FENCES

In “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost concludes a short poem with the often-quoted line, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Today, I thought of Frost’s poem as I looked out at our new cedar fence that divides our yard and the backyard of a new neighbor who lives on one side of our home in New Iberia, Louisiana. On the opposite side of our yard, I look out at a sagging, gray-colored, older fence, one that leans toward our drive, and which I prefer because it reminds me of the neighbor who planted satsuma trees on his side of the fence and from which we have always plucked overhanging fruit.

This good neighbor died of pancreatic cancer several decades ago. He was an amiable man who came over, at no one’s request, and raked our entire front yard following a major Louisiana hurricane. He verged on mute because he performed the task quietly, then returned to his side of the fence as if he had tended to the grooming of his own yard. I never knew anything about this neighbor’s lineage, but when satsumas form and hang over his old fence, in my mind I see a face that looks almost Native American.

He had hair the color of the ravens that nest in a tree beside his former home, a sallow complexion (perhaps caused by his disease) but he was a handsome, lonely looking fellow (although he had a wife and three young children). When I remember this man who spontaneously performed small tasks in my yard, I think of Cherokee people I had seen near Silva, North Carolina, persons whose appearance resembled the quiet neighbor, who lived and continue to live  in harmony with nature, have kind hearts, and are known as wonder workers.


 

 

Our new cedar fence on the opposite side of our home divides us from a dog yard surrounded by a flimsy wire fence that two hounds push down if they’re roaming around outside and from which they could leap over and into our yard at one time but can no longer scale because of our newly-built tall cedar one. The cedar fence is handsome and was expensive to erect, but it isn’t a wall that inspires sentiment like the old sagging fence on the other side of our drive— one that brings up cogent memories within me — those of the kind-hearted neighbor who embodied Frost’s line, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

 

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan

 

STONE WALL

Stone Fence at Shaker Village

Robert Frost touted the value of walls or fences when he penned the famous lines, “good fences make good neighbors.” He spoke of the fences built in New England, but the Appalachians built more good fences of dry stone walls in central Kentucky than anywhere else in the U.S. We discovered a gracious plenty when we recently visited Berea and surrounding towns in the Blue Grass area of this state.

These beautiful old walls border pasture land along the curving, rolling hills near Danville and Lancaster, Kentucky. Barns painted black and bearing quilt designs on their faces loomed in the background and formed a weird contrast of color to our idea that all barns should be painted red.

During the 18th century, stone walls in Kentucky were built by Irish and Scottish immigrants who later taught black slaves to lay them freehanded with no mortar, and the walls cover mile after mile of Blue Grass country — ageless walls hewed from rock formations and quarried to create sturdy enclosures. Something about their timeless appearance inspired a feeling of safety in me. We weren’t surprised to discover more of the walls at Shaker Village in Pleasant Hill that apocrypha reports surround forty miles of the village.

To better understand the formations from which stone was extracted for the many walls throughout the Kentucky countryside, I purchased a book about geological formations on Kindle but got lost in the chapter about Geologic Time. Unlike Louisiana geologic history, the history of beautiful rock formations in Kentucky hasn't been determined by information supplied from oil drilling. I did learn that the deposits of heavy minerals during the Citronelle formation were formed during the Pliocene and are the likely source of stones for fences. Vickie Sullivan, our intrepid photographer, captured these stone walls in shot after shot but complained about the light working against photographing their natural beauty.

Stonemasons aren’t plentiful in Blue Grass country today, but a Dry Stone Conservancy near Lexington, Kentucky has a mission of preserving dry stone structures and trains artisans in the building and maintenance of these “good fences.” Their mission perhaps validates Frost’s enigmatic line about good fences making good neighbors, and I think the poet probably meant that such structures imply a mutually agreed upon and shared responsibility of upkeep. However, his “Mending Wall” has been the subject of many interpretations that question the integrity of so-called “walls.” A more practical interpretation could be that builders of these walls wanted to keep livestock from wandering away from home.

