The hippo cycle

While preparing for my upcoming move, I discovered a box of 3.5-inch disks filled with writings from my high school and college years. I hope to perform some of the poetry at a future Kibbutz Coffeehouse, but for the moment I have to be content with posting the choicest bits right here. And what could be choicer than my hippo cycle? I still remember the night I started working on it: My parents told me dinner was ready, but I couldn't tear myself away from the computer. I miss that creative intensity and the sense of playfulness that, almost paradoxically, accompanied it. Finding these 15-year-old relics also reminded me of an interview Sasha Frere-Jones did several years back with Fiona Apple, in which she recalled something very similar:

FA: I used to write stories and stuff when I was in my room. I constantly think about this time. This makes me so sad in a certain way. I don’t know why I always reference this moment. I can remember sitting at my desk in my room, up at my mom’s house. And I remember my mom calling me for dinner over and over and over again, and me saying, “Wait, wait, wait,” because I was writing a story. I made up a story, and I was writing this twenty-page story. It was great, and I was finishing it up and I wasn’t going to leave until I was finished because I was really enjoying writing the story. I always remember that: I wasn’t going to go and eat dinner because I was finishing writing a story.

SFJ: Why is that sad?

FA: Because I wouldn’t do that now. Because I wouldn’t even start a story, let alone not go to dinner because I was finishing it.

SFJ: I think you’re being a little hard on yourself.

FA: That’s my job. Jesus.

Naturally, when I read that interview, it resonated deeply with me. It's not always clear how we go from creative dervishes to people who can't be bothered to start a story, but it's worth thinking about. Not so we can beat ourselves up, but so we can try to reclaim even a portion of what we had: that eagerness to make something new, to experiment, to play. And now, without further ado, the hippo cycle:

An Ode to Hippos Everywhere

The hippo's a majestic beast
In ev'ry shape and way,
Yet still there seems some ignorance
About its life and play.

The hippo's gray (we all know that),
And rather large and round.
Still, some of us (I won't name names)
Don't know where he is found.

The hippomus mammalius lives not in your backyard.
He dwells in rivers, swamps, and lakes,
And life is rather hard
For something so filled up with lard.

Indeed, proceed, hunt hippos!
(With camaras, not guns)
Don't let a hippo flatten you, however:
They weigh tons!

To conclude my lesson to
You readers mid-sized, large, and small,
I'll admit I don't know much
about the hippo-beast at all!

Hippo Limericks

There once lived a hippo from Dover,
Whose lifestyle seemed quite incomplete.
Legend says he aspired
To opera, was fired,
And ended up out on the street.

There once lived a hippo from Texas,
Who chased endlessly after her tail.
After years of hard work,
With a sigh and a smirk,
She succeeded, and then posted bail.

2009 in haiku

This afternoon, KUOW challenged listeners to summarize their experience of 2009 in haiku form. Here's mine:

A student again;
in life, too, I still require
much education.

This is not a long, reflective post

I haven't been writing those for a while. Variety of reasons. I do want to get back to them, but in the meantime I've tried to post little things I've found around the Internet. And I hope to feature more old poems -- the ones I'm willing to share.

I have a new writing goal: Send poems to trusted fellow writers, get feedback, and read at Coffeehouse in August. I've found myself writing new poems lately from a place of need, i.e. "I'm going slightly crazy and I need to get this out in a brief, relatively unstructured form that forgives vagueness, at least in the first draft." So I'll maybe start posting those. I read other people's blogs and see what personal stuff they reveal -- Sasha and Dane come immediately to mind -- and I'm inspired and a little ashamed that I don't do the same.

There's the 21st-century dilemma of how much to make public, since your boss or mother or friends or ex might be reading what you write, but other bloggers seem to find that fine line pretty consistently. I thought I was running a slight risk when I wrote about going, and staying, on Lexapro, but there's stuff that's a whole lot more personal than that. And maybe by posting poems I can bring some of it to light.

One more time-capsule poem

I wrote this one in 1998, as a creative writing major at Oberlin. My mother uses it in the introduction of her soon-to-be-published memoir, (Re)vision of a Life: My Mother’s Holocaust Story.

KADDISH

a welling up of voices,
sorrowed, pious
and heavy with deference

these are
the dizzying heights
of mourning, of seeking out
the unanswerable questions
and answering them once more

this is
how He would have us weep,
how the order of things must be,
how lives at their end
are marked by narrow grooves
worn into the Rock of Ages

raised on the odor
of old pine pews,
the child finds his place
in the Holy Ark, his lullabies
the swelling hymns and distant,
hollow voices of the dead

And here's a passage from my mother's book:

I am the only child of Holocaust survivors. As is the case with most of the second generation, I am one of very few of our family members left in the world. I never knew my grandparents or a host of other relatives who could have filled my bank of memories and experiences while growing up. Instead, they were photographs to me—and stories. I always felt different in that regard as a child, except when I was around others who had suffered similar losses even before they were born. My recollection of childhood memories is incomplete, but the Leitmotif is certainly the Holocaust. My mother would say with both grief and pride: “I am from the Holocaust. I am the survivor, the only one left from my big family.” And now my son Neal and I are the only ones left from her side of the family.

Time-capsule poetry

Sasha's mom recently ported some old documents to a new computer, and she found e-mails I'd sent Sasha back in 1996. At the time, Sasha ran a site called The Sweetest Cherry that published original poetry, and two of the e-mails contained poems from my 17-year-old self. I herewith republish them, noting only that the first won an award and the second is almost unbearably pretentious in the way that only teenage poetry can be.

