Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Happy Birthday to Edna St. Vincent Millay- February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950)

Edna St. Vincent Millay
 


 

SONNET XLVII


Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;


In my own way, and with my full consent.


Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely


Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.


Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping


I will confess; but that's permitted me;


Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping


Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.


If I had loved you less or played you slyly


I might have held you for a summer more,


But at the cost of words I value highly,


And no such summer as the one before.


Should I outlive this anguish — and men do —


I shall have only good to say of you.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Happy Birthday to my Mother: Iris Luckenbill Fitzgerald - 2/8/07 - 1/21/89


I

On May 11, nineteen thirty-four,
you and Dad bought a house
in a small town in Indiana.
On the Mother's Day that followed
he planted a lilac bush. Perhaps
he said, "Happy Mother's Day!"
Then, in forty-nine, he died on you.

II

One summer's day in seventy-two --
you were sixty-five and I was thirty-two --
you asked if I'd prune the lilac.
I went out back to look.
Twelve-, fourteen-feet tall.
Stem-thickened.
Some drooping,
almost laying flat on the ground;
others violating the garden's space.
I went uptown and returned with
a brand-new saw.
You squinted into
a bright afternoon, shading,
with a saluting hand,
your eyes.
I sawed away.
"This one too, don't you think?"
you'd say.
Trying to sound patient I said,
"It's up to you,
just tell me what you want me to do."

III

Twenty years ago we chose
a lilac dress for you.
On an amazingly warm January day
my five brothers and I bore you to your grave.
Our three sisters looked on and cried.
The priest intoned some intonations.
He sprinkled water onto the casket
with an aspergillum.
And then it was done.
I did not want to leave you there,
did not want to turn and go.
I did though,
and as I did I saw
the gravediggers across the way;
they were leaning against the back of a pickup truck,
waiting for the seventy of us to go.
They had work to do.

IV

Here's what's come to mind today:
Your pies were the world's best;
they were as perfect as T.S. Eliot's poems,
and no one else's crust comes close.
"Don't work the dough too much," you'd instruct.
Only you, though, seemed to know
how much is too much.
And what I wouldn't give for one of your
from-scratch chocolate cakes with that icing
that was flavored with stale coffee.
And I'd love some of your fried chicken;
I can see you prepping it,
shaking it in a brown paper bag
into which you'd put flour and seasonings.
And I think of your gardens,
your year-after-year-after-year gardens,
your straight and disciplined rows of onions,
of lettuce, of beans and tomatoes and corn.
And I think of your hair, always in a bun,
except when it was being washed or dried --
dried sometimes in the summer sun.

V

The house ended up in my name.
A few years ago I sold it to my brother Jim.
We made a deal: 5 lump sums, 5 annual payments.
He asked, "What day to you want them payments due?"
"Doesn't matter to me," I said to him.
"How's about we make 'em due on the
eighth of February ...
that way we'll never forget."

VI

The lilac bush is still there.
I still have that saw, too, by the way;
it's a good one.

VII

I think this poem could use some pruning.
Some of my lines, I sense, are drooping,
some laying almost flat on the ground.
"This one, too, don't you think?"
I might say to myself.
But no ... enough for today.
I've recorded it in this notebook;
I'm putting it on the shelf.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Happy Birthday James Joyce - Feb. 2, 1882 – Jan. 13 1941

He was a Dubliner-to-the-core even though, as a young adult, he fled Dublin and lived most of his life in Trieste, Paris, and then Zurich. He wrote, “For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.” He liked to think that, should Dublin disappear in the future, it could be recreated exactly by consulting his Ulysses, a novel which many book-worldly-people consider to be the greatest of the Twentieth Century; it comprises one day, June Sixteenth, in the life of a fictionalized Dubliner named Leopold Bloom; Joyce's life and work are celebrated throughout the world on June 16th, Bloomsday.

I love reading biographies of authors. I’m a groupie. I like to say that I even want to know what they had for breakfast. 

I learned today that while living in Trieste James Joyce liked to start his day with a presnitz and caffè at a pastry shop called Pirona.  A presnitz is a sweet Austrian pastry filled with nuts and, variously, figs, plums, apricots, raisins, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, and rum. It's been reported that James Joyce devised Ulysses in this café.
I was in Trieste in 1977 looking for the spirit of James Joyce, but back then I didn’t know about Pirona and presnitz.


I may need to return.


(A diversion: I had arrived in Trieste early in the morning after an all-night train ride from Vienna. I walked, within a lovely sunny brightness, to the main square, a short distance from the stazione, and, having chosen a penzioni from my guidebook, approached a handsome, elaborately uniformed guardi and asked, "Dove è via Tivernella?" A puzzlement fell across his face -- perhaps because I had neglected to make the 'i' of Tivernella sound like an 'e' and the 'e's' sound like 'a's'. He non capisca. I pulled out a notepad and pencil and wrote via Tivernella. "Ah!," he exclaimed, as if all now has been revealed. "Ah! Via Teever-naaaaay-la!" He drew out and intoned the 'e' of 'nella' as if it were a musical phrase, understanding me now, but unfortunately having no idea where the street was. He said something to a passerby. The passerby pointed out that via Tivernella was just across the plaza! The guardi found this uproariously funny; he lay his hand on my shoulder, laughed, blew kisses into the air, and, pointing across the plaza, said, "Buono! Buono!"


He's a perfect example of why I love Italians and want, in my next life, to be one.)



James Augustine Aloysius Joyce died of a stomach ulcer at the age of 58 on January 13, 1941, and is buried in Zurich.



Wednesday, February 1, 2012

e e cummings - Oct. 14, 1894 – Sept. 3, 1962

e e cummings
e e cummings wrote something like 2,900 poems, including many I love and also one of my very favorites; I've carried it in my wallet for 40-some years. It describes the sort of day you're having when everything feels right and marvelous and good -- both Mother Nature and Lady Luck are coddling you. In October, 2007, at Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, I recited this poem at his grave for my audience of two, dear Mark and dear Abby. It happened to be one of those amazing days -- there was a true blue dream of sky and the greenly spirits of the trees were leaping.



i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes


(i who have died am alive again today
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)


how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any -- lifted from the no
of all nothing -- human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?


(now the ears of my ears wake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)