The Post- Poet Laureate promise

Wednesday I read at the Community Gallery surrounded by works of art by children.  I called it my Post-Poet Laureate reading and read from the many poems I wrote way back then. Okay, I promised to not have a post-post-poet laureate reading, but I can't promise I won't read from the poems again as they are leaning towards a book.  I need to get one of those purity rings to keep poetically chaste or maybe three rings like a notebook.

The three best things people said to me during my tenure (I love to say tenure for the obvious reason that I will never have another) are this:

1. "I am so proud of you. Don't lose a bit of it."  My grand daughter Kaylee at age four the night I  passed the pencil and took my oath of office on the Santa Fe Plaza. I swear she was channeling my mother or at very least my Aunt Chutey or Pearl.

2. "You still have that new poet laureate smell."  SWAI jeweler Kenneth Johnson

3. "Didn't you used to be somebody?"  Carolyn Riman, after the final jot had been jotted,  on Lincoln Avenue.

I had a very nice evening Wednesday, revisiting my post, and everybody seemed happy with Odes & Offerings, the book Sunstone Press published of my final project of visual art inspired by 36 poems by 36 poets. People were so sweet.  I forgot that people were so much sweeter than my obsessing and Woody Allenesque mind.  Besides my black belt in worry, I am skilled in worse case scenario.  Open the doors and see all the people.

I think most of them came for the door prizes which were five poem holders and a few little books.   We had a distinguished visit by street poet Chuck Calabreze and later a cameo appearance by Jon Davis, current Santa Fe P.L.  My grand daughter was there hooting a bit and it was her first reading at age one year and I think, by her clapping and hollering, that it was a hit. The sushi afterwards wasn't bad either.

Now I am back home and trying to do less sewing and viewing and more writing, or moving poems around on the computer since there are so many wastrel poems in here.  I send post-Good Friday love to you all. Thanks if you came to hear me read, and thanks if you are reading this, and just plain old thanks.  

I am busy teaching little Kaleia one year old things like "Block," "bird," and "what does the owl say?"

My Braid and I

My braid and I are happy it is poetry month.

 Already I have written two intros to books, forgotten to write something about Espanola, and have a keynote to write for the Santa Fe Girls' School Gala.  I went to a gala last Saturday.  It was filled with writers and for literacy. People keep asking me about my writing.  Everywhere I go people ask me, "So, Are you writing?"  I am not writing a poem much, or sewing a poem holder though I sold six yesterday, Yay team, and not in my blog so much.  My not writing is taking up all my writing time.  I have to keep up with my "shows," see my friends, fit in as many chile rellenos as one can in a lifetime, and admire my jonquils and hyacinths before the wind takes them. I have to be there for the grandkids.

Last night it frosted.  My windshield and the lawn were white. The beautiful three peach trees seem to be still holding their blossoms, but maybe it is a last ditch effort before they turn black and shrivel. Spring in New Mexico is full of heartbreak.  I know. I have been here forty-one years, one week from today is our New Mexico anniversary. So I called my old land lady and invited her to lunch.

We arrived on April 11, 1973.   This was before there was poetry month and before I had poetry credentials.  I wrote, was class poet, and won a Academy of American poets college poetry award in 1966 of all years. I was a freshman.  But in 1973 I was married, had survived a few months driving a school bus in Fox Chapel, a year in Chiacgo teaching Kindergarten, a year in San Francisco, and two long sub zero winters in rural Wisconsin on my husband's family dairy farm.

New Mexico looked like paradise. We landed in Pojoaque which we pronounced as you would expect two greenhorns to pronounce it, and stayed with Robin and Jim, Barb and Syd.   Barb remembers me walking around naked. I remember her soaking pinto beans and baby Jessica crawling around my ankles. Michael and I drove the dirt roads looking for a place to rent.  We considered ruins of adobes with no windows.  Hey, after two Wisconsin winters how bad could it be?  We stopped at Al's Pharmacy and Al told us of a house up the road a mile.

When we got there and I knocked, I noticed the succulents by the door, a good sign as I love succulent plants. The woman who opened the door had the most beautiful open smile. Beatific.  It was Virginia. We were to become neighbors for 3 1/2 years. Now I haven't seen her for about six, but I just called her on the phone to ask if she will celebrate with me.