THE SOUND OF ONE HAND CLAPPING

Although I try to “keep up,” I confess to being somewhat of a Luddite, often lagging way behind  contemporary social customs, and last week-end I was made more aware of my age when I went up to Grand Coteau, Louisiana to hear poets Darrell Bourque, Patricia Smith, and Allison Joseph read at an annual Festival of Words event. The Chicory’s Coffee and Cafe buzzed with poetry lovers, teachers, and students interested in literary events. We chose a table at the back of the room where young people from Baton Rouge were recognized for traveling some distance to hear the poets perform.

About midway through the second reading, I began to hear fingers snapping and wondered about the disruption. Instead of abating, the students near me continued to snap when they identified with a particularly arresting verse or line they heard. For me, the sound was distracting, and when I got home, I began to research the pros and cons of finger snapping at public events.

It seems that I am indeed way behind the times. Although I was in my teens and early twenties at the time of the beatnik revolution, I knew nothing about finger snapping that went on at poetry events, had read nothing about the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village where finger snapping at poetry readings was in vogue. Of course, the finger snapping was mainly a survival action for poets because the old Gaslight Cafe was located beneath apartment dwellers who objected to the traditional hand clapping type of applause that wafted upstairs and kept them awake. 

Finger snapping, rather than clapping, was also a custom in the Roman Empire, and there are pages and pages of justifications for this custom in the classroom, in poetry slams, and during political speeches — snapping instead of clapping is a quieter demonstration of support and appreciation. I might add that this form of applause can also signal a kind of political activism. Snapping fingers is very alive and well in college cultures across the nation and abroad in countries like Great Britain.

As a Luddite, I was brought up to regard finger snapping as a rude gesture that indicated an impatient family member or friend who wanted me to serve them in some way pronto! When I visited in Mexico several summers, I was told to summon waiters in restaurants by snapping my fingers, but I never could bring myself to do it (and I can actually snap my fingers very well, even now with ailing nerves in my left hand). 

One writer has complained that finger snapping turns readings into competitions for poets to create more and more emotional dramas in their poetry, but this writer seemed to be in a minority in the finger-snapping world. For me, the constant finger snapping at the Festival of Words broke into my listening mood, and I reckon I wouldn’t have been a very good beatnik poet although I was writing heavy emotional lyrics in the 50’s. I know that when I do a reading now, I appreciate healthy hand clapping at the end of the poetry share, and I think I’d be greatly distracted if the sound of one hand snapping broke into the reading of a line or verse.

And having said all of this, I do appreciate that young people are listening to contemporary bards. Perhaps the interruptions indicate that which Robert Frost conveyed when he said that “permanence in poetry as in love is perceived instantly…the proof of a poem is not that we have never forgotten it, but we knew at the [sound] of it, we never could forget it.” And so, I might conclude, perhaps he would’ve approved of snapping our fingers at once when we heard a great line! 

Artwork by me.

NEXT IN LINE

Next in Line

A definition of “philosophical” I once read is: “exploration of what the game is about.” Another definition describes the word as meaning that local concerns are trivial in the light of more profound truths. As I read Pinyon Publishing’s latest poet, Annette Barnes, who was a former professor of philosophy, these definitions seem to fit her apprehensions of our time on earth.

The lead poem in this volume, “What We Want,” is one that reflects a certain detachment while the poet thinks through issues facing humans “doing what they want,” — issues of power, non-sharing, ruthlessness, war… “like animals on a short leash who/discover the leash is gone and suddenly take off,/thinking freedom’s free”… However, she concludes with a beautiful resolution: “the view from up here swarms with light the way/bees pulse a hive, but you must climb up before/you can hear the souls of the fallen rise.”

Barnes isn’t dispassionate in her observations about ordinary life and attempts to see things from every angle as she explores the “Imperfections of Everyday Life,” bringing the trivial to higher thought as “Boys in red caps and jackets kick/a soccer ball, tread on the daffodils…” To me, this poem exemplifies the carelessness of contemporary living, “the women to her left talk[ing]/through the mid-week matinee, tak[ing] no notice of attempts/to quiet them…” I hear echoes of W.H. Auden in the lines: “Living on a planet whose core of/molten rock erupts infrequently/allows us to be careless.” To some readers, she may seem to be dispassionate in the face of adverse conditions but in the spirit of a true philosopher, her love of wisdom overrides difficult ordinary situations.

