Of Poetics, Polemics, and Politics

In the last post on this site, I put up a clearly political poem, “Endorsement”, and stated in emails to some of my correspondents that I had done so in a “What Would Neruda Do”?  moment.   I did not mean to imply that my work was the equal of Neruda's, nor even to suggest that this poem was meant to emulate any of his -- I simply wished to remind readers and other writers that he was not afraid to take a political stand and to let his poetry reflect that position.  Too often, I fear, we are using our pens "just for pretty", as the old New England boatbuilders said of adornments to their craft.

No one responding to my emails took an opposing political view to mine, and many thought the poem a pretty good one.  From the standpoint of one judging purely on the merits of its poetics, it may not be.  A few didn’t care for it’s lack of metaphor and other good and wonderful devices which made Neruda’s work stand out during his time and ours.  Perhaps we mortals should be more careful in invoking the name of San Pablo.  But as a bit of possibly memorable political communication aimed at 21st century Americans, I think my piece may still have some merit.

I did get a few comments, though, suggesting that as poets we are only able to “preach to the choir”, so it may be pointless for us to even delve into the political and, worse, when we do, we too often engage in mere rants and screeds.  Of course, there’s truth in that.

       But.

If we, having developed our craft to whatever little level decide not to speak to whatever little audience about injustice as we see it, then I believe we are complicit in that injustice.  Yes, we must say our poems in the very best way we can, but we must say them.  And they must, occasionally, actually be about something that matters.

     ~ RM    

Against the Wall

Endorsement

However fine are their qualities

and however fine ours may be,

if we empower as leaders

those bought and sold,

we, too, are bought and told

that this is the golden-

hued freedom we dumb

bastards fought for

and all the bleeding was for naught

and the dying fools.

We are buying that it’s cool

to sell the nation to the corporation,

build more jails, close more schools.

We can all just stay tuned

to the one station that broadcasts

the coronation, see the placement,

on that paid-for head,

of our crown of jewels.

~ Ralph Murre

Chicken Shack, or The Coop

bookmark: murre, from basho's road

photo: sharon auberle

Some of you will remember Norbert Blei.  My friend, my mentor, my publisher.  One of the people most influential in my writing life.  Wrote a bunch of books, published a lot of other people's books, stayed in touch with the wide world of literature and literati,and raised as much hell as he could to save the environment and a disappearing way of life; all from a not-too-reconstructed chicken coop in the Wisconsin woods.

Since Norb's death, his property has been sold, but thanks to his children, The Coop has been donated to Write On! Door County, and relocated to those grounds where it will serve as sanctuary and inspiration to other writers, young and old.

I attended a fine dedication ceremony last Saturday along with about 150 other folks, many of whom paid tribute with their words, their art, their music, and at least one original dance, choreographed just for the day.  Here's the poem I wrote for the occasion:

The Cock o’ the Coop

(On the studio of Norbert Blei)

Beyond Ellison Bay, in may-apple May

and blue-sky July gone by,

or in the gray of dim December,

south windows searching for sun,

there would have been Leghorns

I suppose, utilitarian,

clucking and cackling

in this chicken house.

Good layers, Leghorns.

Might have been White Rocks and Barred Rocks,

brooding.  Rhode Island Reds.  Perhaps even

Sunday-dinner Wyandotte, Orpington, or Jersey Giant.

For certain --

one Bantam rooster, crowing

doing his damnedest

to wake the neighbors

~ Ralph Murre

Observations on Earth Day

Starlings in America

The watchman stood alone on his blue hill

and watched, then, as he does now.

Saw them coming.

A few Vikings, some kook in a coracle.

He saw three ships come sailing in

from Spain.

They traded trinkets for coconuts and corn,

traded pox for potatoes.

A syphilitic wife will change your life.

The sun rises and the sun sets.

Their God was nailed to a tree

where they could keep an eye on him.

They brought original sin, brought a savior

and took silver, brought guns and took gold.

Brought alcohol, took tobacco.

They brought ponies and plunder,

were crazy for beaver

and a quick way to China.

In time, they brought steel and steam.

A steel knife will change your life, too.

