Category Archives: poetry

All the men die unjustly.

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“The Iliad has no “truth” in it, no facts not clothed in a mystical and sacramental glory. Rather, it is theophany in dark relief. The hearer of the Iliad becomes Panaghia [Mary] at the foot of the cross, gazing upon Christ’s unjust crucifixion. For the fact is that all the men in the Iliad die unjustly, Simone Weil tells us, in the sense that they are all trapped within the same world of blind might where they must kill or be killed. And the poetry, the language, and the spirituality of the Iliad are all superb.”

-Timothy Patitsas

Jonathan Shay

Reading The Iliad requires of me a certain focus of mind that I don’t always have, which is why it’s taking a while. I listen to the audio version of the Fagles translation, and I have the same in the print edition, which I like better. I am listening to Elizabeth Vandiver’s Teaching Company series of lectures, and I read Rosemary Sutcliff’s retelling for children, Black Ships Before Troy.

But the first impetus for this recent interest probably came from Timothy Patitsas, by way of his book The Ethics of Beauty, which in turn was prompted by his reading of Jonathan Shay’s Achilles in Vietnam. On the occasion of Veterans Day, Patitsas has shared on his Substack site an excerpt from the introduction to his own book, which relates how a study of Homer is meaningful for soldiers in this modern era. Another excerpt from his post:

“That act of listening to the recitation of the Iliad from someone who knew it by heart over days or weeks worked because it took place in a communal setting among other veterans and it showed a kind of universal compassion to all the soldiers equally. Since in the Iliad there are no good guys or bad guys, its performance helps you to renounce resentment and villainization….  the wind of hate (the spiritual shock of realizing that another human being hates you enough to want to kill you) is itself the villain. It is a force and everyone is the victim of the empire of naked force.”

You can read the whole Substack piece here: “How The Iliad Heals”

This spectacle of leaves.

poetry,

Last week I drove across the county to a memorial service for a dear friend. This was in the valley where our growing family lived for about seventeen years, and where my late husband worked for most of his career. The journey was through hills and valleys, vineyards and oak forests, where the early rains have brought out the most gorgeous colors of the season. In my town the Chinese Pistache trees are making the biggest splashes right now, but over there a wide assortment of sizes and shapes of venerable trees, and sloped vineyards of several wine grape varietals, brightened the landscape with a rich palette. So many beautiful sights nourished my heart! But in the end, it was a remembrance from my own garden that seemed to best illustrate this poem.

NOVEMBER

It is an old drama
this disappearance of the leaves,
this seeming death

of the landscape.
In a later scene,
or earlier,
the trees like gnarled magicians
produce handkerchiefs
of leaves
out of empty branches.

And we watch.
We are like children
at this spectacle
of leaves,
as if one day we too
will open the wooden doors
of our coffins
and come out smiling
and bowing
all over again.

~ Linda Pastan, born 1932, American poet

Were I a molecule.

humanity, poetry, , ,

 

 

 

 

 

YES

Were I a molecule, I’d make my home
Within the vast halls of a solid stone,
Pass through magnetic fields, ascend my throne
And rule the echoes, permanent, alone,

And if I were a particle of light,
I’d sear my burrow through the velvet night,
With perfect elegance, prismatic might,
And skewer darkness. Such would be my right,

But I am merely human. Sinew. Skin.
Too large to hide—instead I’m hid within.
A little righteousness. A little sin.
One little word that flutters out and in.

-Paul J. Pastor

(Thanks to Hearth and Field)

Rembrandt, St. Jerome Kneeling in Prayer

His ornaments are fruits.

bees, my garden, poetry, , , , , , ,

I saw that Hunter’s Moon the night before it was full, then out my bedroom window the next morning as it was near to setting, and again last night at its max. I got to feeling very familiar with that lovely Hunter. This was the view from my front yard to the east:

feijoa fruit leather

After a few drops of rain, we are back to mostly clear skies, with cool mornings and pleasant afternoons. The feijoas keep ripening, and I discovered that I don’t have to wait for them to fall, to know if they are ripe. Many of them are so near to falling, they come off at the merest touch, so I’ve taken to touch-testing them.

I read more about the feijoa on websites in New Zealand, where it is considered by many to be the unofficial national fruit, and it’s common to have one or several trees in your back yard. People might harvest pounds and pounds of feijoas (down there they don’t call them pineapple guavas) and eat them in many ways during the winter. They don’t like to throw away the skins, even after they have scooped the flesh out. If compared to the lemon peel, they say it has a “floral and eucalyptus-tinged green note (from its myrtle family) that lemons lack.” Its tartness has been described as less intense than that of lemons, “a blend of citrus peel and green apple skin.” Eating the whole package together sets my taste buds to ricocheting wildly.

For more than a year, off and on in the briefest of spurts, I have worked at memorizing the “stanza of the month” of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Poet’s Calendar”; there are twelve verses, one for each month. I even got so far as writing a few in one of these little booklets that are handy to take on walks. This afternoon I wanted to read poetry, but I also wanted to wander under those blue skies, so after making sure the autumnal stanzas had been added to the Mini Composition Book, I headed out the door. My phone’s battery was nearly dead, so I left it at home, and was blessedly without the option to take pictures.

American Tulip Tree

I had ignored this poem through several months, but today I tackled the October and November parts as I walked, crunching acorns, along the paths and sidewalks where in some places the scent of baking redwood needles came up from the ground, and in other places leaves lay waiting there for me to notice and pick them up.

October

My ornaments are fruits; my garments leaves,
  Woven like cloth of gold, and crimson dyed;
I do not boast the harvesting of sheaves,
  O’er orchards and o’er vineyards I preside.
Though on the frigid Scorpion I ride,
  The dreamy air is full, and overflows
With tender memories of the summer-tide,
  And mingled voices of the doves and crows. 

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In “The Poet’s Calendar” all but one of the months of the year are characterized by an astronomical constellation and/or a mythological figure that Longfellow ties into the weather and agricultural customs of the season. Was it the perfect weather of this afternoon that made it easy to learn these few lines? Or maybe only the particular, evocative images he sketches. I hope my memorization project will be a little less sporadic from now on, so that my own “tender memories” might be enriched by more Poems Along the Paths.

My neighbor’s Fuyu persimmon tree is certainly decorated beautifully, its whole self an ornament to our street. And it might be that same front yard where I saw a lone honeybee drinking at a rosemary bush. The poor thing seemed to be finding most of the flowers empty, and moved quickly on….

A few roses hang on to the tall hedge along the path. I hope the bushes can let go of summer pretty soon and enjoy a nice rest in dormancy for at least a few months. I’m looking forward to some of that myself — but not while it is still October!