Charles Simic and Me: DP Poets

I got an email yesterday from a friend. He asked me what I thought about Charles Simic. He's a poet that some of you might have heard of. He was the poet laureate of the US a couple of years ago. I think my friend was asking me about him because he figured that Charles Simic and I shared some history. We both came to the US after the war as Displaced Persons, refugees.

My friend's question got me thinking. I wonder how old Simic was when he came here to America, Chicago. I think he was older than I was--he was born before the war and he probably remembers a lot of it. I was born in 1948 and remember only the DP camps and what I heard my parents and their friends talking about. In one of the official biographies, it says Simic's life was "complicated by the events of World War II." I like the way that makes the war sound like something no more important than static on your radio, a couple hours without internet.

I doubt he ever read my poems, but I've read a lot of his.

His poems to me feel European, existential, surreal, funny in a really dark way. Maybe it's because of the different ways we learned our English. I learned it from the ground up starting when I came over when I was three. Coming to the states when he was in his teens, he probablly learned his English from the middle up (and down), and so the words he knows are the words for little plain things and big ideas, frightening and foreign even though they are a lot of times our own.

Here's a poem Charles Simic wrote.


Puppet-Maker


In his fear of solitude, he made us.
Fearing eternity, he gave us time.
I hear his white cane thumping
Up and down the hall.

I expect neighbors to complain, but no.
The little girl who sobbed
When her daddy crawled into her bed
Is quiet now.

It's quarter to two.
On this street of darkened pawnshops,
Welfare hotels and tenements,
One or two ragged puppets are awake.

____

 

Here's a poem I wrote called "A Dog Will." It recently was published in The Convergence Review.

A Dog Will

A dog will
eat a dog

and a dog will
eat a man

and a man will
eat a dog

and a man will
eat a man

and a man will eat
his own father

sister and brother
even the mother

who fed him
milk at her breast

even though
every rule

of his church
and his people

tells him not to
if he is hungry

-----------

If you want to see a youtube of Charlie Simic reading at Cornell, just click here.

If you want to see a youtube of me reading at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, NY, just click here.

Last Heart Attack Update

The above title sounds optimistic, and I hope it's true. I hope this, in fact, is the last time I'll be writing to tell you all about what my heart's up to.

Last week Thursday, I went to see the surgeon who did my bypass. He looked at the x-rays, the blood tests, and EKGs that were done the day before, and he said, "Everything's perfect. You look like the younger brother of the fellow I operated on last week."

Then he gave me more good news. He cleared me so that I could start Cardiac Rehab, and he also gave me the okay to do some mild aerobic exercise.

As you can imagine, I was pretty happy. On April 23, I had a cardiac incident that looked like a heart attack to the doctor on the cruise ship. Two weeks later, I failed my nuclear stress test because my blood pressure went balistic, and a week after that I was in the hospital having a cardiac catheterization and, a couple of days later, open heart surgery and a bypass. And now, a little more than a month after my troubles started, the doctor was telling me I could pretty much go back to what my life was like before all of this started.

I am pretty happy, and I'm thinking a lot about what my mom felt following her surgery for ovarian cancer.

Here's the poem I wrote about it:

My Mother's Optimism

When she was seventy-eight years old
and the angel of death called to her
and told her the vaginal bleeding
that had been starting and stopping
like a crazy menopausal period
was ovarian cancer, she said to him,
"Listen Doctor, I don't have to tell you
your job. If it's cancer it's cancer.
If you got to cut it out, you got to."

After surgery, in the convalescent home
among the old men crying for their mothers,
and the silent roommates waiting for death
she called me over to see her wound,
stapled and stitched, fourteen raw inches
from below her breasts to below her navel.
And when I said, "Mom, I don't want to see it,"
she said, "Johnny, don't be such a baby."