I think living there is the luckiest thing that happened in a pretty lucky life, knock wood. The three room adobe was a classic and Nora and Roland Pickens had lived there.  They restored it as Roland, may he rest in peace, designed exhibits at the museums. I have written this again and again, but there I was painting the house a fresh coat and all three doors to the three rooms open tot he road. The people streamed by on the Nambé Road and I thought New Mexico rich with walking.  It was Good Friday, April 19th, 1973. These were actually pilgrims walking to the Santuario de Chimayo.

Forty-one years later, our son is married to Tammy Garcia Logghe, from the family who owned the Pojoaque place where we first landed.   These braided lives come out of a state with a sparse population. It is just right for me. I was a pilgrim and a stranger.  I live in that beatific smile
more than my back east frown.  We drove the road this week to see if we could see Angel, Ana, and Joe walking, these new New Yorkers in our life.  We drove our pilgrimage, but still, cruising is a sort of prayer here, and you and me, babe, keep on trucking.

Why I Cannot Be President

Though I appreciate the support I got when campaigning for Pope, and I am very glad to cede the position to Pope Francis, the first Pope I've enjoyed since John let us eat meat on Friday, I simply can't be President.  When I saw "we" in terms of eating meat, it's not that we were Catholic, but that Mrs. Deegan who cared for me in both senses of the word, was Catholic and so we ate fish on Fridays.
She prayed and prayed and I can't help feel that she prayed me Catholic so much that I couldn't help but marry a Catholic.

Anyhow, as much as I could have embraced the role of Pope, I don't feature myself as President and so I will have to respectfully decline those of you who were going to vogue for me as a write-in candidate.  I mean "vote," Autocorrect.

I simply don't have enough time or energy.  I hope Hillary does.  She went to Wellesley and was in the same class, "Hillary's Class," as my good friends Dee Dee and Nancy Wanderer.  They did a film on that class, the graduates of 1969, and interviewed Nancy.  I hope Hillary will have enough time, but she probably will because she isn't a grandmother yet.  If she were a grandmother, she'd definitely not have enough time so I suggest that Chelsea put it off until after the election.

If she were a grandmother, any day when she had nothing on the calendar, say meetings with Iraqi women or cutting the ribbon on a new Planned Parenthood office, the open day would fill with a grandchild. I know she could find a sort of uber-nanny, a presidential au pair, but it's what happens to the mind in the presence of grandkids, presidential and women's college educated or not.  I have three biological grand children and one step-grandchild.  In any of their presences my mind is taken over, it's like a good drug but a drug nonetheless.  In fact the word "nonetheless" is a perfect description of how I become in their midst.  I simply could not make an unbiased opinion in office. I would be talking to a head of state and the baby would be throwing peas onto the carpet or yanking at the curtains. Or, I would be asking the eleven year old what he thinks, since he seems to know everything. If not, he would show me how to access the answer on something electronic. So, I respectfully have to decline your nomination.

Then there is the issue of time.  I hope Hillary has more time than I do, and that she has a better system than my day-planner.  This year when I bought my Month-at-a-Glance, I got the cheaper version so there is no room for my notes in between months.   Believe me, that was a Mistake-at-a-Glance and I was too frugal balancing the domestic budget to toss it out and upgrade..  I know, I know, Hillary is probably digital.  If she has it all on her I-phone, I hope she is better than I am about not misplacing it.  Maybe she has one of those clap-on devices to locate it.  I would suggest.

Another suggestion.   Her hair has been a problem.  I looked to Georgia O'Keeffe long ago and decided when I was old or oldish, I would wear only black and white clothing with an accent of red, and have a white braid.  You have no idea how many perks the white braid has.  Subliminally there is the O'Keeffe thing going on.  I am pretty sure my braid became Poet Laureate of Santa Fe and I followed along.  If Hillary grew a white braid, she would be respected for embracing her age, her power, being so brave, and she wouldn't' have to deal with the collapse of hair volume she seems to be prey to.  It also cuts down on hair expenses which she can point out to the public, plus save time.  It is the school uniform of hairstyles and some people even think I am a native of somewhere besides Pittsburgh.

