clarahsu – Page 27

Learning to Write

Learning is a strange process. After writing poetry for ten years I’m beginning to realize there are skills involved. My tool bag? Quite empty at the moment. And it is this lack that propels me to enquire.

Language. We begin learning by listening, not by recognizing the alphabets. Perhaps poetry is the same thing. We begin by thinking (not writing)—that everything is a puzzle and nothing is what it seems to be. From one thought, go deep, branch out, retrieve, manipulate; poetry is art.

Take out logic, what do we have? Capturing random thoughts requires intention. Connecting the conscious and the subconscious and what to do with them? These are my questions. After breaking down one door there is always another. Poetry is mystery.

Listen to many languages to come up with a new language, one that may illustrate my thoughts. It’s English with a new outfit. And I’m fickle, always wanting a new outfit.

Circles Of Gifts

Angar Mora, or rather, his able assistant Felix Feline has the following to say in the recent View Point: Ideas for Our Imagination, Wow!

The season of gift giving is fast approaching, and Felix suggests giving a ‘gift-of-art’. Here’s how he defines the gift:

* Gifts are the result of the giver’s personal efforts, not store-bought.

* Gifts are given in person, in order to benefit from the extended gift of being in the presence of the OTHER.

* Gifting does not obligate the recipient to reciprocate directly to the ‘giver’; rather, the recipient should pass on the ‘gift’ received, or a gift of equivalent or greater ‘liveliness’ to someone else.

I think the idea is ingenious coming from a feline. But with Angar Mora, you always expect the unexpected.

Herbs and Spices

My neighbor Susan has an herb garden of rosemary, basil, sage, bay leaves… She also grows lemons, pears, tomatoes and apples. When the picking season is over she preserves the lemons with salt and olive oil, adding cinnamon sticks and cloves for flavor. The salted lemon is a Moroccan specialty that the dish tajin (stew) is incomplete without it.

Each winter Susan brings me a jar of the salted lemon and clippings of a variety of herbs. In the summer she brings lavender. I cherish these gentle gifts, and when the aroma fills the house when I put them in my cooking I think of her.

Her face when we parted/a parting I can never forget/and for the keepsake she left it /printed on the moon. (Saigyo, 1118-1190)

Poem Monster

It comes out of nowhere and grows big and bad and soon you run out of space on the page and it keeps spilling and morphing and shaping into something unrecognizable. That’s when you know you’ve created a poem monster. It wants to speak its own language and uses its unique hand writing and it likes to scribble. I have never given birth to one until today and it looks kind of cute in all its rawness. It doesn’t resemble me, at least I don’t think I resemble it but I might be wrong.

What’s IT talking about? At the moment that is not quite important. Sometimes we just like to look at things even if we don’t understand them. I think that’s OK. I have seen other people’s poem monsters and know that they belong to a tribe that doesn’t belong. Just not mainstream, you know, but they don’t hurt anyone, and always wait so patiently for someone to pick them up and give them a weigh on the hands.

Statistically speaking if you keep writing poems you are bound to create some poem monsters. That’s when you know you’ve stepped through a threshold into the unknown and it is WONDERful!

Watcha Lookin At?

Where do I put my eyes? In my pocket? Is the acceptable manner to look away stone-faced, pretending the other’s presence don’t exist? The only friend is the one on your cell phone. The rest of the world, horseshit. And when horseshit gazes at you absentmindedly while waiting for the 54 bus at a lonely stop you snap “What the FUCK are you lookin at?”

I’m back in the United States—California—San Francisco—the Excelsior—home. My wandering eyes need to be restrained, my heart needs to turn cold and my smile tuck away. I’m in the city of wind where the air can explode if I’m not careful and the story of a friend dodging bullets on Mission Street I carry it in my mind. Home is a place that no one needs to say welcome. Home is a place where you help yourself. Home is a place where in your loneliness and fury strike out at your fellow inhabitant. It is true, I’m home.