The sun rises and the sun sets.

They brought bulldozers and drag-line buckets.

Tore the Earth.  Tore the Good Earth.

Put it on Mr. Peabody’s coal train.

  

Brought languages,

took languages away.

Brought starlings.

Brought Studebakers and Scotch Tape.

Duct tape and red tape.

They brought refrigerator magnets,

scotch and soda, the cotton gin, wrinkle –

free polyester.  Bourbon and Bud Lite and

a bomb that bloomed in the desert.

They taught children to hide under desks.

Atomic strife will change your life.

The sun rises and sets.

Edsels come and Edsels go.

The watchman stands alone on his blue hill.

Do not be hopeful,

he calls out at last,

but do not be without hope.

They brought Schubert.

~ Ralph Murre

Little Eagle's RE / VERSE: Fare thee well, Ellen Kort

photosource unknown

Please find a few words about the passing of our friend at:
Little Eagle's RE / VERSE: Fare thee well, Ellen Kort:

A Funny Thing . . .

A funny thing happened on the way to the podium.  As the result of a process totally mysterious to me, I have been named poet laureate of Door County, Wisconsin.  While I was sure that this was some gross miscalculation or simply a hoax, apparently the county board didn't get the joke, and I was installed yesterday at the board meeting.  Another funny thing:  Flu.  I haven't been sick for years, but the night before my big moment, I was struck, hard, by some nastiness.  I could not attend.  Luckily for me, the out-going and outgoing laureate, Estella Lauter, said a few very kind words on my behalf and read the poem I had written for the occasion, an imperative piece which is as much a note to myself as to the assembled board.
In awe of the three who have held this post before me; Frances May, Barbara Larsen, and Estella Lauter, I humbly submit:

To the Duly Elected,

the newly elected, and those selected

to serve many times before –

I ask you to speak for the farmer as he tills,

for the builder as he builds.

Speak for the bagger of groceries

and speak, please, for the trees.

Speak loudly to save quiet places.

Speak, too, for the ferryman,

the fisherman, the schools of fishes.

Remember the one who taught you to read.

Remember the ones who wash dishes.

Be strong for the weak, the unhealthy.

Speak up for those in need.

Speak up for the artist and the scene she paints.

Speak, please, for the creek.

Be wary of saints and the wealthy.

Speak out against greed.

Speak for the nurses and nursery-men.

Represent those who scrub floors.

Represent those who pull weeds.

Speak for the firefighter, the all-nighter cop,

speak for the crop in the field.

Listen to the one who voted against you.

Listen to the wind in the night.

Listen to your heart when it says to stand fast,

listen close when it tells you to yield.

~ Ralph Murre

Je suis, aussi

artwork: ralph murre

je suis ecrivain

je suis iconoclaste

je suis artiste

je suis chaque homme

je suis, aussi, charlie

~ ralph murre

(Slow) Running Things

photo: ralph murre

How slowly the writing comes these days, as evidenced by the fact that I haven't posted to this site since May.  Have barely written anything else for anywhere else.  Forgive me re-running this 10-year old piece, still possibly appropriate for the day:

Running Things

Another year

Another chance to get it right

To do the things I shoulda done

Tear down that fence I built

Quit the party

Let running things run

Another wave rolls up the beach

Tumbles stones

Polishes what survives

Shorebirds – hungry – rush

Consume the dazzled on the sands

End the safe, crustacean lives

Another day

Another chance to see the light

To see the clouded, rising sun

Copper flame in pewter bowl

Embrace the certain, coming toll

Or be a running thing, and run

~ Ralph Murre

On a brighter note, and concerning two friends for whom the writing seems to be coming along very nicely, I want to refer you to two new blogs that brighten my days considerably.  The first, a self-titled site by Mary Wehner, can be found at http://marywehner.blogspot.com and the second, called The Poet At Large, is by Al DeGenova, and is at http://albertdegenova.blogspot.com.  Beautiful.

Both sites are new enough that you can easily read them from their beginnings, an exercise quite definitely worth your while. Links to both will remain in my right-hand column under "Good Places".

