Poetry Blog: "A Work Day in Hard Times"

Monday February 23  A blizzard in Denver

I spent this past weekend with 5 UDM faculty in Denver at the 2015 Heartland-Delta Faculty Conversations Weekend.  The five?  (Walter Lim: dentistry 13th year;  Amy Dereczyk: Physician Assistant Director 8 years;  Renady Hightower:  (chair for Health Services Admin);  Rose Yang: (accounting), and Terri Laws:  (religious studies and interim director for African American Studies).   We were part of c. 50 faculty from Jesuit universities across the middle of the US.   Tom Landy, Director of Collegium, led us in a series of individual silent contemplations and small group follow-up conversations on the topic: “Ignatian Imagination and Teaching Excellence.”

An exquisite and very messy blizzard descended on us Saturday afternoon and changed our plans.  But not enough to stifle conversations among faculty about the question of how prayer as taught by St. Ignatius in The Spiritual Exercises can free faculty imaginations about the student learning experience.

We got home very late and I’ve been using Monday to catch up.  So today’s post comes so late most readers will find it Tuesday morning.  I’ve borrowed it from Professor Rosemary Weatherston’s series of February 2014 posts honoring Dudley Randall’s 100th birthday.   This year marks the 50th anniversary of Dudley Randall’s Broadside Press, part of the reason UDM’s Library has been named one of the US National Literary Landmarks.

With thanks to Rosemary, here is her post from February 26, 2014, a poem by one of UDM’s distinguished poet graduates, Al Ward.  Al writes about Grand River Blvd, the southern border of the University neighborhood.  Lots of familiar streets find their place in the poem.

Have a good week.  See you Wednesday.

john st sj

Today’s Post “If Grand River Were a River”

This week students submitted their entries for UDM’s annual Dudley Randall Student Poetry Competition. The competition began while Randall was a librarian and poet-in-resident at U of D. He served as its judge for several years—one of the many ways he inspired our student writers.

Those of us who know Randall primarily through his poetry and reputation as a publisher may be unaware of this aspect of his legacy–his extraordinary generosity with and support of poets of all ages and walks of life. Broadside Press’s extensive work with community writers continues this legacy.

In today’s and tomorrow’s posts I would like to share the work of three talented University poets whose work has been supported by Randall and Broadside Press.

The first author, Albert M. Ward, is a University of Detroit alumnus and well-known Detroit poet, activist, and educator. He often speaks of the transformative effect it had on him as a young African American boy to visit Dudley Randall in the public library near his home where Randall worked.

In Ward’s poem, “If Grand River Were A River,” we can hear echoes of Randall’s love of our city. We hear, too, Ward’s own rich, powerful voice taking us somewhere new.

Rosemary Weatherston
Director, Dudley Randall Center for Print Culture

“If Grand River Were A River”

There are no waterfalls on Dexter
But when it rains
The street shimmers like glass
And Oakman Boulevard
Becomes a rainforest,

Blue and transparent
The sky over Dexter
Is bright in summer,
The sun washes the savannahs
And sidewalks in golden hues,
In a barbershop on Dexter
I learned to play checkers.

At Parkman Library
My bicycle was stolen.
Had my African warriors
Been with me,
We would have drummed
On our shields,
Walked through the tall grass
And found my bicycle.

If Grand River were a river,
I would walk along its banks
From village to village,
If Grand River were a river,
Children could dance at water’s edge,
Dances of freedom.

Grandmothers would say,
“Carry these groceries, boys,
One day you’ll make fine young men.”
We’d walk Dexter sometimes
To Elmhurst or Fullerton
Or across Davidson to Clements
And Pasadena,
Had lots of friends on
Ewald Circle and Kendall.
The grandmothers would tell stories
And give us lots of fifty cents.

I remember that summer of “67,
43 people died they said,
A civil disturbance,
Businesses burned on 12th Street,
Houses in Pingree,
Tanks chewed up the alley
Behind the garage of my Aunt Sweet,
Looters running through her backyard
Terror, smoke and ashes,
Not to be denied . . .

If Grand River were a river,
Trees would grow rich and lush
Like baobobs, their roots thick,
If Grand River were a river,
I would be free.

Woodward and the boulevard, market place
Where villagers and neighbors come
To trade, to greet,
I see watercolours of silk
And broadcloths, women
With their bundles walking,
The Elders with their sticks.

Mt. Kilimanjaro is greater
Than the Fisher building
With snow like crystal,
Silver at its crest,
The sun sleeps there
When the moon is round and full,
East or west of Woodward . . . I am home.

If Grand River were a river,
Elephants could drink from it
And I would wash my clothes
Among its stones.