Six months later, at the end of her chemo,
my mother knows why the old men cry.
A few wiry strands of hair on head,
her hands so weak she couldn't hold a cup,
her legs swollen and blotched with blue lesions,
she says, "I'll get better. After his chemo,
Pauline's second husband had ten more years.
He was playing golf and breaking down doors
when he died of a heart attack at ninety."

Then my mom's eyes lock on mine, and she says,
"You know, optimism is a crazy man's mother."

And she laughs.

-----------

You can read my post "The Heart Attack Cruise" about how all this started by clicking here.

Heart Attack Update: Riding the Iron Rooster

I was great yesterday--I walked around the house 3 times for about 6 minutes each time, did these breathing exercises on the hour like I was supposed to, took it easy all day watching the food channel and poker on TV, but the night was terrible.

I couldn't sleep and there was a lots of pain. I gave up around 3 am and took some oxycodone and started reading Paul Theroux's Riding the Iron Rooster, a book about traveling through China by train in the 1980s.

Theroux is always wonderful. Especially after open heart surgery. There's something about his prose rhythms and the rhythm of the train trips he's describing that inscribes itself on your heart rhythms, no matter how wild and vacillicious they are. And there's wisdom there too.

Here's what he says about traveling to China by railroad:

"Sometimes it seemed like real travel, full of those peculiar discoveries and satisfactions. But more often it was as if I had lost my footing in London and had fallen down a long flight of stairs, perhaps one of those endless staircases designed by a surrealist painter, and down I went, bump-bump-bump, and across the landing, and down again, bump-bump-bump, until I had fallen halfway around the world."

Theroux could be talking about the heart attack I had or didn't have on the ship and the world it opened me up to.

I read Riding the Iron Rooster till about 7 when it was time for my first 10 pills of the day. They almost knocked me out. I started sweating and couldn't stop. Linda helped me to the couch. I lay there for an hour till I stopped sweating finally.

I made it

Dear Friends,I made it through the open heart surgery. I'm weak and foggy but okay.

Heart Attack Cruise: Update 2

Yesterday, my catheterization hadn't gone the way the cardiologist thought. He figured the blockage in my artery would be minor, and he would be able to put a stent in the artery, but that's not what happened.

Instead, the blockage was severe (about 75%), and it hit at a place where the artery forked, and he knew it would be pointless to put a stent there.

He told me I would need open heart surgery to graft a vein around the blockage. I would need a by-pass.

So today, Linda and I spent most of the morning in the hospital seeing my cardiologist and another cardiologist and the open heart surgeon and his assistant. Individually, they came to tell me about his or her part of the story of the surgery they were going to do on me. Most of it, I couldn't understand. They talked about terms and procedures I didn't know a thing about and had never heard of. They showed me pictures of the heart and pictures of the arteries. They told me what would happen first and what I could expect a couple of weeks from today when I would start to feel better.

It was a lot to take in.

The last person I saw was the anesthesiologist. He was there to evaluate my condition before Thursday's surgery. He looked me up and down and took my medical history and asked me about my life style.

I told him about how I've been a vegetarian for 30 years and exercised every day and didn't smoke and limited my drinking to a glass of wine a night. I even told him about doing yoga and lifting weights.

That's when he shook his head and said, "You know, you're in great shape. You got the body of a 52-year old man."

I said, "Yeah? So how come I'm having open heart surgery at 530 Thursday morning."

He looked at me and said, "Shit happens."

__________

Lillian will be posting updates at my facebook page about the operation.

By the way, the above tattoo of a dagger piercing a heart appeared at TattooSymbol.Com

Heart Attack Cruise: Update

That's the EKG I got two weeks ago on the cruise ship showing the rhythms of my wayward heart. Since then, I’ve been grading papers for my online course and seeing the cardiologist.

Let me tell you, the former is less stressful than the latter.

Last week, Thursday, 8 days after my heart attack, I went to see the cardiologist my doctor here in Danville, Virginia, recommended. He looked at the EKG tests and blood word and cardiac enzyme counts I brought in and decided I hadn’t had a heart attack.