Happy New Year to all.     ~ RM 

the poet, at seventy, observes

and the aged

   discuss at length

 their aging

   the raging pains

and nagging

   the sagging

and the gravity

   their long-lost

youth,  naïveté

   as though

there was forever

   to converse
they heed

   no call for terse

nor feel a need

   for brevity

~ ralph murre

small talk

Little Eagle Press

~ proudly presents ~

small talk

A fine, new book of the shorter poems of Bruce Dethlefsen,

past Poet Laureate of Wisconsin.   Here’s your chance to see what a terrific writer can say in ten lines or less, and to see why Little Eagle, always very selective, jumped at the chance to publish this jewel of a manuscript.  There’s a lot of wry humor in these 92 pages, as well as good doses of poignancy and pathos.  Add a liberal sprinkling of the drawings of Ralph Murre, and we feel you’ll agree that this is a winning text.

a sample:

1950

at night

my mother bathed me in a white tub

scrubbed me with white soap

rubbed me in a white towel

hugged and plugged me

into pajamas and the white sheets

an act so kind

so common

it barely even happened

small talk can be ordered directly from the author

Bruce Dethlefsen

422 Lawrence Street

Westfield, WI   53964

at $15. per copy, plus $3. for shipping & handling.

( For shipping fees on orders of multiple copies, please

email:  poetdethlefsen@gmail.com )

all it has to be

this river

is not long

nor swift

nor all that deep

but it flows true

from dream to dream

and it’s all it has to be

and it does all a river needs to do

~ ralph murre

Gone Blind -- Arvinson Log post # 600

Gone Blind  (2014)

                                                                                            

Justice! they cry

What’s it mean? sez I

ain’t it just another name for revenge?

She’s often portrayed

as a blind chick with a sword

as untoward as blind rage

or blind drunk on a binge

Oh, she looks good

sittin’ here on this page

but she lights fires, you know

and if we’re not burnt

we’ll be singed

To invite her

we’re gonna need courage

let us try

one more time

for courage

Justice! they cry

Save me from it, sez I

or I and my kind

will swing in the breeze

and a lonely trumpet play

and the harpies will

tug at our flesh

‘til sometime late in the day

if anyone knows

that we aren’t on our knees

begging the unknown in the sky

begging, please

Let us try

one more time

for courage, for courage

Let us try

one more time

for courage

For I and my kind

by choice have gone blind

and our names

are signed to the checks

and our names are in the fields

of oil and blood

and our spirits

are dragged through the mud

as Old Glory waves

and we salute the ones

who send children

We salute, and dig graves

for our children

Let us try

one more time

for courage

Justice! they cry

but does she ever forgive?

And if it’s an eye

for an eye

how will grandchildren live?

Just look at her there

Sweet Justice – how fair

though she seems only to care

for the sound of alarms

It takes courage, too

to not take up arms

it takes courage to say

Let her go, now

we’ll start new

let us try

one more time

for courage

~ Ralph Murre

at evening

western

could I be

a sundown man

enfold you

unfold you

the colored rays

of our shining

the western sky

at evening?

~ ralph murre

as Mardi Gras approaches

Delta Blues

There, on the edge of the shelf,

in the sad and beautiful frames of generations,

the black and white portraits of us,

the sepia of our flesh,

the glisten and the dance.

There, the mouth of Old Man River

speaks to the sea of a continent stolen,

but Mother Ocean says, “Africa –

I’m here for her children. Europa –

I’m here for her children.  And Asia’s,”

she says.  There,

where those two meet day in and out,

night after night, in throes

of love and fight and blows

of gods of wind, there

in a mixed-blood flood,

she takes away a few of those

she’s brought on her broad back,

but carries them now in her womb

from that Crescent City where the water

rises above the tombs.

“Shall we gather . . .”, sings the old man,

“On that beautiful shore . . .”, says the sea.

~ Ralph Murre

The Grandfathers

the grandfathers
their hands flinty with work
reaching down to take mine

smell of oil and liniment and wool
smoke rising
snow falling

their heavy shovels
and plaid coats
the names of old countries


~ Ralph Murre

If that sounds like an old one to any of you, well, it is.  Kinda.  In the spirit of revise, revise, revise, I boiled a fair to middlin' nineteen lines down to nine, and I think I like it even better. If I keep going this way, someday, I'll say nothing at all, and that may be best.   ~ RM

In That House

In That House

". . . any room was full       

of such choreography . . ."