Comic relief comes through a wry poem entitled “The Cat,” who “when annoyed/wags her tail/like a spinster’s finger…a Julia Child/about food/spends a night/licking Brie/Learns only what she wants…doesn’t learn to fetch,/carries her weapons concealed.” Another tongue-in-cheek concerns “Religion” in which Barnes explores the number three, writing that because she lived at three three three, “the Trinity appealed to me./Jesus crucified, a perfidy/that hides Judas made reality,/the Virgin birth, anomaly,/the Resurrection, mystery,/three, distant in unity,/what more ask of Divinity?”

One of her poems reminded me of the poet Billy Collins, again comic relief overcoming the objective of profundity. It’s entitled “Topics For A Book Club Discussion (Recommended for ages six and above).” Number 4. within the poem features Humpty Dumpty: “Was Humpty Dumpty/a. a king/b. a cannon/c. an egg./Did Humpty Dumpty merit the attention/of so many of the King’s men?/Discuss how one should allocate emergency/relief resources.” Barnes also offers discussion topics for “Little Miss Muffet,” “Sing a Song of Six Pence,” and “Old King Cole,” in a highly amusing take on nursery rhymes.

Barnes’ end poem, “Elsewhere” exemplifies Robert Frost”s assessment of good poetry: “A poem should begin in delight and end in wisdom.” She writes that “A blackbird sips rain/water from the hydrangea’s saucer, chirping/between sips. Elsewhere lovers pant between/kisses, butterflies sip tortoise tears and runners/reach finish lines. No bombs go off, no one dies."

In eighty pages of poetry Barnes succeeds in creating direct expressions of profound truths, wisdom that flashes like polished gems. Artistry and amusement entwine throughout this volume.

Annette Barnes has also published two books of philosophy, Seeing through Self-Deception and On Interpretation. She lives in England, and Next In Line is her debut book of poetry. From beginning to end, a “glad surprise,” Pinyon!

Available from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403.

TWO MILES WEST

Gary Entsminger, editor and publisher of Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado, spends many hours every day encouraging, supporting, and publishing poets. Like Ezra Pound, he believes that "the more every man/woman knows about poetry the better." At some hour during his busy day as a publisher, naturalist, computer programmer, and musician, he manages to write. He has published two novels, two non-fiction books, and numerous scientific articles and poetry in literary journals; however, this month he celebrates the publication of Two Miles West, his first full-length book of poetry, and it is a work of signature brilliance, a dazzling piece de résistance.

The cover of this inspiring book features the artistry of Susan Elliott, Entsminger's publishing partner. Elliott photographed and enhanced the "pictographs in the Barrier Canyon Style of the characteristic ghostly anthropomorphs, some six or seven feet tall in the Thompson Wash in southeast Utah." The cover design sets the tone of wonder and awe inherent in the text of Two Miles West. Section drawings of women symbolize the muses or sages mentioned in Yeats' epigraph poem at the beginning of Two Miles West and emphasize the roles various women have played in Entsminger's life; e.g., grandmother, mother, aunt, lover.

Perhaps what Entsminger does best in this work is to present a way to understand ourselves and our potential within the context of time and this universe, melding imagination, insight, and wit in lyrics that celebrate surprising moments. In Two Miles West we find capricious explorations into philosophy, music, and nature. The inner "scape" of each poem has a distinctive voice (the evocation of the Muse) that keeps watch over emotional reactions as well as physical impressions of the world two miles west and beyond Entsminger's cabin on a plateau in southwestern Colorado.

While reading this volume that contains many metaphysical poems, I was reminded of Ken Wilber's A Theory of Everything in which he presents ideas that invite readers to integrate body, mind, and spirit. This reminder occurred in the poem, "Reading Rilke," in which Entsminger probes the question: "... why weren't/we comfortable/with paradise? /I make a note/as the cottonwood crackles/where are the angels? / we fare no better now/in our interpreted worlds/beneath the higher stars/still as terrified/yet if we beckon/will they reappear/as themselves/and will we recognize/our past echoes in their wings?" Entsminger's poetic questions seem to be designed to cast light upon the hidden and to introduce some measure of light through philosophical enquiry without being didactic.

