Teaching The Ape to Write

They didn't have much trouble
teaching the ape to write poems:
first they strapped him into the chair
then tied his pencil around his hand
(the paper had already been nailed down).
Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder
and whispered into his ear:
"You look like a god sitting there.
Why don't you try writing something?"

-James Tate, 1970

Essential Poem
(for John Hollander)

Although it’s likely you’re on your own
at this moment in this city of three million
reading the poems of Traherne,
and there was no one till you lit your lamp,
the kingdom of childhood keeps being founded
in his voice and his seeing,
which are a sort of birth. A birth goes on
in the dark of a poor family, or a mother alone.
Then comes the small bright circle of the faces:
lover pores over sleeping loved one, parent over child
in their enclosure we name home,
a hut in the plain so bare there’s not a tongue
of grass to make the wind hiss. Unknown
to the world a world exists:
trees and streams, birds all the colors of the flowers.
So Traherne pours over you
his wild remembrance of the world to come. And would
even in the silence of his book
if it were lost and lay unopened
two hundred years. Even if he had died
before he sang the Eden in his look.

-A. F. Moritz, 2011

I started Wednesday poemday almost three years ago on a lark. Other than missing the month of August in 2009, and also taking off for a month in 2010, this thing has been going strong. In celebration (celebration?) today we have two sides of the poetry coin.

Also here is some information about poetry.

(Happy Leap Day.)

When I phoned home last month after a week when the mercury hit 35 below (that's Celsius), I told my parents, "Well, at least January's almost over."

And they asked if I thought January was the worst month.

"No," I said: "It's February."

So February's almost over. I think it's probably the worst month, and in celebration I went ahead and made some caramel sauce, and then I put it in some hot chocolate. Besides, you know what they say about March, right? (In like a lion--)

Actually, I made the caramel sauce just to see if I could, and then I put it in hot chocolate because I didn't know what else to do with it. The hot chocolate was a bit too rich and sweet for me; I think my whole family knows that peppermint hot chocolate is my favorite, and hot chocolate with cinnamon in it is a close second place. This didn't quite oust those, but the caramel sauce is good, and I think I'll eat it with apples or maybe ice cream (neither of which is particularly wintry). Or maybe I'll try the hot chocolate thing again, and add cinnamon.

Here are the recipes: caramel sauce from here (and here's a word on caramelizing sugar) and hot chocolate recipe, well, it's fairly straightforward. I looked at a few recipes and then decided just to reduce the sugar and add caramel to my usual.

This is how I make hot chocolate with a microwave (as opposed to one a stove). It is also how containers of cocoa powder everywhere tell you how to make hot chocolate, if you would ever listen: I microwave a mug of milk for 2 minutes, and while that happens I stir together 2 tablespoons of sugar and 4 teaspoons of cocoa powder with a fork. Then I add a little milk, and stir that together until it's blended, and I add that mixture to the microwaved milk when it's done. This is the way they tell you do it on the containers for most cocoas, as far as I can tell, and seems to help dissolve the cocoa powder smoothly, so you don't get gross, powdery chunks.

So, caramel hot chocolate: I reduced the amount of sugar by half, to 1 tablespoon, but I think you could eliminate it entirely. I added the caramel sauce (about three tablespoons--I tried for two, but the caramel flavor didn't come through in the hot chocolate) to the sugar/cocoa/milk mixture, and poured that into the milk as usual.

There you go. Long post about hot chocolate. But February's the worst month, right? And it's a day longer this year. So you--we--deserve it. Or something.

my fate

like the fox
I run with the hunted
and if I'm not
the happiest man
on earth
I'm surely the
luckiest man
alive.