~ Michael Ondaatje

each of the chambers

of his heart

held a dance

his inner ear

a symphony

the optic nerve

told of roses

and rose windows

remembering that day

in that far away

when her eyes whispered

maybe

and still

after

the quick step

of all these

yesterdays

a waltzing

and that fox

still trotting

the way she does

in that house

full of the choreography

of whispered

yes

~ Ralph Murre

Gratitude in Dark December

There's nothing more gratifying for a writer, I suppose, than to be read -- and to have a person or two in some way moved by the reading.  A couple of years ago, I penned "In Dark December" which has been published here and there in print and on line, and which I've read at several events.  Well -- people seem to like it and it's been spreading on the internet and by emails and now I get references to the piece from far and wide. Thanks to friend Kris Thacher for the above photo, showing the poem posted on the Poetry Pole on Candelaria Road in Albuquerque, New Mexico; a far piece from my digs in Northeast Wisconsin.  Sometimes, I think, a piece of writing can be bigger than its author, and that's certainly how I feel about this poem.  Grateful to have had my pen on paper -- my hook in the water -- when this one came swimming by.  Grateful, too, for the friends, new and old, who have helped keep this alive.    ~ RM

In Dark December

by Ralph Murre

Whatever you believe,

whatever you do not,

there are sacred rites

you must perform

in dark December.

Do this for me:

Pull together

the kitchen table,

the folding table,

and that odd half-oval

usually covered

with bills and broken pencils

and red ink.

Pull together family and friends,

cool cats and stray dogs alike.

Turn off everything

except colored lights,

the roaster,

the toaster, the stove.

Cook.  Bake.  Eat.

Yes, even the fruitcake.

Eat, crowded around

those assembled tables

with mismatched chairs.

Reach so far

in your sharing

that you hold the sun

in one hand,

the stars in the other,

and no one between is hungry.

Now walk together,

talk together,

be together

on these darkest nights.

Give and forgive.

Light candles and ring bells.

Sing the old songs.

Tell the old stories

one more time,

leaving nothing out,

leaving no one out

in the long night,

leaving nothing wrong

that you can make right.

~ first published in Peninsula Pulse                                                        

in the pond of plenty

Heaven

I don't know about the streets of Heaven, nor am I likely to find out -- but parts of County Trunk Q were paved with gold this morning as a sheath of shed tamarack needles clung to the wetted roadway.  That's good enough for me.     ~ RM

Of Sugar and Marigolds

It is

La Dia de los Muertos

let us remember

and let us dance

~ RM

Hallows Eve

With appropriate dark

And this damp chill

Tomorrow begins November

We shall wear brave masks tonight

RM

Islands

Islands

No man, you tell me, but everyman, I tell you,

and woman and boat, every Wisconsin farmhouse

and apartment in the Bronx; an island.

That blue circle of horizon, the dangerous passage,

those days the ferry cannot cross from my shores

to the quiet cove of yours.  The sea between.

~ Ralph Murre

That's the little tug Neverwas in my sketch above, departing Rock Island, Wisconsin, in the early afternoon of long ago, and getting a friendly wave from an unidentified guest at the Thordarson Boathouse, where Sharon Auberle and I were recently privileged to read to a sizable and receptive audience from our book Wind Where Music Was.  Headliner on the program was ferryman Richard Purinton, who was introducing his Thordarson and Rock Island, an absolute "must read" for anyone interested in the history of the region and the biography of the man.  I predict that this wonderfully researched volume will be the standard text on the topic for a long time to come.     ~ RM  

Falling

digitally derived from seed co. photo

Like a Melon, Love.

She weighed it in her hand

in her heart

this chance

this could be

as a cantaloupe

this fruit

this thing

bought on faith

before it could be

cut open.

She

smelled of it

felt of it

fell.

~ Ralph Murre

That first line (italicized) is a snippet

borrowed from Louis de Bernieres