Entsminger's naturalist inclinations appear in the poem "Pelicans," in which he observes the pouches of lady slippers growing in the mountains and likens them to "strangers in a strange land/..." agreeing to nod and make no sound, remaining lady's slippers until they fade in spring "when sunshine bends/and words leaf/then pelicans/leave the ground."

Entsminger moves us from level to level, from memory to reality in inspired leaps, from childhood characters to the invented a la Kerouac persona named McQ, and he accomplishes these leaps with images not unlike the pictograph photographs that extend the reader's boundaries, including and transcending along the way. "Music At Three" is a poignant recollection of Entsminger's grandmother who is captured in a "full-cut apron/hugging her wide hips/canvas shoes to ease/sore feet smell [ing] of/onions and fried potatoes/I ask for munie/and dance/snapping fingers/and thumbs where/the beat purses/her lips/as if to kiss/then pinches my cheek/but it never hurts a bit."

Brittle wit on the cusp of being idiosyncratic emerges in Entsminger's "Robbery," a poem about the human experience of lost opportunities that expresses the poet's regret from making wise choices (!): "...I was already up/making plans/to steal a million/we'd rush out/before breakfast/with our haul/mount a bay/and pinto/ride to Colorado/saddlebags slapping/against hair/and skin/until time/caught up with us/with the sheriff's posse our butts/in a sling/should've made love/chile rellenos & refried beans/I could'a been somebody." "Robbery" is a laugh-aloud moment for readers.

One of my favorite poems in Two Miles West is a short piece entitled "Feathers" about a nursery rhyme that "has escaped somewhere," a poem that draws the reader in with the delight Robert Frost spoke of as inclining to the impulse, assuming "direction with the first line laid down." In "Feathers," Entsminger "lays it down," imagining two girls and a boy leaving their houses to "run into the woods/live with crows/eat corn get/chased/learn to fly/in time the girls/become crow/maidens and the boy/ a night watch/man with feathers/where his arms used to be." From the initial image of "a nursery rhyme escaping somewhere" (I love that line!) to the end line of "a watch man with feathers/where his arms used to be," Entsminger unfolds a poem that was predestined to achieve the element of surprise, a characteristic of many of his poems.

 "Metamorphosis" establishes Entsminger's role as a prophet of hope and belief in the potential of men/women despite their preoccupation with "stuff," and their struggles as "wooly bears" "...one day to the next/climbing higher/to just below/somewhere else/soon to become tiger moths." This poem "comes right with a click like a closing box," as Yeats said in his Letters on Poetry.

Perhaps the tantamount vision in Entsminger's Two Miles West is that of the possibility of humans being elevated to joy in life while living in a complex, mechanized society. Readers are treated to his appreciation of women, his liberation from time and space limitations, his devotion to truth, and his love of a natural world that presents glad surprises for his poetizing. Thinker, storyteller, a poet who poses questions about the visible and audible world, as well as the spiritual realm, Entsminger emerges as a contemporary version of a renaissance man in this debut volume of poetry.

Available from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, Colorado 81403.

A WALK IN THE WOODS

Lately, weighty problems that occupy too much of my thinking have forced my "writerly" body away from the computer and onto a walking trail called The Mountain Goat Trail, a hiking/biking trail that has gained national attention. The Mountain Goat Trail at Sewanee is an ideal walking path for those who prefer pavement to grass and want to enjoy the woods at the same time. I walk a portion of the paved trail as often as I can and complete a two-mile stint in the afternoons. When I first stepped onto this trail, I thought of Robert Frost's line, "the woods are lovely, dark, and deep," and the deeper onto the trail I walked, the deeper and lovelier the forest became.