He felt that the elevated cardiac enzymes I was showing weren’t the significant ones.

This good news was immediately followed by the bad. My heart has some kind of arrhythmia that needs medication and further testing. He told me to start taking 10 milligrams of Coreg CR daily. He even gave me three weeks worth of free samples. I was feeling good about this guy.

We also set up a nuclear stress test and echocardiogram for this week Tuesday.

I was looking forward to the stress test.

I hadn’t had any exercise or even strenuous walking since my attack, and I was hoping that this would be a good workout. I dressed in some exercise shorts, T-shirt, and running shoes and was ready for anything.

First they gave me an echocardiogram (like a sonogram), and then they injected some kind of radioactive mineral into my blood stream. After waiting for a while to make sure it was moving around in my heart, they set me up on the treadmill.

I typically do about 45 minutes of aerobic exercise each day and expected this to be a piece of cake.

It was. It took me about 9 minutes to get my heart to the target rate (135 beats a minute), and I was feeling pretty good. Then,the nurse put a stop to the whole thing.

She had been monitoring my blood pressure, and she thought it was way too high, 190/100. My resting bp is about typically 120/60, and 190//100 was -- to use her word -- abnormal. She slowed the threadmill and asked me to take a seat until my blood pressure went down. It did, but very slowly, too slowly. This worried her too.

When the cardiologist stopped by and saw the blood pressure numbers, he reacted the way the nurse reacted. He immediately raised the Coreg CR dosage to 40 milligrams a day. A week ago I wasn't taking any meds, and suddenly I was doing mega-doses.

Although my blood pressure was high, I didn’t feel woozy, wonky, or dizzy. I did feel a little winded, but I figured that was because I hadn’t exercised in two weeks, and after all, the stress test had me marching up a 14 degree grade for 9 minutes.

Yesterday, Wednesday, the nurse called me with the results of the various tests. The good news was that I survived. Pretty much everything else was bad news. The cardiologist suspects I have a couple leaky heart valves and two blocked arteries. The valves aren’t a big deal, he said, but I needed to get the blocked arteries fixed.

He recommended he do a cardiac catheterization. That’s where he introduces a thin tube into one of my veins and works it up to my heart. He said that this would let him see how much blockage was in the arteries and whether I would need a stent or a by-pass.

At this point, I’m wondering “what’s going on?!?” Two weeks ago, I was living my normal life, exercising without a problem, eating peanuts and oranges (my favorite vegetarian foods), and now I’m listening to this cardiologist who I don’t know from Adam telling me I might need by-pass surgery and that, although he doesn’t do surgery, he could hook me up with somebody who’s really good.

Linda is of course going crazy, but I’m too drugged to notice.


PS--Linda just asked me to mention that the cardiologist wanted me to have the catheterization this coming Tuesday, but I told him that I couldn't because we're going to Las Vegas for a week with her parents Tony and Mabel. He shook his head and thought for a minute and said we could do it the following week.

I said, "Great."

Then he asked, "Didn't you have your last cardiac event on vacation?"

Heart Attack Cruise

“This is not a Death Certificate”

That’s what it said at the top of the Guest Removal Form I was filling out in the infirmary of the cruise ship the Independence of the Sea. The nurse gave me the sheet and asked me to sign it. I was about to when I suddenly saw that statement about how the form wasn’t a Death Certificate. That gave me pause.

I started reading through the form more carefully at that point. On the first side, there wasn’t much that you wouldn’t expect. The infirmary and the cruise line wanted my name and address and such, and I was prepared to fill that in. I had agreed to leave the ship to see a cardiologist in Lisbon, and that was the kind of information I knew the cruise line would need.

