appear sometimes like this — a friend sends me a poem;  it sits on the edge of awareness for 2 months;  I finally notice the poem, read it, am moved by it, look around internet places to learn a little about the poet, and write a post to contextualize it.   Paying attention to one poem (i.e., last Friday’s about the little girl and the table cloth) introduces me to a poetry list titled “Poetry — for better or worse:  My favorite poems, one by one”  at a cheeky website  http://tiltingourheadsup.blogspot.com.  So far I have not found the editor’s name.

For the last day in February, how do you like this poem, written by a fifth grader?   It reminds me to thank February, 2016 for its blessings.    Have a good day.   Aloud w. pauses.

john sj

Today’s Post:  “Waiting in Line”:

[Curator’s note: Nick Penna was in fifth grade when he wrote this poem.]

When you listen you reach
into dark corners and
pull out your wonders.
When you listen your
ideas come in and out
like they were waiting in line.
Your ears don’t always listen.
It can be your brain, your
fingers, your toes.
You can listen anywhere.
Your mind might not want to go.
If you can listen you can find
answers to questions you didn’t know.
If you have listened, truly
listened, you don’t find your
self alone.

Waiting in Line, Nick Penna from Poetic Medicine, the Healing Art of Poem Making”, John Fox @ Jeremy P Tarcher,  Putnam 1997
Posted in “A Year of Being Here”  Phyllis Cole-Dai  January 29, 2013

Friday February 26  “. . . and in this world not everything’s been examined”

A friend of many years emailed me January 13, the day after Gerry Stockhausen died;  hers was one of so many that I only found it yesterday as I open one beautiful note after another.

********
******** ********

“I took a walk this evening, by the river, close to sunset–and tried to think of what I wanted to say to you by way of comfort on the death of your friend Gerry.  Slowly, I pieced this together, from your reference to him as a “soul mate,” and from your post, a few days ago, about a sermon he gave that inspired you.   Souls…inspirations…We don’t lose our friends when they die, because we inspire them, breathe them in–and they become part of us, their souls become part of ours.”

“I’ve also attached two of my favorite poems, by way of reminding you that there is still beauty in our world.”

********
******** ********

So, this Friday morning, weeks after I began to learn my way into the absence of a soul friend, I read one of the two poems the way I encourage readers of the Work Day list to  read;  out loud, with pauses.  I bet you will love it as my friend who sent it does and as I, now this Friday morning in late February, do too.

Have a blessed weekend.

john sj

Today’s Post “A Little Girl Tugs At The Tablecloth”

Wislawa Szymborska

 She’s been in this world for over a year,

and in this world not everything’s been examined
and taken in hand.

The subject of today’s investigation
is things that don’t move themselves.

They need to be helped along,

shoved, shifted,
taken from their place and relocated.

They don’t all want to go, e,g., the bookshelf,
the cupboard, the unyielding walls, the table.

But the tablecloth on the stubborn table
– when well-seized by its hems –
manifests a willingness to travel.

And the glasses, plates,
creamer, spoons, bowl,
are fairly shaking with desire.

It’s fascinating,
what form of motion will they take,
once they’re trembling on the brink:
will they roam across the ceiling?
fly around the lamp?
hop onto the windowsill and from there to a tree?

Mr. Newton still has no say in this.
Let him look down from the heavens and wave his hands.

This experiment must be completed.
And it will.

(Translation: Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak)

Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska^[1][2] [viˈswava ʂɨmˈbɔrska] (2 July 1923 – 1 February 2012)

Nobel Prize in Literature 1996

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

Wednesday  February 24
     “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
     And to whom I was like to give offense.”

It’s hard to walk through a full day without hearing angry calls to build and defend walls. Walls are technologies that cannot get far from mistrust, statements in wire and digital stone that privilege fear of little understood human beings other than oneself.Robert Frost’s masterpiece, “Mending Wall,” treats his neighbor’s entrenched suspicions playfully.

          “He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
          Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
          If I could put a notion in his head:
          ‘Why do they make good neighbors?”

Last week here on campus, we blessed a lovely gate out onto McNichols Road.  Its digital tools make it easier to get in and get out; the broad oval arch frames Detroit Mercy’s legendary clock tower.   I hear the gate say “Welcome,” this fresh new sound at our front door:  the EZ-pass cards for students and employees, leaving more time for guests who need directions from a live person in the other lane;  “Welcome” it says to neighbors who come to walk the track and use the library’s internet work stations;  “Welcome” it says to EZ-pass homies who come to work on mean days, come to work worn down and impatient.

