“Vocation” first appeared in 32 Poems. Here it’s read in a video with jazz-inspired music in the background.
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The newest book of all is the one living in your mind. Do you put it on paper? Do you speak it out loud only at night? Do you whisper it to the trees?
Putting the words on paper can be scary, thrilling, aggravating.
Are you writing your second book? They ask. Who asks? Who are “they”?
They. They are always out there having a margarita and giving advice.
Yes, I do have a second book. A book-in-waiting. A book-in-writing. Or revising.
I want my revision to be radical. I don’t know if it needs to be radical. All I know is to follow instinct. Sometimes, I put this instinct into words for others. That becomes teaching.
Where does instinct from from? Years of practice. I’ve practiced for decades. I’m not a guru though. I’m a student. I learn something new every time I meet that blank page. I will always choose to be a student.
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The previous post was post number 1,000. This is post 1,001. Wow.
I’m writing this to tell you I am taking myself less seriously. Since less is more, I am taking myself more seriously as well.
If you would like to join me, I would like the company. We can take ourselves more or less seriously together or be seriously less or more.
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Did I tell you my resolution for 2010? My resolution contains two words.
Why is she talking about New Year’s resolutions in March? For Pete’s sake, haven’t we forgotten those by now? Can’t we talk about painting our skin green for St. Patrick’s Day?
Those two words follow me like devoted dogs. Of course, I am allergic to dogs. Dogs make me sneeze. Perhaps, the two words are more like devoted apples. I like apples. They stay put and never pee on the carpet. The two words this year: Quit Everything. Last year’s was: Less Sh..Stuff.
Yesterday, I decided it was easier on my mind to believe in magic. This was after I decided to quit my addiction to making sense 100% of the time. Making sense 100% of the time keeps me from being creative. Yes, I believe in magic — and miracles. Magic is how my husband leaves a backpack in a car, which makes us drive all over the state of Florida, which makes us end up in a restaurant in a town where we should not have been, which makes me run into someone I have not seen in 20 years. That is the magic I mean.
Is that crazy? Call in the guys in white coats, please. I will serve them white cookies with chocolate chips and chocolate chops.
Just when I think I’m original, I learn I’m not. A guy named Dean blogs on quitting. Dean Dwyer quit a lot: jobs, cars, coffee.
I’ve quit worrying and long commutes.
I quit to make space.
Once I started carving out space, I had to keep going. Quitting may be addictive. I can take no responsibility for the magic that happens once you quit.
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They asked me how I organized my book, what am I reading, how do I balance mothering and writing. One asked about the syntax of my poems. They thought I had answers.
I was back in Iowa. Back to the expanse of white and at the end of 80 days of snow coverage. The deer stood hungry on the hills. The car crept past the muffler factory.
1. There is no balance. Everything comes at once. Stay present to what’s around you.
2. What am I reading? This is the perfect question to wipe my brain clean as a clean chalkboard. I should use this question on myself when I want peace and complete emptiness of mind. I have read The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker. He mentions living poets by name in a novel. That seems to break a rule. I don’t know which rule. But good for him. I read Ignore Everybody by a man who doodles on business cards for a living. I read the Drake University student magazine (it’s well designed) and read of Guerilla Gardeners who plant flowers on public property in the middle of the night. Planting a flower on public property without permission is technically a crime. I do not know if these gardeners ever doodle. I read of someone shooting people at the Pentagon. I read Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath. I read about Vitamin D in Nutrition Action Newsletter.
3. I organized my book by instinct. One could say it’s geographically organized. One could say whatever they would like. One could say it’s not organized at all.
4. I go by feel. I learn rules. I forget them. I mess the rules up. The wrong words fire from my brain, and I write anyway. I revise.
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In addition to his work as a diagnostic radiologist specializing in nuclear medicine, Amit Majmudar is a poet. We published “American Amorobiotics, Inc.” in 32 Poems, and I’ve followed his work ever since. He’s also been published in POETRY and New England Review.