Friday February 20  —  Philip Levine  Detroit poet and US Poet Laureate  (+  Feb 14, 2015  age 87,  U.S. Poet Laureate 2011 & 2012)

“Thanks for giving him more recognition. Great poet. This will sound like a ‘bot’ but having lived in Detroit for many years, his work really spoke to me… far more than most of these ‘poet laureates’ who tend to do riffs on ‘walks in the woods with the dog’.”  (J C Harris comment NPR  Feb 16)

I’ve been noticing a change in the wind about wage work in the U.S.  For a while now the settled truth in some readings of the direction of U.S. history put wage work, hourly pay, moving off in the rear view mirror;  off to South East Asia or Mexico.  In the US everybody does desk work with a large, medium, small or tiny digital screen and keyboard.  So it sometimes seems.

But lately, you can read of manufacturing jobs coming back to the U.S., to recognition of skilled hands and not just skilled algorithms, as being important here.    You can read more and more about income inequality and the decades-long squeeze on hourly wages.   Even Walmart begins to recognize that it takes a hit when the wide world perceives a Walmart job as a dead end.  Philip Levine’s death on Valentine’s Day (cancer, age 87 – U.S. Poet Laureate 2011-12) and multiple readings of his iconic poem, “What Work Is,” opens a moment to notice stagnant wage work, undocumented sweat shop factory workers, and major labor unrest along the US Pacific coast.  Here’s a piece from this morning’s Crain’s Detroit Business that offers a snapshot. http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20150220/NEWS01/150229998/u-s-unions-poised-for-comeback-as-wages-stall-rich-get-richer

“Labor unrest.”   Bad news for the nation which hankers for an orderly and predictable daily order?  Maybe not.  Maybe unrest is the fruit of paying attention and the birth place of a living culture.  Giving birth is bloody and exhausting and the source of all our grace.

Sermonizing today.  Philip Levine stirs the blood I guess.   He reminds me that all around this campus women and men work like hell.  Makes me proud to work here too.

Have a good weekend.

john sj

PS      After the print version of the poem, you can click on a link to listen to Levine read it.

Today’s Post: What Work Is

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.

Philip Levine, “What Work Is” from What Work Is. Copyright © 1992 by Philip Levine. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

To listen to the poem and the poet, click the play button below:

Wednesday February 18 — “confident shrug and twist”

Two unusually busy days for me;  especially this morning when I am preparing a half day retreat for UDM’s 10 admissions counselors.   Too busy to write a new post even though there’s lots to post about just now:  Our student vigil last night for the 3 murdered UNC students.  Every time our students risk looking closely at the violence that wounds our society, they test their imagination and their courage.  And when  us older people witness students do that, we test our imagination and courage too.  So this is a repeat from last August 20 when, just as this morning’s half-day for admissions counselors,  we were gearing up for new student orientation.

Best to read the poem out loud,  with pauses.

Have a good day;  I hope you enjoy snow.

john sj

Monday January 23

I happened to look at last year’s post for January 24.   It could have been written this morning, that is to say:    -5º,  reports of 7 ft of  snow in Boston, where hundreds of years old narrow streets without driveways play havoc with snow removal, predictions of many Michigan drivers finding dead batteries in their cars today  (-25º in the UP).    A hammer of a time.  We got through last winter, we’ll get through this one too.

Blessings,

john st sj

Friday, January 24, 2014

Friday, February 13 — “Broadside Press Poets’ Theatre . . . the entire session will be devoted to open mic (new poets are welcome)”

The Badilisha Poetry X-Change website begins with words that Dudlley Randall, UDM’s Poet Laureate, might have written about Black poetry in Detroit when he founded Broadside Press.

“Why We Do It: Africans have limited access to the vast poetic work of both historical and contemporary African poets. There has never been an archive of these poets’ work that is both expansive and easily accessible. This means that many Africans are not inspired and influenced by their own writers and poets – negatively impacting their personal growth, identity, development and sense of place.”

Broadside Press, diected by Professor Rosemary Weatherston, hosts programs designed to put a light on great African American poetry, especially but not exclusively Detroit poets. Year by year, The Dudley Randall Poetry Competition features UDM student winners, new poets who inspire and influence the culture in which we live and the air we breathe. (n.b., after I wrote this post I saw Dr. Weatherston’s email announcing this Sundays “Broadside Press Poets’ Theatre (3:15 Sunday in Grounds) a precise example of what Broadside Press exists to do. Check out the full email at the end of this post: jstsj)

I found a tough, strong African poem in my first walk-around the Badilisha X-Change. Here at the end of week 2 of Black History Month, “Gardenia’s Night” is meant as a tribute to all the poetry UDM has called forth in the decades since Dudley Randall worked here and opened a tradition of African American expression.