We’ve suffered with a stingy-looking gate for years.  The new gate makes me smile even on hard days.  I’ve been looking out our living room window and watching UDM people arrive for another work day.  Those people, my peers, the new gate makes them look a little more beautiful, brave and noble.  Perhaps that’s why Robert Frost came to mind.   “Mending Walls” is a great poem, a source of wisdom and playful humor during crabby times.

Best to read the poet out loud, with pauses.  Have a blest day.

john st sj

Today’s Post, “Mending Walls”

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

          Robert Frost, 1874 – 1963
          

Monday, February 22, 2016  

I have yet to tire of watching university people driving through our lovely new gate;  after years of watching people stalled in line when someone ahead in line needs to discuss logistics with the gate attendant, I find it so cool that university ID’s open a 2nd gate that welcomes homies onto campus for another work day.  It helps that I like the way the gate’s soft-curve arch frames the university’s clock tower and makes ordinary automobiles look gracious, a welcoming gate again this Monday morning.

February has surprises to go with its dim light.  I dug back in the list for a poem that has been absent for too long, posted first on another February Monday, in 2014.  If you find time to read the post out loud, with pauses, it may tease a smile out from your soul.

Have a blest week.

john sj

February 2014

A friend, some years ago, gave me  David Whyte’s The House of Belonging.   It sat on my shelf for 14 years waiting for me to pay attention.  Two people, the poet and my friend who gave me the book, have created a place waiting for me to find it.  That’s the point of David Wagoner’s poem “Lost” which leads off David Whyte’s book.  It blows me away. “Lost” echoes a wisdom some Lakota friends taught me 50 years ago when I came to the Pine Ridge Reservation to learn how to teach and become a grown up.  I use 3 short sayings as one of my email signatures.

Three wisdom-sayings born on the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation

“Time spent baking bread follows the pace of yeast”

“Motorcycling alone I move as a tiny person in a vast world”

“If I pause long enough, I hear the sound of grass growing — and trees — each at its own pace.”

Here’s David Wagoner’s way to say something similar.  Welcome to a new work week in the middle of February.

john sj

“Lost”

Stand still.   The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes.  Listen.  It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost.  Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

David Wagoner (1976)

{Frontispiece in  David Whyte,  The House of Belonging, Many Rivers Press, 1997}

Monday, February 15,   “Making the House Ready for the Lord”

I have not posted this Mary Oliver winter poem since 2 years and 4 days ago.  This gray Monday morning I stood at an East-facing window in the Jesuit Residence out onto the large parking lot watching university employees straggle in, crunch across the snow, and decide on a resting space for the work day.  Were the snow serious and exquisite, perhaps another poem would have come to mind.  Today the snow is unassuming and ordinary, work-a-day snow.  M Oliver’s poem strikes me as work-a-day too.   “Making the House Ready for the Lord” emerges from the depths of winter.  It’s cold outside,” says the poet, “How deep might the capacity for welcome run?  Whose house is it anyway?”

Winter won’t last forever.   Have a blest day.   Read the poem out loud if you can.

john sj

Today’s Post:  “Making the House Ready for the Lord”

Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but
still nothing is as shining as it should be
for you. Under the sink, for example, is an
uproar of mice – it is the season of their
many children. What shall I do? And under
the eaves
and through the walls the squirrels
have gnawed their ragged entrances – but it is
the season
when they need shelter, so what shall I do?
And the raccoon limps into the kitchen and
opens the cupboard
while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;
what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling
in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly
up the path to the door. And still I believe
you will
come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox,
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering
sea-goose, know
that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in,
Come in.

Mary Oliver

p.s. When I pulled this February 11, 2014 post off the archive blog, the blog header came along with it, along with a right margin banner.   I decided to keep it today; something I’ve never done before.  The header and banner can remind us readers that since its September 2013 beginning, the Work Day/Hard Time list has posted 326 poem-posts.  All searchable looking for an author’s name or any other word at https://sites.udmercy.edu/poetry  The most recent post appears at the top.   Last April, the university’s IT team began counting visitors and visits.  As of this morning, the site has received 15,151 visitors browsing about with 42,649 visits.