I needed to see a cardiologist because just the day before after walking on the ship's jogging track for about 30 minutes something weird happened. When I got down to my cabin to take a shower, I suddenly started sweating. I didn't know where that was coming from. The walking I did on the jogging track was pretty mild, and I hadn’t been sweating earlier when I was walking on the track. There was a pretty strong wind the ship was moving into and it whisked the sweat off me. Plus I was wearing my new micro-fiber hat and t-shirt and shorts and they all promised me that if I bought them I wouldn’t sweat and if I did I wouldn’t feel it.

But there I was in my cabin sweating.

I was waiting for Linda to get back from the fitness center, and I knew I had to stop sweating before she got back and we went off for breakfast. So I figured I would walk onto the balcony and cool off. It was always cool there, getting plenty of that wind that the ship was heading into, and I stepped outside and tried to dry myself off, but I just started sweating more and more, and I realized I was having trouble breathing so I sat down, but that just made my breathing harder and the sweat pour out of me faster.

Then I went into the shower and turned on the cold water, but that didn’t do any good. I was still sweating like an Arkansas hog.

I’d been sweating and having trouble breathing for ten minutes, and suddenly I noticed that my heart was beating at a clip. I jumped out of the shower and grabbed my wristwatch and tried to time my pulse.

But I couldn’t keep track of the beats because I couldn’t count that fast.

Listen, you know you’re in trouble when you can’t time your pulse because the beats are coming too fast. As soon as you try to count 100 beats, you know you're missing dozens of other beats. Nobody can count that fast.

I knew I couldn’t get to the infirmary on the first deck without Linda, so I sat down naked in the middle of our cabin and waited.

Thank God, she didn’t stop to gamble in the casino.

She saw me there sitting on the chair, sweating, naked, and she said, “What’s wrong.”

I said, “I think I’m sick.”

She called the infirmary and told them we were coming down.

I threw on my t-shirt and shorts and started walking down the corridor to the elevators. Linda said, “You don’t have your shoes.”

I didn’t go back to get them. I just kept walking.

We got to the infirmary and the place was packed, but the nurse looked at me and told me to sit down and took my pulse and then helped me to the emergency room. The doctor came in, and she took my pulse too and couldn’t believe it.

It was 207.


They gave me a shot of something to regulate my heart because it was – according to the doctor who was making these motions with her hand – contracting like a crazy octopus when it should be contracting like a languid jellyfish.

The injection was amazing. As soon as the doctor shot it in my vein, she asked me how I felt, and I paused my shaking and beating and sweating to see how I felt, and it was like I could feel whatever it was that she gave me moving through my body like a slow stream, up from the vein in my arm, across my chest to my heart and up my shoulder, and up and over my neck to my lips and eyes and brain. A slow steady rising stream of ease that calmed down all that bounding my heart was doing.

After that, for the next 6 hours they ran tests and had me resting between them, and what they found was that I had had a cardiac arrhythmia with an atrial fibrillation and elevated levels of cardiac enzymes.

After the tests, they told me that I had had a heart attack and that I should definitely see a cardiologist at the next port, Lisbon.

As you can imagine, I thought that was a good idea, and the next morning, Linda and I were in the infirmary, and I was filling out the necessary paperwork for leaving the ship so I could see the cardiologist.

That’s when I was stopped by that phrase “This is not a Death Certificate” on the top of the page, and I started to read the form carefully.

The second page made it clear that if I filled out the form and left the ship it was possible that I might never be able to get back on it. The cardiologist in Lisbon could declare me unfit to travel if he thought I was too weak. In which case, I was stuck in Lisbon.

I didn’t want to be stuck in Lisbon, and I didn’t want to hassle with the rigmarole of trying to find a way out of Lisbon when most of the flights in Europe had been cancelled because of that volcano erupting in Iceland, and ultimately I didn’t want to die in Lisbon.

For that matter, I didn’t want to die anywhere. Death was not something I wanted to be seeing in my future. Three of my friends had died in the previous month, and I didn’t want to die. I had this crazy idea that if I could stay on the cruise ship I would be healthy and swell and the atrial fibrillations would never come back.