But, of course, “Gardenia’s Night” also appeared here because it’s a good poem. Best to read it out loud with pauses.

Have a blest weekend,

john sj

Today’s Post: The Garden Full of Gardenia, Amira Ali

The garden full of gardenia
the smell perfectly lingers
as I imperfectly linger
on the blood-full skied
night
the night I should have talked
to the soul of his truth
before I laid my body down
maybe even lifted the many shades
before I bowed down to belief
I should have sent a prayer out
to the ancestral land
poured out libation
offerings
listen for a word back
a sign of consent
that he is King deserving
of a Queen
before offering my body
made to be a King’s Queen
between the sky and gardenia
we made such a pretty picture
blinded
I laid in-between
offer I did my body to him
Before brushing the stars
outta my hair
as the stars still peeked
at a face still hot
from the night’s heat
while his smell still lingered
before his shadow disappeared
I found out
He’s not [my] king.

Gardenias Night (Production of poem – Kenny Allen) by Amira Ali

[jwplayer mediaid=”1181″]
BIOGRAPHY
Amira is a creative artist, poet, writer and educator, born in Ethiopia, based in the U.S. http://badilishapoetry.com/?theme=love She is a regular contributor to Pambazuka News and chief writer, as well as editorial team member at AfricaSpeaks4Africa.org. She is currently at work on, in collaboration with a South African poet and Kenyan writer, producing Podcast stories (Afro’pick and coffee) that accentuates the everyday stories of the African disaporans, residing in America.

p.s.
Broadside Press’ Poets’ Theater
Sunday, January 18, 2015
3:15 pm – 6:00 pm
Grounds

Sunday, February 15th, the Dudley Randall Center for Print Culture and Broadside Press will host Broadside Press Poets’ Theater. There is no featured performer; the entire session will be devoted to open mic (new poets are welcome and encouraged to come read!) This event is free and open to the public.

Broadside Press Poets’ Theater takes place on UDM’s McNichols Campus the third Sunday of each month during the academic year. For more information, contact Rosemary Weatherston, Director of UDM’s Dudley Randall Center for Print Culture and UDM Press at weatherr@udmercy.edu. We hope you can join us.

Dr. Rosemary Weatherston
Associate Professor of English

Wednesday, February 11 – “surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses” Hebrews 12:1

Yesterday afternoon, judging from email traffic, readers on this list are thrilled that Detroit’s North Side urban garden won the national M-Gro contest and will use the $40,000 to create a teaching farm for children. Last night in the West Side Redford Theatre, Mayor Mike Duggan spent one hour imagining Detroit’s rebirth with a litany of specific neighborhood promises made credible to that packed house and lots of us who watched on tv by the long list of promises made by the Mayor’s administration last year. I’ve lived here 34 years and felt like an old-guy homie, thrilled by Detroit’s emerging version of what Denise Levertov calls “Making Peace.” Later last night, after UDM’s 9:30 student residence-hall mass, I came home to learn that Jon Stewart has announced that he will be leaving The Daily Show, his 17 year masterwork where biting humor and passionate commitment to human depth in a hard world have stirred courage in millions of people. Lots of us will miss him.

A “great cloud of witnesses” all on the same evening. A hard world, crowded with women and men at work about re-birth.

This morning I woke to an NPR account of Kayla Mueller’s martyrdom in Syria at age 26 as a captive of ISIS. Those who knew her speak of an unwavering commitment to compassion; lived in some of the world’s most daunting places of violence. It was the news about Kayla that led me back to Levertov’s “Making Peace.” The poem transformed last night’s and this morning’s disparate array of news into what Hebrews 12 calls “such a great cloud of witnesses.” Late yesterday & this morning appear to be a moment in time of sheer human courage and beauty.

Maybe it’s because Pope Francis just named Bishop Oscar Romero “a martyr,” that I think of Kayla with that word. In Greek, “martyr” means “witness,” or “one who bears witness,” or perhaps “one who pays attention.” On hard days and in hard places it helps to pay attention to the sheer beauty of women and men who bear witness, and go way out of their way to make peace.

Best to read the poem aloud, with pauses, several times.

Have a blest day.

john sj

Today’s Post: “Making Peace” Denise Levertov

A voice from the dark called out,
“The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.”

But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.

A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.

A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses. . . .

A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.