During the first meandering hike I just surveyed the woods on either side of the road and didn't try to meditate on answers for the weighty problems I carried with me. Wet tulip poplar leaves blanketed the trail, and I almost stepped on the scat of some large animal, possibly a horse's droppings, and, hopefully, not a bear's offerings! The woods on either side contained oak, poplar, walnut, and red maple trees, to name a few, and farther down the trail, I peered into a deep ravine where slippery
elms grew in the bottomland. On a path into the ravine, someone had built a rock bridge that crossed a small run-off ditch, and I could have crossed this bridge and ascended a trail that led to a road on the other side of the forest. However, I stayed on track and took the one "most traveled by," (in contradiction to Frost's "less traveled by" line in the "Road Not Taken"), more sure of my footing on the flat grade of a railroad bed that had been paved over. The paved road is the result of the efforts of Ian Prunty, a high school student who obtained a grant from the Tennessee State government to launch the project in 1998, then raised more funds to solidify plans for the road.

The first phase of my walk ended at Lake O'Donnell Road where three metal posts, waist high, were imbedded in the pavement, and I lightly tapped the top of the center post as if I had reached a "personal best" goal. When I turned to retrace my steps, I met a woman pushing a baby carriage in which a round-faced infant dozed placidly, unmindful of the sound of locusts perched on tree trunks, whirring their monotonous songs. I felt poems stirring within me and wondered if I had achieved the "high" that runners feel when they've run long enough and far enough to energize the brain for a peak experience.

On that first walk, I didn't realize that Sewanee and surrounding environs were buzzing with the news that Governor Bill Haslam of Tennessee had awarded a $600,000 grant to the non-profit organization, Mountain Goat Alliance, to extend the rail-to-trail outdoor recreation project called Mountain Goat Trail. This abandoned railroad right-of-way is being converted into a multi-purpose corridor (e.g., walking, biking) between Grundy and Franklin Counties of middle Tennessee. This week when we traveled to Monteagle, we passed giant road machines that were creating a trail linking Monteagle and Sewanee on a five-mile stretch of Mountain Goat Trail.

From 1856-1985 the Mountain Goat Railroad transported coal and passengers between Palmer and Cowan, Tennessee. It carried coal from mines of The Mountain, beginning at Sewanee and going through Tracy City, Coalmont, Gruetli-Laager, and Palmer, and was dubbed the Mountain Goat Line because the climb on the Cumberland Plateau was one of the steepest ascents in the world at that time. Once mining ceased, the tracks of the Mountain Goat Railroad were taken up.

I haven't solved any of the weighty problems I mentioned at the beginning of this blog by walking the Mountain Goat Trail, but in the company of wildflowers, fern, and old stands of trees, I kept thinking of the end line to one of my poems: "Let the trees answer." So far, most of these old friends have been mute, but they seem to approve of the fact that my "writerly" body is becoming more fit. Twice, I've heard a lone bird singing, waiting out a human invasion in the understory of these trees, and have felt hopeful.

Trees inevitably "people" my poetry, and here's a poem that mentions them in my book, Alchemy, published in 2011:

PRAYER WHEN APPROACHING OLD AGE

God help me to know

you are now being fulfilled

in the moment of my writing.

How many dense woods

I've traveled through—

magnificent silent creations

reflecting your good will.

When I see the leaves fall,

brighter in color before dying,

the blood red of still-alive,

I realize that in their blaze

you are being fulfilled

in a final act of ecstasy.

In my seventh decade, I ponder this,

realizing that these late years of poetry,

my own forests of good will,

are acts of co-creation slowly culminating,

becoming a fulfillment

measured by your time

and guided by this light...

evanescent among the trees.

RETURN TO SEWANEE

On our return to The Mountain, our first glimpse of the yard at Sewanee revealed yellow and white daffodils nodding in the sun. When we walked around the side yard, we discovered scattered clumps of wild violets surrounded by an accumulation of leaves heaped there by winter winds. Spring is trying to emerge, but the woods in front of the house are still bare, and none of the trees have begun to green. Inside the cottage, we found ladybugs swarming, hunting for warm shelter. We must have vacuumed up a few hundred of these unwanted visitors who sneaked in while we were in Louisiana, many of them clinging to the ceiling in a bedroom.

Strange how many articles about killing wild violets appear in gardening columns—these reports about ridding yards of spring's loveliest flower seem outrageous to me. But entries about sod cutters and chemical weed killers (I didn't know the wild violet belonged to the family of weeds!) abound—and they're such bad press for the beautiful flower that attracts butterflies and is even an edible plant. The wild violet also contains salicylic acid, which can be used to soften tough skin, and to treat corns and warts.