In terms of energy, I can't really make suggestions, I just know that I don't have enough.  And people are always suggesting various regimens for me which I confuse with regimes.  So for my regime/regimen there is walking, swimming, weights, exercise tubing, gluten-free, paleo diet which includes new cookbooks and grass-fed everything, plus a garden with a nod to locovorism and to follow in Michelle's footsteps.  I mean, it's daunting enough without having to redecorate the White House.

So, while I am sure Hillary is up to the task and I  will support her, I can't even begin.  The campaign itself would do me in.  I am busy writing down my dreams, avoiding too much sun, and doing crossword puzzles.  I hear Bill can do the NY Times in 15 minutes while I scratch my head and my way through the Monday and Tuesday puzzles in our paper.

Anyhow, I wish her well. And for my constituents, Let Them Eat Poetry.

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Whose Words These Are?

I know this looks a lot like the last post, but it is on the west side of the renga, note the sunlight on SITE Santa Fe and how I am dressed for warmer weather.  It also features stanzas of all three Tres Chicas, a happy accident which Axle Contemporary Gallery (of recent PBS Colores fame) was kind enough to document.  My verse, having served six weeks, will retire to be seen no more, until the book comes out this spring. Can't wait.  Each entry illustrated by original art.  I made a farewell cameo appearance to visit my stanza.  It's still happening, the world's shortest poetry event, every Friday at 4:45.

Besides that I have been busy with ArtWorks, taking poetry into public schools and then taking students to live poetry.  This year we decided on classic poetry, a reading called "Whose Words These Are I think I know."   It was challenging to find poems that were fun but not cute or smarmy, deep but not incomprehensible. We settled on a baker's dozen from A.A. Milne to e e cummings, Dickinson to Lorca, poems the three of us readers, Jonathan Richards, Oliver Prezant, and myself could agree on and enjoy performing.  I am really  looking forward to this.  I already worked with four classes, call and response to "all in green went my love riding" and I dressed all in very bright green. I also found out, since this is a poem of the hunt, that the students of Eldorado Community School are hunters. Many hail from Pecos. They loved echoing my dramatic words, "The swift sweet deer, the red rare deer." Everything you ever wanted to know about alliteration.  And "A narrow fellow in the grass" led to me discover that every single student had seen a snake.  I am sure I didn't see a snake till I was much older. New Mexican kids.

There is often a story when you visit a class.   This time I ate lunch with the wonderful fourth grade teacher.  I asked if any of the students' writing was a surprise and she mentioned that one person read at a much lower level and yet wrote a true poem.  That person was the first to stand up and read and when we broke for lunch, stayed to read more of the poem as the others marched off to lunch.  I keep this person anonymous,  except inside me it is yet another example of how the arts break us open, turn us into our best selves, not always but often enough.  As Yeats said, that we "are blessed and can bless."

I am so grateful for ArtWorks, for Axle, for Emily Dickinson, and for my chartreuse pants I spotted in a St. Vincent's de Paul's thrift store. I didn't know I was purchasing e e cummingswear.  I suggest you try call and response, reading a poem and having it echoed by the kids.  It is the most fun I had all week. Delicate.  Not even the rain has such soft hands.

I also send admiration for the amazing teacher who gives the third grade kids "Vitamin Words"each week, the likes of "ubiquitous" and "diligent."  These teachers I meet are the finest humans on earth.
So, I am praying for snow in all the right places, but not enough to keep me from poetry.

A Density of Synchronicity

I promised you, dear blog readers, that I would post my renga post. I like to keep my word.

Thanks to Axle Contemporary for this wonderful project.  I think my post is still up for one more week, if you want to catch the poetic linked excitement of it. And there are still weeks and weeks of renga, until summer.

I know you have been wondering, what sun-kissed synchronicities have befallen me. So many I almost have to skip a clutch of them, as they do come in groups.  I will begin. 

My son-in-law is applying to grad school, a PHD program in psychology at Duquesne University.  The program has a depth psychology and a specific professor with a Jungian bent. It is in my home town of Pittsburgh.  We all feel my mother is getting back at me for moving west and raising the grand kids in the wilds.