Denise Levetov (1987) Breathing the Water

Kayla Mueller
August 14, 1988 – c. February 6, 2015

Monday, February  9  –  “Scar tissue is visible history  . . . “

Many friends have seen the leather based, bead-worked stole a Lakota woman created in 1970.   Two other women told me to wear it as I walked in procession to be ordained a priest on May 25, 1970.    In pictures from that day, the white of the leather is hard to distinguish from the white of the robe I wore.   Today the stole shows its age.  I sometimes tease about its battered 44 year condition; “it’s blessed a lot of pain and heard a lot of courage, and wears its history.”  Several crafts-people have repaired it at times when it was falling to pieces.    Is the stole more beautiful now or when the Lakota artist created it?  Beautiful both times.  Beauty from its first artist, beauty from grief and despair and playful energy that have worn it down.

Which is more beautiful among our students?  Their dazzling achievements or their fatigue?  Both I think:  “scar tissue is visible history” says today’s poet.   Same thing for us non-students who give our energy and skill and affection for the rebirth of hope in ourselves and in the world.  “The fatigue is worth it,” says our behavior day by day.

Chana Bloch is a poet new to me.  She writes here about a broken pot turned radiant by an artist joining its pieces back to a new whole, more beautiful than the original.

Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses.

Blessings on the new week.

john sj

Chana Bloch: “The Joins”

Posted by Phyllis Cole-Dai on Feb 05, 2015 12:00 am

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of mending precious pottery with gold.
What’s between us
often seems flexible as the webbing
between forefinger and thumb.

Seems flexible, but it’s not;
what’s between us
is made of clay,

like any cup on the shelf.
It shatters easily. Repair
becomes the task.

We glue the wounded edges
with tentative fingers.
Scar tissue is visible history,

the cup more precious to us
because
we saved it.

In the art of kintsugi, 
a potter repairing a broken cup
would sprinkle the resin

with powdered gold.
Sometimes the joins
are so exquisite

they say the potter
may have broken the cup
just so he could mend it.
“The Joins” by Chana Bloch. Text as published in The Southern Review (Winter 2014).

Curator’s note: Kintsugi is the Japanese way of honoring and repairing broken ceramic objects with a special lacquer mixed with silver, gold or platinum. It’s an embracing of the flawed or imperfect, honoring it as essential. As the artist Barbara Bloom writes, “[Japanese kintsugi artists] believe that when something’s suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.”

Art credit: A bowl restored the kintsugi way by Morti and Patty at the Lakeside Pottery and Ceramics Restoration Studio, image by unknown photographer.

Friday,  February 6,

Work days, slamming work,  bundling up in yesterday’s dazzling Detroit sunshine (+4 @ 8:00 am),  Detroit’s Winterfest at Campus Martius all weekend.  Enough hard nosed poetry,  flinty and anvil hard, for a while.  Not all work life is tough;  some parts are just funny.

Hint:  play this 4-5 times;

Have a good day.

john st sj

Here’s another.

p.s.       baby on ice (24 seconds)

Wednesday February 4 –  “odd to talk about gardening on the tail end of a blizzard, but  . . . . “

It turns out that one of Detroit’s most notable urban farms is in a neck & neck voting contest for a $40,000 grant.  The usual deal, vote once a day until next Monday;  the other competing garden is in Oakland, CA – a good town too, but this is DETROIT!

Even if your votes and mine don’t push us over the top, the contest ask offers a close-up of a larger urban farm in the heart of the city (and some pictures of summer time in the city).

Here’s the link to the contest ask,  consider voting ok?

http://detroit.curbed.com/archives/2015/02/north-ends-prolific-urban-farm-hopes-to-add-garden-for-kids.php

Back to snow and to Mary Oliver who’s been a little neglected here lately.

Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses.

Mid-week.  Have a blest day.

john sj

View of the courtyard in the Jesuit residence, February 2, 12:34 pm

First Snow

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles, nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain — not a single
answer has been found –
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.

–Mary Oliver ©

Wednesday January 28  –   Rumi    “ . . .  as an unexpected visitor”

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī  (جلال‌الدین محمد رومی‎)   Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic 1207-1273.   A friend, who reads this list, sent me Rumi’s “The Guest House.”   Her note reminded me that I had managed to post over 200 poems and prayers without inviting Rumi onto the list.  “The Guest House” is a good poem to welcome another great poet here.

It’s the middle work day of the last January week.  Some friends from the east coast have told me stories of blizzards out there.  Some friends on campus talk about how cold it is.  A good day for welcoming what comes our way.
Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses.

No post Friday.  Tomorrow morning we have a half-day retreat  (3 trustees, 3 faculty, 1 fellow, 8 staff and administrators).   When we finish with lunch the university’s board of trustees begins the January meeting into Friday.   Too tight a fit to contemplate and write.  Monday I’ll be flying back from the ACCU  annual meeting in DC.  See you again next Wednesday.

john sj

Today’s Post “The Guest House”

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.