ALMOST TOGETHER

If you'll stroke my coals
With my favorite feather
I'll make us both
A cup of tea
We'll drink it like the Japanese
Slurping politely
I'll recline
You'll bite my knees

You'll wear olives
On your index fingers
I'll put bagpipes
On the stereo
Then we'll lie there
Almost together
The wolves will howl
And the snow will snow

EXECUTIONER'S LAMENT

Christened in Red Dye 40
I was, first of my generation
To be initiated crimson
Into life. And since that day
I've felt a deep vermilion shadow
Following me. Confessed, I have,
To many an analyst
My bloody torment:
Swathed in gory vividness,
I enter offices, shake hands,
And lie on couches,
Only to discover
Through their words of numb compassion
That the little blood my body holds
Must be content to hang in clouds
Around me, changing breath and love
And rest into ordeals of suffocation.
My veins lie idle,
I feel no pulsing in my breast,
And I am nebulous in the mirror glass.

John Updike teaches from beyond the grave

Reading The New Yorker's artful collection of excerpts from the late author's oeuvre is like taking a tiny master class. From a droll poem about neutrinos (which in 1960 were a hot topic) to the sensuality and unnerving suspense of "Elsie by Starlight" (2004), the magazine's tribute effectively demonstrates to Updike neophytes why he's so widely celebrated.

As a writer, I appreciate the way this assortment hopscotches from fiction to poetry, then to memoir, and back to fiction, with a few book reviews tossed in for good measure. It's an impressive display of Updike's versatility, but it's also inspiring, since he makes genre-hopping look tremendously fun and rewarding. Also well worth a look: Adam Gopnik's lovely obituary, and Roger Angell's even lovelier one. The first makes me want to read Updike; the second makes me want to write fiction.

On an equally vital cultural note: the stories behind various Muppets, courtesy of CNN.com (by way of Kelly).

Snow!

Since it's a Red Blue Green tradition to celebrate the season's first snow with pictures, a poem, and an iTunes mix, here's this year's crop. First, the photos:



Next, a poem by Mary Oliver:

FIRST SNOW

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles; nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain-not a single
answer has been found-
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.

And, finally, an (edited) iTunes mix, the result of using "snow" as the search term:

1. Snow Crush Killing Song -- The Mountain Goats
2. Velvet Snow -- Kings of Leon
3. Snow Cherries From France -- Tori Amos
4. Snow (Hey Oh) -- Red Hot Chili Peppers
5. Angel in the Snow -- Elliott Smith
6. Snow Camping -- Laura Veirs
7. Snow Lion -- Readymade FC feat. Feist
8. 20 Years Of Snow -- Regina Spektor
9. Snow On The Sahara -- Anggun
10. Snow -- Loreena McKennitt
11. Snowden -- Doves
12. Snow On The Sahara -- Stanford University Harmonics
13. Snow Is Gone -- Josh Ritter
14. Snowflake Music -- Mark Mothersbaugh

Actually, since that's a partial repeat of last year, here's a "winter" mix to grow on:

1. Faded From The Winter -- Iron & Wine
2. The Winter Solstice -- Sufjan Stevens
3. Wait For The Wintertime -- Yeasayer
4. Winter Wonderland -- Aimee Mann
5. Winter -- Tori Amos
6. Winter Is Gone -- Nick Drake
7. In Winter Still -- Dot Allison
8. In The Bleak Mid-Winter -- Shawn Colvin
9. Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind -- Barenaked Ladies
10. The Winter Song -- Eisley
11. Dead Of Winter -- Eels
12. Summer Dress 1 (All Her Winter Clothes) -- Plus/Minus

Rain!

A random rain poem, by Shel Silverstein:

RAIN

I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand--
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.

A rain mix, courtesy of iTunes:

1. "Early Morning Rain" -- Eva Cassidy
2. "Fire and Rain" -- James Taylor
3. "Why Does It Always Rain On Me?" -- Travis
4. "Rainfall" -- Apples in Stereo
5. "Rainy Day Women #12 & #35" -- Bob Dylan
6. "And It Rained All Night" -- Thom Yorke
7. "Rain Dogs" -- Tom Waits
8. "Beauty of the Rain" -- Dar Williams
9. "Raining in Baltimore" -- Counting Crows
10. "Red Rain" -- The White Stripes
11. "Rainy Day" -- Guster
12. "As the Rain" -- Jeb Loy Nichols
13. "Rain" -- Patty Griffin
14. "So. Central Rain" -- R.E.M.
15. "Only Happy When It Rains" -- Garbage
16. "Rain City" -- Turin Brakes
17. "The Rain Falls and the Sky Shudders" -- Moby
18. "Rainslicker" -- Josh Ritter
19. "I Think It's Going to Rain Today" -- Randy Newman

Snow!

Here's a random snow poem by Robert Frost (thanks, Google):

DUST OF SNOW

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

And here's the playlist iTunes gave me when I used "snow" as a search term:

1. "Angel in the Snow" -- Elliott Smith
2. "Snow Camping" -- Laura Veirs
3. "Snow Lion" -- Readymade FC featuring Feist
4. "20 Years of Snow" -- Regina Spektor
5. "Snow on the Sahara" -- Anggun
6. "Snow" -- Loreena McKennitt
7. "Snow is Gone" -- Josh Ritter
8. "Snowflake Music" -- Mark Mothersbaugh