His book, Zero Degrees, Zero Degrees, was published by Northwestern University Press. About the book, they say:
0° , 0° is where the equator and prime meridian cross, but it is also, in Amit Majmudar’s poetic cartography, “the one True Cross, the rood’s wood warped and tacked / pole to pole.” Unlikely intersections lie at the heart of Amit Majmudar’s first collection of poetry. Mythical, biblical, political, and scientific allusion thrive side by side, inspiring surprise and wonder. Majmudar’s training as a medical doctor is clearly at work as he is able to balance poetic forms requiring surgical precision—including the exceedingly difficult ghazal—with warmth and compassion for the world. Majmudar understands suffering on the large scale and the small, whether he is speaking up for the biblical character Job and “answering the whirlwind,” or tallying the human cost of war at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Instructions to an Artisan
Into the rood wood, where the grain’s current splits
around the stones of its knots, carve eyelashes and eyelids.
Dye the knots, too—indigo, ink-black, vermillion
irises. These will be his eyes, always open, willing
themselves not to close when dust rises or sweat falls,
eyes witnessing, dimly, the eclipse that shawls
the shuddering hill, Jerusalem’s naked shoulder.
The body itself? From a wick that still whiffs of smolder,
wax, because wax sloughs a smooth skein on the fingers just
below sensation’s threshold. Prop the cross
upright and let the tear-hot wax trickle, slow, clot, taper
into a torso, thighs, calves, feet. Of Gideon Bible paper,
thinner than skin, cut him his scrap of cloth; embed
iron shavings in his forehead,
and, as the wax cools, scrape the rust off an old fuel can
to salt the whole wound that is the man.
Cry, if you feel like crying, and if no one else is there.
Then set it on the counter with your other wares.
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For a week, we had too many snowflakes and not enough sunsets. This blizzard was called Snowpocalypse, Snowmageddon, and Snoverkill. Eventually, it was called SnOMG.
What’s the lesson from four feet of snow? The lesson might be you’ll never have 100% balance. You’ll always have one less sunset than you’d like to have. The lesson might be enjoy what you have. Perhaps the lesson is go with what is.
I don’t know. I’m a poet and not a Zen Buddhist priest although I may play a Zen Buddhist priest on TV.
Since the back of my house faces west and we’re on a hill and nothing blocks the view, we see stunning sunsets. When the dust particles went crazy in Russia, we had stunning sunsets. When nothing happened at all, we had stunning sunsets. I don’t have to do a think to make the sunset happen. I get to be.
I am so fortunate — when not watching a tree crashing towards the kitchen window — to see a sunset that reminds me of one good reason to breathe.
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First, I am wondering if the large white thing behind me in this photo is a beached whale or a fallen tree. Perhaps it is a bleached wall? I won’t know for certain until the snow disappears.
If it IS a tree, I am curious what Ms. Manners would say if I shove it back into the neighbor’s yard. Isn’t it enough that their tree knocked my fence down? Must insult be added to injury in requiring me to remove it?
I’m happy to say I’ve written fourteen poems in fourteen days. I have sixteen more to go for the 30 Days of Poetry Challenge.
What else, you ask? What more could you want from this blog post?
Well, if you insist.
I shoveled 150-250 lbs of snow from my property. I am taking seventeen ibuprofen and eating a house.
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I joined a group of poets to write 30 poems in 30 days. Some of us have gathered together before — in a virtual way — to cheer each other on (threaten? cajole? prod? encourage? shame?) to write poetry.
In the old days, I used to think being a professor was the way to artistic happiness. I thought this because one had the summers off and, ideally, everyone would support the artistic work. This idea is also discussed in Ignore Everybody (that link will give you 25% of the book for free).
However, I’ve grown, matured, and wised up. Being a teacher is like any other job in that it has its ups and downs, challening people, fantastic people, headaches, and joys.
No matter what “work” we choose, there’s going to be that “money” side. The Ignore Everybody author points out even John Travolta has to make the cheesy movies so he has money to make the cool movies.
I will not tell anyone here “to shine.”
What I will do here is suggest you try this macaroni and cheese recipe made with carrots. I haven’t tried it, yet I will soon. If you get to it before me, let me know what you think.
Also, I will tell you to read that book up above.
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