No less attractive is the yellow daffodil that surrounds a bird bath in the front yard, a bright flower that can also be found in orange, pink, red, and, more recently, lavender hues. Although, the golden daffodil has been immortalized in Wordsworth's poem of that name, and the Chinese have adopted it as a symbol of their New Year, its beauty is deceptive for it contains an alkaloid poison called lycorine which, when ingested, can cause bodily harm. Also, I'm careful when I cut these bright flowers to bring indoors because the plant has been known to cause daffodil itch on the hands.

Actually, as we drove in yesterday, the first glimpse of our Sewanee property was at the entry to our

drive and included the view of a skeleton of apartments being constructed for students at the University of the South. The huge building overshadows our retreat, but we're fortunate to have a privacy fence around the back and one side of our property. The sight of this structure isn't a surprise as we received word, months ago, that the building would be constructed while we sojourned in Louisiana. However, we're still shocked when we look out the kitchen window and see this building rising a little higher in the sky each morning. The construction reminds me of e. e. cummings' succinct poem, "Pity this busy monster, manunkind," in which he writes: "Progress is a comfortable disease...plays with the bigness of his (mankind's) littleness...

I can always sit on the front porch of our retreat, look out at the emerging daffodils, and wait for the wildlife to appear in the woods. My contemplative hour will probably include pondering the words of another poet, Robert Frost, who reminds me that "good fences make good neighbors."

P.S.  Just to warn us that spring is not ready to spring, snow flurries have begun to veil the high rise construction, and the weatherman says that temps will dip to 21 degrees tonight.  While shopping for groceries, we saw three friends who teased us about our lack of timing in returning to The Mountain while a freakish winter wind is still blowing out of the North.

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan

MORE NOTES ON WINTER

Backyard at dusk, Sewanee

Slowly, ever so slowly, the quiet snow is melting on The Mountain, and its white luster subsides. Still, the air is sharp, and the sun struggles to appear, reminding me of its struggle to shine as it did when I lived in New England fifty years ago.

Today, we went to lunch at Crossroads Restaurant with our good friend, Kathy Hamman, editor and co-publisher of Plateau Press in Sewanee, Tennessee and shivered in the huge barnlike place that was once the site of Sewanee Cleaners, huddling close to a woodstove and warming ourselves on lentil soup and Chinese Oolong tea—delicious wintry pleasures.

When I reached home following lunch, I had an impulse to listen to "Songs From Liquid Days" by Phillip Glass, an album that Glass put together with lyricists Paul Simon, Suzanne Vega, David Byrne, and Laurie Anderson. I was drawn to listen to a piece called "Freezing" with vocals by Suzanne Vega and Linda Ronstadt, which ends with the words: "And now I'm freezing/Freezing." The lyrics seemed compatible with the below freezing weather outside my window.

I had been reading E. B. White's account of a trip to China Lake when he, his wife, and young son were stranded in a village in New England during a snowstorm sans nightclothes. White had chosen to sleep in sweater and socks, his wife in a coonskin coat, and his son in a suit of "heavies" with a sweater on his legs. White wrote that his wife arose in the night and told him that it was impossible to sleep in a coonskin coat. I laughed aloud, as I had awakened, perspiring, in pajamas and a long-sleeve fuzzy bed jacket last night, while the temperatures dipped to eight degrees outdoors.

This morning, there were animal tracks on the snow-covered drive and in the snow piled on our front porch, and I wondered what freezing critters had come to visit, looking for warmth and finding inhospitable hostesses. We've sealed off the crawl space under the cottage that skunks inhabited last winter; boarded up the entries to the attic where chipmunks once snuggled down for the season; the deer have been culled, and, in general, our wildlife population has diminished for the duration.

Life's problems seem minimal when we look out and see icicles hanging from the roof. Our thoughts are reduced to the major problem of keeping warm, and we dream of warmer climes like the Caribbean tropics, of being at peace with winter storms.

Monday we'll return to "tropical" Louisiana that has also been assailed by Arctic storms—a place where temps are usually sultry, but where my son-in-law jackknifed his van on icy Darby Lane yesterday morning. Schools in New Iberia have been closed, and State offices have been shut down for three days. We hope for forty and fifty degree weather and for the balm of sunny days upon our return.