My own youngest, the delicious nine month old Kaleia, was on a holiday journey to her dad's family in sub-zero Indiana. Her other grandpa, Charlie, who has just come back from Peace Corp in Rwanda, had a hankering for a VW camper van, you know the type. He found one which had lived in Santa Fe (!) and was now in Pittsburgh (!!).   Charlie told the VW seller that his son was applying to grad school, and guess what? One of the seller's best friends is head of the Psychology department and the aforementioned professor (!!!).

Kaleia, Hope, Charlie, and Leland drove from Indianapolis to Pittsburgh and got to buy the van and meet the professor, who respects synchronicity.  I am taking a deep breath, and saying "Roots and wings, we give them roots and wings" at the distinct possibility that our enviable all-in-one place family becomes like most of American, only FaceTime and two air flights away.

I stood in a parking lot telling a young man this story, as he was a Duquesne University graduate.

"I was born on Jung's birthday. July 26th," the guy said. (!!!!) Of course he'd love to meet them if they come to Pittsburgh where he still lives. Thanks Luke.  I am keeping a file of Pittsburgh connections.

Telling our pals Pat & Melinda this story, Pat kept saying "Tracks, tracks."  What she explained she meant was a teaching of Carlos Castaneda who they had studies with.   The tracks of your destiny, when life lines up like this.  You gotta respect it. You gotta wonder why I am so resistant and attached.  Dense, is all I can say.

Word Fads

The latest excuse for not writing is the holidays.  So when a little poem snuck out on New Year's morning, I felt like it was an excellent omen for the year.  In the spirit of my brief poems:
       
      New Year’s Day

Substitute the words “far-out” and “mellow”

for every adjective. Then cool.

That’s how it was in 1973, forty years ago

and we were just a sparkle

in New Mexico’s eyes.

Then the years of “awesome,”

a persistent moniker

and lately “Really?”

in a sweet surprised voice

that lilts upwards, especially

near my grandchild.

The words may change, 2003,

the year bling hit the Oxford English.

But today itself is mellow and far out,

awesome and full of bling,

bling, and bling.

I knew this was a mere skeletal approach to my topic.  How I react to word fads.

I am sure Shakespeare and I have this one thing in common.  He did not resist the

new words of his faire tongue, and I do not either.  I sometimes can't stand them, and react like a person with a rash.  But I do hear them, take note, and sometimes slip them into

writing.

I took my little note pad out at Sue Farrington's famous  Chimayo New Year's Day Party, I'd guess I have attended over 30 times. Thanks Sue. I asked the youngest folks in the room if they had anything to say about word fads.  They said I'd asked the right people, Willa and Jerry, two musicians back form New York, late thirties.   When I told them my love/hate reaction to words we became instant "besties" and here are some we added.

"Groovy" would go in with the Seventies and is one I love.

"Totally," "radical" or "rad," and "whatever" may slide into the Awesome generation.

Meanwhile, Johnny is alongside and suggests "Bitchin'."  I tell him I will not accept that,

for it is very Beach Boys, too west coast (though I lived there a year)  and not in my language surfing experience.  

I think of "righteous" and Jerry suggests "wicked" which I feel is mostly Massachusetts where I did live for four years.  So I accept it reluctantly.  Johnny again said, "bitchin'" and I again say I never used that word and do not intend to, the female dog and negativity about women aside, it isn't something I have crossed paths with verbally.  Now that the word "Bitch" is used both humorously, lovingly I guess, and in rap music non-stop, I am especially sensitive.  Poison oak of language.

But I digress, I am still jotting like crazy, Robin says "neat " was up in the Fifties, in Los Alamos, and of course "Cool."  I know people and a particular summer camp my kids went to where the only adjective on stock is "cool."  Cool this and cool that. I liked what the camp had to offer except this one stop adjective.  

"Epic," "Gnarly, " and "No way... Way" cropped up in the discussion, and I added "No doubt." It even became the name of a band.  "Obtuse" was suggested and then Dave Best chimed in with "colloquial familiarism" as what I was looking for.  The man looked like he could coin words like a slot machine could spin.  

"Not"  and "Word" occupy a ring of Dante' Hell. The "F Bomb" cropped up at my Ghost Ranch Class since the conference center is owned by Presbyterians and the college students respected my request for appropriate language. Not to censor but to attune.

Again Johnny insists, "Bitchin', bitchin.'"  He gets his wife in on the act and says, "It we saw something we liked in a store, we'd say 'bitchin' right?" 

