Trying something new!
Jan. 19th, 2019 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
epersonaeSo I've started something new in the last couple of months: I'm writing poetry again. Which is partially because Kath took a poetry workshop at school and was sending me her stuff, and partially because all of this is sort of beyond prose or even journaling. And then Mary Oliver died.
So......Mary Oliver was hugely formative to me as a babby poet in college; American Primitive was one of the readings in the intro level poetry writing class, and her work hit me like a thunderbolt. And then I found out we have the same birthday (same as the early 20th C poet HD, by the way, which is a lovely coincidence that I savor deeply).
I stopped writing poetry in the mid-2000s, I think, along with the rest of my writing, probably even sooner than prose, tbh. (I was in a writers group with folks who wrote prose fiction but not poetry at all, which made a big difference.) But even before Kath started sharing her work with me, Mary Oliver came back into my life, when Emi shared the classic Wild Geese, and then last year when Kath and I were looking for a title for our series, I happened to be searching for Wild Geese, and found it on a page with a bunch of her other poems, including The Journey, which ends with the line we used: the only life you could save. And it felt true to the story we were telling, and at the same time just resonated as deep as anything I've read in years.
So when she died, I decided to both break out my copy of A Poetry Handbook, which I bought years ago and never used, and to just go into nature and wander and write. Last night I went back to Tacoma (where I lived 1992-2000) and today I went out to Point Defiance, and this happened, and I'm pretty happy with it. I think I'm going to start sharing some of my poetry here, partially to get into the practice of regular blog posting, partially to get into the habit of putting my poetry out into the world, partially to push myself to write more.
Park in Winter
I didn't drive, then
A plain fact that hides
All the places I can only remember
In the context of others
Now gone
The roses and fuschias are bare sticks
The dahlias a bed covered with black fabric
A squirrel hurries over the wet grass
Into the cover of a sequoia
In the color of the sky
I read rain coming soon
But I linger too long
Forced to hurry for cover
Before returning to my car
“Oh, you have grown up”
A girl standing in the rain
Photographer under an umbrella
As I wait under the eave of a building
I've never seen alone
//
A break in the clouds lights the headland
As I drove down I saw a rainbow
But it was gone when I arrived at the beach
Did we ever come here in the winter?
In your rattling red Bug
Hair a cloud of curls in the breeze
I only ever remember summer
When I look up
There's a window of blue
The water is still grey
Wrinkled with wind and tide
And the slick dark body of a seal
Water laps against piled logs
Too high to look for little white rocks
But I need to start a new collection
Do you still have one?
When it's hot and dry
Do you still remember rain?
My good boots sink a little
Into the rounded rocks
A ferry waits on the far shore
White quartz, flecked with dark
Black granite, streaked with white
Grey and brown and tan
Tumbled and soft
And the tide shifts
So......Mary Oliver was hugely formative to me as a babby poet in college; American Primitive was one of the readings in the intro level poetry writing class, and her work hit me like a thunderbolt. And then I found out we have the same birthday (same as the early 20th C poet HD, by the way, which is a lovely coincidence that I savor deeply).
I stopped writing poetry in the mid-2000s, I think, along with the rest of my writing, probably even sooner than prose, tbh. (I was in a writers group with folks who wrote prose fiction but not poetry at all, which made a big difference.) But even before Kath started sharing her work with me, Mary Oliver came back into my life, when Emi shared the classic Wild Geese, and then last year when Kath and I were looking for a title for our series, I happened to be searching for Wild Geese, and found it on a page with a bunch of her other poems, including The Journey, which ends with the line we used: the only life you could save. And it felt true to the story we were telling, and at the same time just resonated as deep as anything I've read in years.
So when she died, I decided to both break out my copy of A Poetry Handbook, which I bought years ago and never used, and to just go into nature and wander and write. Last night I went back to Tacoma (where I lived 1992-2000) and today I went out to Point Defiance, and this happened, and I'm pretty happy with it. I think I'm going to start sharing some of my poetry here, partially to get into the practice of regular blog posting, partially to get into the habit of putting my poetry out into the world, partially to push myself to write more.
Park in Winter
I didn't drive, then
A plain fact that hides
All the places I can only remember
In the context of others
Now gone
The roses and fuschias are bare sticks
The dahlias a bed covered with black fabric
A squirrel hurries over the wet grass
Into the cover of a sequoia
In the color of the sky
I read rain coming soon
But I linger too long
Forced to hurry for cover
Before returning to my car
“Oh, you have grown up”
A girl standing in the rain
Photographer under an umbrella
As I wait under the eave of a building
I've never seen alone
//
A break in the clouds lights the headland
As I drove down I saw a rainbow
But it was gone when I arrived at the beach
Did we ever come here in the winter?
In your rattling red Bug
Hair a cloud of curls in the breeze
I only ever remember summer
When I look up
There's a window of blue
The water is still grey
Wrinkled with wind and tide
And the slick dark body of a seal
Water laps against piled logs
Too high to look for little white rocks
But I need to start a new collection
Do you still have one?
When it's hot and dry
Do you still remember rain?
My good boots sink a little
Into the rounded rocks
A ferry waits on the far shore
White quartz, flecked with dark
Black granite, streaked with white
Grey and brown and tan
Tumbled and soft
And the tide shifts
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Date: 2019-01-20 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-20 07:18 pm (UTC)