December 27, 2024.
Words... Judith on "dumbing down prose" -- my poem follows.
A writer friend asked me to edit a few chapters of something she is writing, and I had quite a discussion with her about the slovenly trend in the last twenty years or so—it appeared suddenly and spread like poison ivy—of having people “exit” a room. By me (New York Yiddish derived dialect) exit is written over doors and otherwise appears in play scripts. And it is a dead word. It took a while for Melody to get it (well she is considerably younger than I am..NOT me, by the way, which is worse than poison ivy and is EVERYWHERE.) I insisted it is dead. You can amble, flounce, stomp, slither, stalk—all sorts of nice juicy active verbs to convey situation or character, so why exit? She finally got it. Exhausting.
see my poem: Exit with a nod to Sartre and TS Eliot and dedicated to the inimitable Judith Judson (filed in December 2024)
Exit
with a nod to Sartre and TS Eliot
It's clearly marked: over the doorway, to show
the way out. But please, says my friend, would you
have it be a verb? Exit a room? What does that tell?
Amble, flounce, stomp, slither, or even stalk will add
a bit of juice to convey the character, the how of it all.
Rather like hushing the CH in touch so plutoc(h)ratic
crisps its freshly minted bills, pressing
them into the CHIC gloves of oligarchical.
The infamous "they" say, all cyclical.
How easy to switch off the howl of ouch with the paint
of T, squeezing the uh, uh, of touch.
Let's review Huis Clos performed three months before
the "end" of world war II 80 years ago. Let us
re-examine decisions behind closed doors—
stop the play. No matter how you stage
and re-stage, translate it as No Way Out,
Vicious Circle or Dead End, it doesn't help
the smell of the rat.
The hush returns. Shantih.
Shantih. Shantih.
commentary on Bishop's Sandpiper: (tbd on Jan. 8-9)
Wallace Stevens ended one of his poems hilariously: “Happens to like is one /of the ways things happen to fall.” I love how irreverentially he notes that our emotional lives and our desires are often governed by accident
**
Two Poems not chosen for the start of the year 2025... The first somewhat discussed in O Pen.
"A wonderful poem to read when "ever negotiating the psychic demands of being present in a world where kindness feels in short supply." posted on the Slowdown, 12/2/2024
On Living by Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk |
Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example—
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
I mean living must be your whole occupation.
to continue reading: https://poetrysociety.org/poems/on-living
Christmas on the Border, 1929 by Alberto Ríos
Based on local newspaper reports
and recollections from the time.
1929, the early days of the Great Depression.
The desert air was biting, but the spirit of the season was alive.
Despite hard times, the town of Nogales, Arizona, determined
They would host a grand Christmas party
For the children in the area—a celebration that would defy
The gloom of the year, the headlines in the paper, and winter itself.
In the heart of town, a towering Christmas tree stood,
A pine in the desert.
Its branches, they promised, would be adorned
With over 3,000 gifts. 3,000.
The thought at first was to illuminate the tree like at home,
With candles, but it was already a little dry.
Needles were beginning to contemplate jumping.
A finger along a branch made them all fall off.
People brought candles anyway. The church sent over
Some used ones, too. The grocery store sent
Some paper bags, which settled things.
Everyone knew what to do.
They filled the bags with sand from the fire station,
Put the candles in them, making a big pool of lighted luminarias.
From a distance the tree was floating in a lake of light—
Fire so normally a terror in the desert, but here so close to miracle.
For the tree itself, people brought garlands from home, garlands
Made of everything, walnuts and small gourds and flowers,
Chilies, too—the chilies themselves looking
A little like flames.
The townspeople strung them all over the beast—
It kept getting bigger, after all, with each new addition,
This curious donkey whose burden was joy.
At the end, the final touch was tinsel, tinsel everywhere, more tinsel.
Children from nearby communities were invited, and so were those
From across the border, in Nogales, Sonora, a stone’s throw away.
But there was a problem. The border.
As the festive day approached, it became painfully clear—
The children in Nogales, Sonora, would not be able to cross over.
They were, quite literally, on the wrong side of Christmas.
Determined to find a solution, the people of Nogales, Arizona,
Collaborated with Mexican authorities on the other side.
In a gesture as generous as it was bold, as happy as it was cold:
On Christmas Eve, 1929,
For a few transcendent hours,
The border moved.
Officials shifted it north, past city hall, in this way bringing
The Christmas tree within reach of children from both towns.
On Christmas Day, thousands of children—
American and Mexican, Indigenous and orphaned—
Gathered around the tree, hands outstretched,
Eyes wide, with shouting and singing both.
Gifts were passed out, candy canes were licked,
And for one day, there was no border.
When the last present had been handed out,
When the last child returned home,
The border resumed its usual place,
Separating the two towns once again.
For those few hours, however, the line in the sand disappeared.
The only thing that mattered was Christmas.
Newspapers reported no incidents that day, nothing beyond
The running of children, their pockets stuffed with candy and toys,
Milling people on both sides,
The music of so many peppermint candies being unwrapped.
On that chilly December day, the people of Nogales
Gathered and did what seemed impossible:
However quietly regarding the outside world,
They simply redrew the border.
In doing so, they brought a little more warmth to the desert winter.
On the border, on this day, they had a problem and they solved it.
-- posted on Poem-a-day 12/22/2024
AND a little commentary from Paul on the session he missed (see Dec. 18)
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