Ensouled

Ensouled—a beautiful word—to endow with a soul. If there is such a voice that is ensouled, it is Carlos Ramirez’s. We partnered again tonight for a tribute to Langston Hughes at the Red Poppy Art House. Carlos was hyped up before the show and had trouble containing his excitement. Soon as the spotlights turned on he was afire. His white mane, his smiling eyes, his dancing feet tapped and stomped and bounced and took him within inches of the audience. He sang songs set to the words of Hughes in his baritone voice that could easily drop down to the bass and race up to the tenor register.

“I felt an immediate affinity to Langston Hughes’ poetry when I first read them.” Carlos told me with his wide child-like smile. “They are so singable.”

April Rain, Sun Song, Mother to Child, Daybreak in Alabama, Red Clay Blues…the audience and I were in turn ensouled by Carlos in this December MAPP* night.

*Mission Arts & Performance Project

Graceful Departure

Jehanah painting — Painting by Chris Trian

Even though photos of Jehanah Wedgwood are still hanging on the wall at the Sacred Grounds Cafe, I felt that she had truly departed. Memories live in those who have known her, her poetry, and the resemblance on her children’s faces. It has been a year since her death. The poetry reading series has assumed a different personality—light, humorous, at times rowdy—that of our host, Dan Brady’s.

Her presence used to fill the room, even long after she was gone. Like air, it dissipated without our knowing each time the cafe door opened and closed. I realized Sacred Grounds has regenerated. A whole new me ready to go again.* The old Druidess has let it to be so. We must remember to celebrate the new.

*Old Druidess by Jehanah Wedgwood.

The Deliverer

The version on youtube of TS Eliot reading his own work, The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock, is painfully uninteresting. There are a few other interpretations by various people. Only one, a young, high-pitched voice, has the kind of edginess I imagine J Alfred to be; but the verses are chopped up by an infantile video interpretation.

It doesn’t take much to turn a great dramatic monologue into a bore, but it does take intention and integrity of the deliverer to bring out the essence of a poem. Last night at the Sacred Grounds we had such a treat, when the featured poet Greg Pond received a standing ovation (a rarity) after his reading.

Besides his own poems, Greg chose to present the work of his friends. He clearly worked on each poem to bring out the drama and music. Greg personified the romance of Steve Mackin, the satire of Garrett Murphy, the mysticism of Jehanah Wedgwood, and the angst of Don Brennan. He read our poems better than we have read them. We were all giddy, after discovering a “side” of our poems that we had never imagined. We swore to improve ourselves as we chattered non-stop like school children, walking out into the night.

Dead Poet Speaks

The page said, “Read me.”

I read.

“No,” it said, “READ.”

Read. Meaning, out loud?

“Yes. READ OUT LOUD.”

So I did, sitting in my car parked on a Berkeley sidewalk, I read Robert Duncan’s introduction to his book of poems, Bending the Bow, out loud. His words flowed out of my mouth. His thoughts on the Vietnam War, the reader, equilibration… elegant and moving. He wrote his work to be read, out loud.

I first came across Robert Duncan’s name when I was leafing through Jack Foley’s Visions and Affiliations, A California Literary Time Line Part I. Duncan called his poems “passages”. Recently Jack gave me Bending the Bow. “You have to read Duncan.” He said.

Duncan wants me to hear the music of his work. I looked out to the bright winter sky. Yellowing leaves scattered about by the order of the breeze . Duncan might be just outside my window tapping the rhythms with his fingers. Without a physical body he managed to speak through another’s mouth and lived again.

Suddenly There Is Energy

“What’s Black Friday?” My father asked.

“I guess it has something to do with tenting in parking lots for bargains.” I replied.

Suddenly there is a burst of energy. Everyone is moving in a purposeful way. The bells are jingling on street corners and Christmas music can be heard from downtown to Chinatown. The gift-giving season has kick-started.

My piano student walks into her lesson bleary-eyed. She stood in line at some shop five in the morning. I don’t bother to ask if she has practiced.

Bargain means buying things that you don’t really need but feel good spending the money. Oh, but I’m being cynical! It’s the American culture (since when has it become a culture?), and if you have fun being part of the mob then why not?

Photo credit: The Inquisitr