With the country swathed in cold and ice, I reflect on Robert Frost's poem "Fire and Ice:"

"Some say the world will end in fire.

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if I had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction, ice

Is also great

And would suffice."

Wherever you are, stay warm and well. As another poet said, "If winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"

PINYON PUBLISHING’S LATEST POET

Robert Francis, one of my favorite New England poets and a contemporary of Robert Frost, wrote that poetry was what “excited him most deeply,” but at the age of 70 he declared that he disliked it! In the introduction to Traveling in Amherst, Richard Gillman explains that Francis declared this antipathy for poetry because he found much of the poetry written by his contemporaries (excepting Frost) “to be boring or baffling or both.” At some point in Francis’s life, he concentrated on creating his own poetry rather than being unhappy reading the work of others, and he wrote his best poems when he entered his sixth decade.

I admire Robert Francis’s poetry, but in antithesis to his denigration of contemporary poetry, I find that I’m exhilarated by post modern and progressive poetry, and my shelves have become crowded with volumes of contemporary poets.

Publisher Gary Entsminger of Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado, has launched the work of several distinguished contemporary poets during the last few years, and the work of these poets have delighted and surprised me. I always try to budget for the newest poetry books emerging from this Indie press located in a cabin in the Rockies.

Pinyon’s latest poet, Francine Marie Tolf, has written a volume of sharply-edged poems that might surprise Robert Francis, if he were alive and reading, despite his avowed dislike for contemporary poetry. Prodigal, Tolf’s second collection of poems, is written by a poet who possesses that which some literary critics would call “new eyes”—and she uses them to make observations about animals, nature, even antiquity, sometimes poking fun at herself in the manner of Charles Simic, another contemporary poet, particularly in the prose poems that plumb her personal life; e.g., “She Only Wants to Write:”

“the thin keening of crickets this fragile May morning, and how the breath of her cat sleeping on a pillow behind her is a little cloud on the back of her neck. She knows if she links these two mysteries, she’ll spin a bridge joining everything to everything, with her in the center, swaying on rope that braids itself as she casts down words, sinking full weight into each syllable without looking down.”

This kind of objective/subjective poetry is difficult to achieve. It illustrates “control” accomplished by synthesizing personal and profound in a way that changes and moves not only the reader but the poet as well. As publisher Entsminger observes, [it is] “derived not from cheaply won sentiment, but from an intensely personal conviction…”

Tolf achieves a meditative effect with her compact poem entitled “Morning,” which includes a beginning quote from Joanna Macy: “I could not cure myself of praying to a God I no longer believed in.” The brief, incisive poem is a wry commentary on the Jungian notion of God needing us to bring Him into the world:

“But I do believe. He knows that.

I talk to him as I drink coffee in the morning.

I give him angels.

When I wake in darkness, severed

from myself and from him,

‘he knows my terror.

He allows me to pray

him back into being.”

For me, the poem that presented an evocative mixture of mindfulness and wisdom was the title poem of Tolf’s book, “Prodigal.” It is a blend of imagery about ordinary landscapes of nature and human terror and extraordinary beauty that illuminates our intimate connection with all life:

“…They remind me how prodigal beauty is

Think of sunflower offering themselves

at the edges of freeways, never caring

if they’re prized.

Beauty seems the opposite to me of evil,

which weighs advantages expertly

and wastes nothing—

neither a mother’s terror, not a child’s trust,

nor the gold filings of the dead.

Beauty throws away acres

of pear blossom and burnished maple

season after season, never learning

to be prudent, yet saving my heart

again and again—

my stapled together heart

that refuses to remain open…”

Prodigal contains wonderful meditative poetry that illustrates hard-won wisdom emerging from an understanding of what it is to be a human living in the tension of a beautiful and savage world.

Francine Marie Tolf’s poems and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals, and she has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board; Barbara Deming Memorial/Money for Women; the Loft Literary Center; and the Elizabeth George Foundation. She has an MA from Kansas State University and an MFA from the University of Minnesota.

Prodigal is available from www.pinyon-publishing.com or Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403.