I figured that not filling out the form that said “This is not a Death Certificate” and not leaving the ship to see the cardiologist was the best way to go, and I told the nurse that. She was a very nice person, from the Philippines, and had been with me throughout my tests, and when I told her that I wasn’t going to see the cardiologist she said in her Spanish accent, “You must see the cardiologist. I know how you were when you came in. It was bad. You weren’t like this, standing and breathing like a living man. I see you now and you think you are better, but when I saw you then you were very bad, and I feel you still are.”

I said, “I don’t want to leave the ship.”

“I can’t tell you what do to, but if I were you and had been that sick, I would leave this ship, see the cardiologist.”

I said it again. “I don’t want to leave the ship.”

She said, “I see.”

I smiled and shook her hand and said, “I hope I don’t see you again.”

She shook her head and said, “And so do I.”


___________

PS--Linda took all three photos. The last two are of sculptures in Vigo, Spain, two days after my heart attack.

In the last one, I'm sitting next to a statue of one of my boyhood idols Jules Verne.
Like me, he visited Vigo once.

PPS--I'm seeing my doctor tomorrow and the cardiologist on Thursday.

April is National Poetry Month

Yes, April is National Poetry Month.

You want to do poetry a favor?

Buy a book of poetry by a living poet.

If you don't know any and need some suggestions, buy something by Jared Carter or Lola Haskins or Bruce Guernsey or Charles Fishman or Charles Swanson or me.

It's easy. Just click on one of the names above.

Or if you don't want one of those books take a look through my Writing the Polish Diaspora blog or Writing the Holocaust. I'm sure you'll find a poet you'll like.

Call For Submissions: Finishing Line Press

Leah Maines at the Finishing Line Press is looking for chapbooks by women poets for her New Women's Voices Chapbook Competition.

She and her husband Kevin run one of the best small presses around and produce beautiful books. They published my chapbook Third Winter of War: Buchenwald, and I've frequently recommended their press to my friends.

Here's her call for submission for the Finishing Line Press 2010 NEW WOMEN’S VOICES CHAPBOOK COMPETITION

http://www.finishinglinepress.com/submissionguidelines.htm

A prize of $1,000 and publication for a chapbook-length poetry collection. Open to women who have never before published a full-length poetry collection. Previous chapbook publication does not disqualify. International entries are welcome. Multiple submissions are accepted. Leah Maines will final judge.

All entries will be considered for publication. The top-ten finalists will be offered publication. Submit up to 26 pages of poetry, PLUS bio, acknowledgments, SASE and cover letter with a $15 entry fee (pay by check, money order or pay online to pay using your credit card)

Deadline: Feb. 28, 2010 (DEADLINE EXTENDED ) POSTMARK

The address is

NWV
Finishing Line Press
P O Box 1626
Georgetown, KY 40324

Steel Toe Books: Call for Submissions

My collection Lightning and Ashes was published by Steel Toe Books, and I can't imagine a better press for anyone looking for a publisher. Really, I recommend Steel Toe to everyone I can.

Tom Hunley, the editor, is first-rate.

Here's his call for submissions.

SUBMIT YOUR MANUSCRIPT TO STEEL TOE BOOKS
http://www.steeltoebooks.com/submit.html

Steel Toe Books will hold its next open reading period from January 1, 2010 through February 14, 2010. There is no reading fee, but we ask that you purchase one of our existing titles directly from us when you submit your manuscript.

Submission process:

Send the following:
• a check or money order for $14.50 ($12 for a book, $2.50 for postage and handling)
• a filled-out order form indicating which of our titles you would like us to send you
• a copy of your 48-80 page manuscript for consideration
• an acknowledgements page
• a cover page containing your name and contact information

Do not send a SASE for notification. Upon selecting a new title, we will make an announcement on the web site, on our News page at www.steeltoebooks.com.