-Charles Bukowski, 1993

I walked to campus today, which I usually don't do, and brought my camera, which I also usually don't do. But when I left the house there was a quiet, unbroken layer of snow on the ground and fat flakes coming down, and it seemed worth the extra time. The bike ride to campus is about twenty minutes; the walk is about forty. When I walk I sometimes take a more direct route, on main roads instead of down side streets and back alleys, but today I took the long way. A little over a week ago, before I went to Manitoba, I streamed Guy Maddin's film 'My Winnipeg' on Netflix. It's a documentary, of sorts, but he also tells several stories I suspect are false. One of those is about how, in order to avoid competition, one of the two taxi companies in town was relegated only to back alleys. This is probably false: but the image stuck with me. The movie, which also claims that everyone in Winnipeg sleep walks constantly, is kind of, maybe, about the strange weight of winter here on the prairies. But Saskatoon (not Winnipeg) is purportedly the sunniest city in Canada, and because of Saskatchewan's intense commitment to being flat, when the sky here is grey the whole world is grey, and when the sun is out the sun is everywhere. Today was a grey day, as it happens, but by sunset the clouds had moved on and the sky was completely clear.

My Heart's in the Highlands

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.

Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow;
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.

-Robert Burns, 1796

I know Mom (hi Mom) misses the days when I wrote more--I, for one, was perusing my own archives (as you do) and was kind of shocked by the sheer volume of wordy posts from when I was in New Zealand, for example. So let's see if I can do this anymore.

This week I had the opportunity to hop across the border (read: drive four hours) to Manitoba to visit Riding Mountain National Park which, along with Prince Albert National Park is one of my study sites for my research. I went with the principle investigator on the project my research falls under the umbrella of, and a post-doc on the same project, and we met with a First Nations group to talk about park management, as well as with some people who will--hopefully--be helping me set up workshops and things, when the time comes to set up workshops and things. It's good to get out, though I occasionally feel like I'm floundering around in these places and cultures I know nothing about (before the meeting began, we smudged with sweetgrass, but my years of feeling my way through liturgies at churches I'd never been to served me well). But that's the precise reason why it is so good to go to these places before I begin my research: if you're going to jump in head first, best to do it before the last possible minute.

Anyway, Riding Mountain: nice place. Saw some elk, finally. For someone whose research is ostensibly about elk in Canada, I've seen remarkably few elk in Canada (except at the zoo). Oh, and here are some pictures out motel room windows.

What You Have to Get Over

Stumps. Railroad tracks. Early sicknesses,
the blue one, especially.
Your first love rounding a corner,
that snowy minefield.

Whether you step lightly or heavily,
you have to get over to that tree line a hundred yards in the distance
before evening falls,
letting no one see you wend your way,

that wonderful, old-fashioned word, wend,
meaning “to proceed, to journey,
to travel from one place to another,”
as from bed to breakfast, breakfast to imbecile work.

You have to get over your resentments,
the sun in the morning and the moon at night,
all those shadows of yourself you left behind
on odd little tables.

Tote that barge! Lift that bale! You have to
cross that river, jump that hedge, surmount that slogan,
crawl over this ego or that eros,
then hoist yourself up onto that yonder mountain.

Another old-fashioned word, yonder, meaning
“that indicated place, somewhere generally seen
or just beyond sight.” If you would recover,
you have to get over the shattered autos in the backwoods lot

to that bridge in the darkness
where the sentinels stand
guarding the border with their half-slung rifles,
warned of the likes of you.

-Dick Allen, 2010

Foundations

I built on the sand
And it tumbled down,
I built on a rock
And it tumbled down.
Now when I build,
I shall begin
With the smoke from the chimney.

-Leopold Staff, 1965

I Can't Help You

Poor moth, I can't help you,
I can only turn out the light.

-Ryszard Krynicki, 1991

I think that someone asked me where I got these poems. Once. A long time ago. The answer, more often than not, is that I grab books or flip through the Poetry Foundation website, but the book I grab a disproportionate amount of the time is "A Book of Luminous Things", an anthology edited by poet and Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz. If you own only one poetry anthology, I would hazard the suggestion that it be this one. I don't know where my copy came from, or when I obtained it, but I do know that it is very good: the poems are approachable, varied, and across-the-board wonderful. Here are two of them (this poem is the most recent example of another), but over the years several poems from that book have made their way into this blog. That doesn't mean it isn't worth owning your own copy, if that's something you're interested in.