"In high school," she didn't seem to like the word any more than I did.  "I"ll put it in my writing"

I told Johnny to make him happy.  He is a rad, gnarly sort of guy, a great skier and only missed surfing by a quirk of geography, being an Albuquerque kid.  He does water ski.  

Maybe it's a jock word, not a poet word.  Now "jock," there's a visual word for you.

I have been trying to add a new word and see if it takes off.  Today was really "dense."

That is so totally "dense."  I see it as a positive like "ill" and "sick" have come to be.

Dave again, "That has mass."  I swear he is a word factory.

My dear poet, Gerald Stern, when I took his class, spoke of his verbal prejudices, or maybe I made up that terms, anyhow, words he could not stand in a poem.  "Compel" and "ponder," that kind of thing.  In my verboten list I have "unique" which sometimes leads to "very unique." You probably could add your own word allergies.

But for today.  May your New Year be sunny and dense.

Blame Allen Ginsberg, Solstice Solar Blog and First Thoughts

I am blaming everything today on Allen Ginsberg.  I tend to honor his "First thought, best thought" credo and then spend hours agonizing about something stupid I said or wrote because I've taken that pledge. So, take that world, it's all Allen Ginsberg's fault.

On the other hand, Feliz Navidad is on the radio, and my greenhouse getting ready for the big moment.
At 10:11 it is the solstice.  We have a wonderful solar greenhouse my husband planned into this house, full of geraniums which he hates and San Pedro cacti which he loves. The yin and yang of it aside, it is a beautiful greenhouse and heats us all day if the sun is out. Today it is and so I can find that line which shows how far up the wall the sun crawls every year as the angle of the sun swoops down and we have a line there,  Last night at my reading of the solstice renga verse, Jerry Wellman or maybe Matthew Chace Daniel called it our Sun Dagger a la Chaco Canyon.  It does pierce the center of us when we shower (there's a shower there I forgot to tell you), water plants, or just heat up a bit.   I want us to have a full solstice experience, and though I was unable to take a flattering selfie we have eleven minutes till the days begin getting longer, and what with my night blindness which restricts my wild social life, I am happy for this solar turn of events. James Taylor is covering "Here Comes the Sun" on the radio.  The song is perfect.   Little darling.  I wonder if that is the darling I have to slay?

Yesterday life in Santa Fe touched back into the "Here Comes the Sun " life that I love.  I got to have my photo taken and there were four other poets being interviewed for a New New Mexican article of poets in Santa Fe. See Pasatiempo January10th. Then I zipped over to Sanbusco, that great space that used to house Borders, RIP, and the students from New Mexico School for the Arts got a piano donated, painted in, and it is now a "Play Me Piano."  I hear it as a statement as in "Now I gonna play me piano."  But I believe it means, play-me,  piano.  Or play, me piano--the piano speaking.  See how important punctuation or line break can be.

Anyhow they got it permitted and insured and held a big musical fundraiser with singers, musicians, and I got to mix some poems in with Mohit Dubey on violin and piano.  It was absolutely so much fun.  Three people from my mailing list came, that was epic. Thanks to Mohit's dad for these photos and to
Mohit and his inspired friends for the all day event, I was just one voice in the mix.

Then We skittered on over to The Renga Project.  Three people from my list came there, and that was the biggest audience they have had in weeks for what amounts to a 5-10 second poetry reading in the cold.  Mercifully short.  When the photos come, you'll be the first to see them here in blog world.

Are you listening, Allen Ginsberg?   Now it's solstice night, my old friend Jim Oberlander just started talking to me about Allen Ginsberg and I said, oh no.  It must be Allen Ginsberg Day! All these holidays cropping up.  He told me his Ginsberg stories and about where he was on the day Ginsberg died. Jim was on his way to Disneyland. I told him I have a poem "My Day the Day Allen Ginsberg Died" in my book, The Singing Bowl.  I was in Albuquerque humming Ginsberg's songs, no kidding.

Happy Allen Ginsberg Day to all.  I think First Thoughts may be a lot better than obsessive thoughts.
Writing is a cure for that, and being asked to be involved in very cool and genius community poetry .
Also, the solstice helps. It's the soltice!   Now I can exhale and get more optimistic.