Mail the packet to:

Steel Toe Books
c/o Tom C. Hunley
Department of English
Western Kentucky University
1906 College Heights Blvd. #11086
Bowling Green, KY 42101-1086

For information on the manuscripts selected in the last open reading period, or for more about what's going on at Steel Toe Books, see our news page at www.steeltoebooks.com

Merry Christmas and a Happy 2010

The big news this year is that Linda and I finally decided what we wanted Lillian’s baby daughter Luciana to call us. Linda has accepted the name Nana, and I have to say that I’m pretty happy with Zee-Zee, although there is still some discussion about how that name will be spelled. My preference is the French spelling “Zi-Zi!” but Linda and Lillian and Luciana all seem happier with the more traditional spelling of the last letter of the alphabet, twice.

 

The other big news is that Lillian did have the baby! Luciana was born on May 19, 2009 at 1154 pm and came weighing in at seven pounds and eleven ounces and measuring twenty-two inches, same as a bobcat. Lillian has asked me not to reveal her current weight and size, but let me just say that if you’ve seen some recent pictures, you know Luciana has grown. If you haven’t seen those pictures, you should. There’s about a 1000 more at Lillian and Luciana’s webpage. Just click here to see them.

This baby is something else. Linda and I know what perfect babies are like because we had Lillian, and we are happy to report that this baby is just as perfect. Luciana’s always ready for a laugh and a hug, and she’s got the curiosity of a kitten. She loves the feel of different colors and textures, and she spends a lot of happy time flicking her fingers back and forth across cloth or cardboard or a piece of plastic or wood. She’s fun to watch.

When we’re not watching the baby flick or listening to her say “Mm-Mm-Mm-Mm-Mm,” we’re doing a lot of travel. I thought we were doing our part last year to re-vitalize the travel industry, but this year we decided to increase our stake in the bailout. We’ve been to Las Vegas three times, and we’ve gone on three cruises. The last one was a 12-day oceanic extravaganza that took us to the Eastern Caribbean. I would like to add that our luck both in Las Vegas and the cruise ship casinos has been excellent. For 2010, we’re already planning to double our vacationing, six Las Vegas trips and six cruises with maybe a couple side trips to the new casino at Greenbrier, WV, thrown in.

 

When we’re not watching Luciana and traveling and gambling, we’re enjoying retirement in other ways. Linda has been doing a lot of volunteer work here in Danville at the Free Clinic, and she’s also been doing jury duty here. (Buy her a glass of red wine when you see her next time, and ask her to tell you about the case of the non-habitual habitual offender. Unbelievable story.)

And I’ve been working on my writing. The American Council for Polish Culture honored me this year by giving me their Cultural Achievement Award for my poems about my parents. I also gave readings at the Polish Museum of America in Chicago, the Association of Writing Programs, and the Sept. 1939 Commemoration at the Polish Mission at Orchard Lake, Michigan. But most of my energy has gone into trying to get my novel “The Soldier and the Widow” published and writing my new novel, a police procedural set in 1950’s Chicago in the Polish-American community around Humboldt Park. I’m about two chapters for the end, and I’m hoping this novel will be an easier sell than the one about Nazis committing terrible atrocities on the Eastern Front in a really bad blizzard.

I hope next year I’ll be able to report that both novels have been sold, our luck at blackjack just continues to get better, Lillian’s gotten a position as an assistant principal, and Luciana’s walking and talking and drawing pictures and practicing her letters and helping her mom cook in the kitchen and finding out about all the great things in the world to touch and see.

 

Luciana!

People keep asking me what's up with baby Luciana, and I keep wanting to post about her but getting bogged down in various other activities, like feeding her or trying to explain gravity to her.

 

But right now, while she's in the other room practicing how to eat peas, I think I will post a link to a site Lillian has set up full of pictures of this beautiful and smart baby.

Here's the Luciana Link. Just click here.

Walt Whitman Sells Pants

Yes, he does. And he does a great job at it.

Levi's -- the jeans company -- is doing a series of ads using Whitman's poems.

