FROM THE FRONT PORCH

It's the time of the pause between books I've been writing—a time when I'm reviewing the work of ants, spiders, birds, plants, and the lime green trees in the wood beyond my front porch. I can't call it the time of idleness because I have a condition that is known as "racing mind," and contemplative or centering prayer is difficult for me unless I have some sort of mantra buzzing in my brain.

I console myself that the transcendentalist Thoreau observed, read, listened to the sounds of nature, built a cabin, planted a garden, and wrote about all of this during his two years of communing with nature in the Concord woods. As far as I know, he didn't assume a lotus position and just ponder or practice nothingness.

Right now, the crows overhead are jeering at me, as they do every time I come out on the porch. I've read that they recognize faces and voices, and we keep up a lively conversation above the sound of construction work going on near my driveway. One of them waddled over to my steps the other day and cocked his yellow eye at me when I recited the first poem I learned at age four while my mother read aloud from A Child's Garden of Verse: "A birdie with a yellow bill/hopped upon my window sill..." The crow quickly exited the yard at the sound of rhyming verse since he's more accustomed to readings of my free verse, and he flew away when I continued to recite the rhyme in a sing-song voice.

Moments later, my nose picked up the scent of a skunk, a creature more equipped for nocturnal visits, and I shuddered, remembering the family that colonized the insulation underneath our cottage two years ago—and ripped it into pieces for a nesting place to raise babies. Three skunk catchers later and $1,000 poorer, we rid ourselves of the offending visitors. I hope the scent this morning doesn't indicate there's a scouting expedition nearby.

We've had rain in sporadic bursts for weeks, and the snails are out. A large one was encamped by the French doors leading into our living room, and I was rude enough to interrupt his slumber, brushing him into the yard. When I was a child, a neighbor bully was fond of sprinkling salt on snail bodies when they emerged from their shells and would watch them turn into "butter," as he called it. It was a gruesome sight, and I've never bothered to find out why this chemical reaction occurred as it was a clear violation of nature.

Tiny bright orange toadstools have appeared in the bed of fern, varicolored hosta, a sickly lemon balm plant, and a stunted rosebush by the steps, the latter two preferring more sunlight than they're getting under the shade of the white oaks. The toadstools look like the fairy footstools my mother painted in her renderings of fantastical creatures that she imagined populated the piney woods near Franklinton, Louisiana. I expected a gnome with a pointed hat to appear on the spot as she always painted a gnome standing alongside huge mushrooms, a palette in hand and a large green frog perched in the foreground, observing the magical creature at work.

Those who want to read expert observations on the natural world should get a copy of The Unseen Forest: A Year's Watch of Nature by David Haskell, or read his blog entitled "Ramble." He has received national awards for his wonderful writings about a square meter of space in the woods where he spent a year observing nature at work. 

I'm not a trained naturalist, but I do like my observation post on the front porch here at Sewanee and find that it's a great way to reclaim my writing urges on a day that could have been a time for just being a good for nothing southerner doing some serious porch sitting.

Photograph by Victoria I. Sullivan

CHANT OF LIFE

Several years ago when Isabel Anders and I were working on Chant of Death, a mystery based in a Benedictine Abbey in south Louisiana, we simultaneously listened to recordings of Gregorian chants while doing the writing. Gary Entsminger and Susan Elliott, co-publishers of Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado, who had issued a contract for Chant of Death, also began to listen to recordings of Gregorian chants when they prepared the book for publication. The four of us developed something called "collective intention" about this particular novel. Isabel and I have always said that Chant wrote itself, and we completed it within six months. Chant contains many allusions to Gregorian chant, to monastic life and metaphysical ideas, and it's an exploration of both the holy and the profane in a tightly-knit mystery of 146 pages.

Last week-end, I attended a silent retreat entitled "Praying the Psalms," sponsored by the Sisters of St. Mary at Sewanee and featuring Sr. Madeline Mary and The Rev. Suzanne Warner as leaders of meditations on the Psalms, including those that we chanted at Morning and Evening Prayer each day. I was again introduced to Gregorian chant, especially those based on Psalms included in the Office of Morning Prayer in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. These Psalms that we chanted had also been chanted by Benedict's monks and had been prescribed by Benedict to educate monks about leading a holy life and to show them how the Gregorian chants inspired connections with God.

One of the articles distributed by Sr. Madeline Mary during this retreat was an article entitled "On Good Health and Gregorian Chant" that featured an interview with a famous French Audiologist named Dr. Alfred Tomatis, and which was the core of a CBC Radio Documentary called "Chant." It was later broadcast on NPR in the United States. The article had been taken from the bulletin of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Latin Mass Community in Littleton, Colorado.

The interview tells the story of the head of a monastery in France, an abbot who had changed the Benedictine Rule to exclude chanting from the monks' daily schedule, an elimination of six to eight hours in their daily activities. Curiously, after the abbot excluded the chants, the monks began to complain of tiredness, and medical specialists were called in to treat them. Various treatments were explored, including that of adding meat to their normally vegetarian diets because they were told they were dying of starvation. Seventy of ninety monks had begun slumping in their cells and seemed devoid of energy. The addition of meat to the diets of the tired monks had no effect on them, and they continued to suffer from the curious lassitude.

