The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 12/18/07 Bonus

[BlueIris]

"Prologue"

The rules, once again applied
One loaf = one loaf.  One fish = one fish.
The so-called three kings were dead. 

And the woman who had been healed grew tired of telling
her story,
and sometimes asked her daughter to tell it.

People generally worshiped where their parents had
worshipped—
The men who'd hijacked the airplane prayed where the dead
pilots had been sitting,
and the passengers prayed from their seats
—so many songs went up and out into the thinning air…

People, listening and watching, nodded and wept, and,
leaving the theater,
one turned to the other and said, What do you want to
do now?
And the other one said, I don't know. What do you want
to do?

It was the Coming of Ordinary Time. First Sunday,
second Sunday.
And then (for who knows how long) it was here.

—Marie Howe

[BlueIris]

1. This is from Marie Howe's third collection of poems, "The Kingdom of Ordinary Time."

More on that book at link:

http://www.blueflowerarts.com/mhowe.html

An anticipated new volume from Marie Howe. Hurrying through errands, attending a dying mother, helping her own child down the playground slide, the speaker in these poems wonders what is the difference between the self and the soul? The secular and the sacred? Where is the kingdom of heaven?  And how does one live in Ordinary Time—during those periods that are not apparently miraculous? These are astonishing poems by a poet known as "a truth-teller of the first order."

[BlueIris]

2. More about Marie Howe:

http://www.bu.edu/agni/interviews-exchanges/online/2004/howe-elliott.html

This interview has some information I think it's really important to know about Marie Howe.

(Q): Stanley Kunitz's blurb on The Good Thief refers to you as "a religious poet." Do you wear that label comfortably?

Howe: I was horrified when I read that. Then I understood. I'm obsessed with the metaphysical, the spiritual dimensions of life as they present themselves in this world, so I understand what he means. "Religious" sort of scared me at first, but it's okay; I accept it now. I think a lot of women writing now are religious poets or spiritual poets...

(Q): I was interested in your saying you don’t want to write personal poems anymore. Is one of the dangers having people confuse your poetry with your life? Once I heard someone say to Sharon Olds, "Tell me, how old are your son and daughter now?" And she said, "I have no son or daughter. Those are fictitious children."

Howe: I understand what she means. For example, with that poem "Practicing," which talks about being in the seventh grade and kissing girls in the basement, The New Yorker legal department called up and said, "Are those girls identifiable?" I said, well, Linda's basement was like a boat and Gloria's father did have a bar downstairs with plush carpeting, but I didn't kiss those girls. So, yes, they're identifiable, because the poem has great, great details from my childhood, but that to me is the answer to the question of whether it is autobiographical. It's all constructed. I didn't kiss those two girls. They were my best friends when I was a kid. I kissed other girls, but how could you give up those gorgeous details with those basements, and it poured into the poems. They still made me change the names. But what comes together in a poem isn't true, and that is why I understand Sharon's response.

I remember a man, a very lonely man, coming up to me at the end of a reading and looking into my face and saying, "I feel as if I have looked down a corridor and seen into your soul." And I looked at him and said, "You haven't." You know, Here's the good news and the bad news: you haven't! I made something, and you and I could look at it together, but it's not me; you don’t live with me; you're not intimate with me. You're not the man I live with or my friend. You will never know me in that way. I'm making something, like Joseph Cornell makes his boxes and everyone looks into them, but it's the box you look into; it's not the man or the woman. It's alchemy of language and memory and imagination and time and music and sounds that gets made, and that's different from "Here is what happened to me when I was ten." That poem is a good example. Linda's boat basement and Gloria's plush carpeting were there, but they weren't there there.

[ThomCat]

3. That's pretty nice.

It's not high-impact, but it you stop to think this one through it's got a lot to say. :)

[BlueIris]

4. So much of Howe's writing is like that for me.

There are poems I first read by her in 1999 that I still don't feel I've gotten to the bottom of.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

5. Thanks for including the bio stuff.

very much appreciated.

[BlueIris]

6. I thought posters who don't know very much about her would appreciate

being able to put her work in some kind of context. Despite what she says about the limits to which her poetry is autobiographical, her own life experiences have informed her work to a certain degree. Also, I find her comments on craft and performance to be insightful.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

7. I loved the way she explained the way she writes.

Would you share with me your thoughts on this poem...

[BlueIris]

9. My thoughts: it's a poem about continuing life *after* spiritual revelation and healing.

Which is...pretty much the same as your old life in many ways, except with expanded awareness.

[BlueIris]

8. Kick.