Here's an ad using lines from "O Pioneers":



Here's an ad using some of "America":



Slate.com has an article about this amazing development in literary history.

Charles Swanson's "After the Garden: Selected Responses to the Psalms"

When my mother was dying, I spent a lot of time in the hospice with her. She had had a stroke, and she couldn’t talk or move. The doctor didn’t even think she could hear me or understand what was happening to her. It was quiet and lonely and sad there with her in her room. Sitting near her, I sometimes talked to her, and sometimes I read the bible.



There was a copy in the waiting room, and I had carried it back to my mom’s room. I’m not religious, but I found myself reading the bible, especially the psalms.

I had always loved their poetry, ever since I studied them in a Colonial American Lit class in college. I’m not the kind of person who likes to memorize poetry or much of anything else, but I sat down as a student and memorized some of the psalms.

Reading those poems of love and grief, sadness and light, I sat near my dying mother and thought about how much truth and longing there was in them. I said to myself that maybe someday I would try writing poems about the psalms, try to write something that would carry something of what I found in them.

After my mom died, I did try to write those poems. Over and over and over again I tried, but I couldn’t do it. I don’t know why, but they didn’t come for me.

But they did come for Charles Swanson, a fine poet I met here in Virginia. He lives about thirty miles north of Danville and teaches high school in Gretna. He also pastors the Melville Avenue Baptist Church in Danville.

Charles has written a series of poems that respond to the psalms, and those poems are now included in his first book, After the Garden: Selected Responses to the Psalms.

The poems in this book take us back to the true roots of poetry, to its source in prayer, music, and the lives of ordinary people who struggle to make sure that the ones who come after them are able to live lives of freedom, hope, and faith. In these beautifully-shaped poems about growing up and living in the Virginia Piedmont and Appalachia, Swanson turns ordinary lives into extraordinary prayers.

Here’s the title poems from his book:

After the Garden: What Does It Mean, the Killing Fields?

For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
Psalm 51:3, RSV

Now this is the truth:
If there is sin, sin beyond
the thorns and the sweat of the brow, then
I have eaten.

We ran through the swamp woodlands,
blasting hummocks of litter like puffballs,
the bunny zagging through patches of light,
my mother with the twenty gauge,
I with a mouthful of marbles,
hard questions that choked me.
She shot a log from under his leap—
mossy wood showering green fireworks,
the somersaulting figure
an acrobat landing on his feet.
He slipped the skin of earth,
in the hollow trunk of a tree.
Putting aside the gun,
she reached a long arm up to armpit
into the mystery of darkness
to grasp his warm hind foot,
pads like buttercups, smooth as wax.
He came out lank, sinews stretched,
long last the tender twitching ears.
We sank onto the mossy log
damaged by her errant shot
and she laid the rabbit along her lap.
Her left hand gripped his feet,
and with her right she swaddled his head
in caress or stranglehold.
The rabbit made a squeaking noise
and I choked out
one hard marble. “Mama,
what will you do?”
A practiced hand made the wrenching sound.

These are the killing fields.
Out of the milk of human kindness
I have been fed.

_________________

Charles Swanson's book is available through his publisher, Motes Books, and through Amazon.

The Motes Books site has more information about Charles and includes another poem.

This November, Finishing Line Press will be publishing his second book, a chapbook entitled Farm Life and Legend.

Hercules: The Epic Poem Unbound!

Hercules has appeared in TV shows, movies, Disney cartoons, comic books, and even Disco Battles, but for a long time there hasn't been an epic poem focused on this hero.

Sure there may have been such a poem in ancient times. There are rumors on the internet that Peisandros of Rhodes (c. 600 B.C.) wrote such an epic but the thing is apparently "lost," and there are some scholars who figure that this epic was just something dreamt up by Peisandros's PR man to pump up his reputation.

