Except for some exciting Hummingbird fights over the newly flowering Crocosmia, things have been rather dull around here. I wanted to visit Malheur and Bear River, but a nagging upper respiratory illness has kept me relatively homebound. It has pretty much limited me to watching television (yes, I probably am addicted to Son of a Critch), practicing Tai Chi and Qi Gong at the Y and Titlow, and meditating in my den.
These activities don’t lend themselves well to blogging, so I’m beginning to feel guilty about the blank screen. So, I thought I would pick up one of the numerous poetry books littering my den and try to write a poetry entry.
Naturally, I picked the shortest one: Painting the Heart Open by Liz Nakazawa; I originally bought it because I liked a collection of Oregon poems she edited that I had read previously. I didn’t realize just how short the book was when I bought it from Amazon — just twenty pages of poetry and fewer poems than that. I might not have purchased that short of book if I’d seen it in a bookstore.
That would have been too bad, though, because I would have missed several poems that I identified with. Nakazawa has an interesting style, combining concrete imagery with abstract concepts to create enigmatic poems. Despite relying on concrete images that any reader would recognize, she combines them with lines like “ variations haggling, properly enigmatic/right into bones of an emulsified conclusion.” I’ve never had to look up so many words I didn’t know in so few pages
Even a short poem as simply written as
Pray. As Earth Does
hold others steady
be a cradle for seed
absorb water slowly
help feed the hungry
manifest layer of rock
so young children
delight in its pebbles
hold others steady
crumble when needed
sharing their sorrows
hold others steady
be a friend to moles and badgers
hold others steady
offer a lap for horse chestnut, catalpa and fir
hold others steady
warm with the sun
pray: to hold others steady
moves from concrete imagery to a much broader concept of Nature as a unifying and healing force.
It’s clear how the Earth cradles seed and helps feed the hungry, but exactly how does the Earth “hold others steady?” Most of us can identify with young children throwing pebbles, but how many of us can identify with “being a friend to moles and badgers”? Despite my wife’s grumbling, I do think moles help improve the soil, and I laughed when a local pest controller knocked on the door and wanted me to pay him to help get rid of them. On the other hand, I have only confronted a single badger once in my life, and I definitely don’t want one in my yard.
It’s never quite clear whether we are supposed to “hold others steady” or whether the Earth is supposed to “hold others steady,” or whether we are both supposed to hold the world together.
The title alone would intrigue me enough to buy it. You did good!
Loren, do you know John Haines’ poem “The Mole”?
Sometimes I envy those
who spring like great black-
and-gold butterflies
before the crowded feet
of summer-
brief, intense,
like pieces of the sun,
they are remembered and celebrated
long after night has fallen.
But I believe also in one
who in the dead of winter
tunnels through a damp,
clinging darkness,
nosing the soil of old gardens.
He lives unnoticed, but
deep within him there is a dream
of the surface one day
breaking and crumbling:
and a small, brown-furred
figure stands there,
blinking at the sky,
as the rising sun slowly dries
his strange, unruly wings.
I might have read it long, long ago, but I don’t remember it.
At 83, I certainly feel more like that mole than the Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly.
In retrospect, I was always more of a book mole than a social butterfly.
Loren, thanks so much for taking a chance on my poetry chapbook, “Painting the Heart Open.” It
was so rewarding and delightful to hear your commentary.
Liz
Thanks for commenting. I bought another chapbook from The Poetry Box by Sally Zakariya and loved it, too. Their books seem worth taking a risk on.