St. Mary's Chapel, Sewanee TN

The abbot called in Dr. Tomatis, the French audiologist, and he treated the monks with sound only, primarily Gregorian chants, explaining that the chants, when sung in Latin, follow a relaxed physiological rhythm that is described as "pure," affect the cortex of the brain, and provide the channel for perfect listening to a higher power. The audiologist played the music of Mozart and Gregorian chants from the Abbey of Solemes, particularly the dawn and midnight masses for Christmas, and within months, the re-introduction of the chants in Latin had revived the health and energy of the French monks.

The article also revealed that Menninger's Clinic in Topeka, Kansan uses Gregorian chant to help their patients recover. This is a very brief resume of the interview with Dr. Tomatis regarding the relationship of Gregorian chant and good health, but the results resonated with the ideas that Isabel, Gary, Susan, and I had about playing Gregorian chant music to inspire the writing of Chant of Death. I remember the time as a highly energized period in which the creative process was heightened by ethereal stimuli and resulted in Chant, a book that Isabel and I still regard as a "mystical mystery."

PINYON REVIEW NUMBER 5

In Editor Gary Entsminger's message to readers of the latest issue of the Pinyon Review, he quotes Aristotle: "Every art and every investigation, and likewise every practical pursuit or undertaking, seems to aim at some good; hence it has been well said that the Good is that at which all things aim." To this quotation in his editorial, "Fool on the Hill," Entsminger later adds, "the work of many great writers sometimes waited a generation or more to entice. But we all have the satisfaction of knowing that originality—whether in music, art, or writing—trumps any other play."

This fifth issue of the Pinyon Review displays a diversity of styles in art and writing and features the work of poets, writers, and artists that offers readers a glimpse of originality in those who choose to follow their play impulse. The issue also includes a poem by editor Entsminger that shows an innovative approach to composing lyrics similar to that of e. e. cummings, one of the most inventive American poets of the 20th century. The poem, entitled "Dream Tracking," is a call and response type poem between two lovers that begins with "the first green-tailed towhee...beneath the window..." and ends with the memorable lines "she: everything impresses memory/he: expressing everything else." It's a unique poem that invites a reader to take a second look and as I said, reminded me of cummings' provocative lyrics that called for more than one reading.

Entsminger, who says he keeps a book of philosophy beside his bed, is committed to reminding folks, via poems and prose, to reconsider how they treat people and other wildlife, and the Pinyon Review, showcases the works of writers and artists who seem to reflect his interest in human behavior, environmental ethics, and his love of the natural world. I counted at least eighteen poets who contributed work that ranged from haiku by Gary Hotham: "warmer coats/the days for vine ripe tomatoes/over" to an eleven-page poem about the natural world entitled "Ouroboros," by David Cravens. And I'm sorry I couldn't review all of the featured writers because the quality of their work is first rate!

Poems of the writers who are featured in the Review vary in form and content and comprise the majority of the issue, but I was equally impressed by the artwork of both Susan Elliott, managing editor of Pinyon Publishing, who executed the cover design and the title page of the magazine, and the paintings of John Tomsick. Tomsick's painting of Billie Holiday or "Lady Day," the blues and jazz singer popular during the 1930's -1950's, is featured on the cover of the Review, and his five paintings of jazz performers entitled "In Performance" within the journal will captivate readers and lovers of jazz music.

Tomsick experimented with pastel on colored mat board to design five paintings based on photographs of jazz artists in performance. As I'm a progressive jazz fan and an admirer of Miles Davis, I particularly liked the rendering of Davis taken from the Apple poster, Think Different in which Tomsick experimented with vine charcoal to achieve "Miles in Thought." However, I'm equally appreciative of New Orleans jazz and was also drawn to the King Oliver Creole Jazz Band with Louis Armstrong on slide trumpet. The painting featured pianist Lillian Hardin, or "Hot Miss Lil," who was the first woman to be a major jazz instrumentalist and who became the wife of Louis Armstrong. The painting of Louis Armstrong, rendered in color on a black mat, is particularly arresting and shows the musician standing in a meditative pose, eyes closed, holding his beloved trumpet. As Tomsick wrote in the text accompanying the paintings, the pieces have a story to tell, and he invited readers of the Review to explore the stories of these gifted musicians and to listen to their music.

I am grateful to Gary Entsminger for featuring three of my poems, which he dubbed the signature poems for the issue, and I agree with him that writing poetry certainly trumps any other form of play. Entsminger noted in his editorial that the work of many great writers sometimes waited a generation or more to entice readers, but he's doing his best to showcase poets and artists he thinks will entice readers and art admirers NOW. Thanks, Gary, from all of us who were given space in the Pinyon Review Number 5.

Copies of the Pinyon Review Number 5 are available from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403.