All of this is changing, however. My friend, Matt Flumerfelt a fellow originally from New York who is wild about rhyme and Ancient Greece and Hercules, is in the process of completing an epic poem based on the life of Hercules and the poem (or at least XIV books of the epic) is available online at Matt's blog, Baloney Emporium.

Here's a sample from book XI with a brief introduction by Matt:

I’ve always been rather proud of this section, when Hercules goes to the ends of the earth and the Garden of the Hesperides to retrieve the golden apples for Eurystheus. In this section he’s crossed the desert and begins to reach the garden.


For days on end Alcides faced
the barren waste without the taste
of food or water, trudging west,
his gaunt cheeks hollow as a ghost.
Sporadic tufts of stoic greenery
intruded on the sabulous sea,
infringing on the sterile scenery
till dunes gave way to luscious lea.
The air grew vibrant with the song
of birds, the murmuring of leaves.
A vernal ichor, young and strong,
made zaftig earth's eclectic entities.
He abutted on a crenellated wall,
a bulwark reared of rough-hewn megaliths
with barbicans to guard against assault,
though here were neither Gauls nor Visigoths.
Such monumental piles of stone
have mostly been reserved for those
whose dainty nates graced a throne,
their egos perilously grandiose.
Tracing the wall's periphery,
he came to a quaint embrasure,
a portal of azure porphyry
with an elaborate entablature.
He gave the door a gentle push,
surprised at finding it ajar.
It swiveled open with a whoosh
as wind swept through the aperture.
The fields unfurled before his eyes
were named for the renowned Hesperides,
praised in the lays of other days
as Dilmun, Eden, Asgard, Paradise.



Atlas' daughters roamed the meadows,
weaving chaplets to adorn their tresses,
trolling airs and three-part operettas
whose harmonies and graceful cadences
were sweet as honey from Hymettus.
Spring, that Dionysian season,
was perpetual, reason being
the garden's pivotal location,
beyond the range of winter's fang.
Ladon was the garden's sentry,
a reptile of outstanding parts,
a member of the dragon gentry,
past master of the mantic arts.
Crossing the intervening croft,
Alcides reached earth's finisterre,
where Atlas held the world aloft,
though what he stood on isn't clear.
Heracles was frank with Atlas,
explaining in plebeian phrases
what he wanted with the apples
and why he'd made his anabasis.
"Why stick your neck out?" Atlas said.
"That dragon's like a pet to me.
He's sweet as lamb’s milk when he's fed.
I'd fetch the apples if my hands were free."
Rather than face the dragon's wrath
and slay so mannerly a creature,
Alcides chose to prop the earth
while Atlas took a little breather.


Putting his shoulder to the wheel,
he hoisted the telluric sphere.
If Heracles had dropped the ball,
life might have ended then and there.
Atlas lolled about the meadow,
feeling like a pardoned felon,
lounging in a live oak's shadow,
munching chunks of watermelon.
This taste of the dolce vita
fired Atlas with a love of gold.
A life of leisure is sweeter
than playing caryatid to the world.
Instead of dealing with the dragon,
he got the apples from his daughters,
who plucked them to relieve the sagging
branches, hoarding them like staters.
Atlas, returning with the booty,
told Heracles peremptorily
he felt it was his bounden duty
to take the apples to Mycenae.
Alcides said he understood
and only asked the Titan leave
to put a cushion on his head
for reasons easy to conceive.
It seemed a sensible request,
so Atlas graciously complied
and briefly reassumed his post
after laying the fruit aside.



Heracles swept up the plunder
and booked without a backward glance.
Atlas recognized his blunder
and reviled him from a distance.
His journey seemed incredible
to the simple folks back home until
he showed them the inedible
fruit. Even then most doubted still.
Eurystheus admired the apples,
but they had a bad track record.
Anyone who touched the globules
was jinxed by the goddess Discord.
He foisted them on Heracles,
who fobbed them off on Athena.
She passed them to the 'sperides,
who socked them away for Hera.

_____________

Matt is also the author of The Art of Dreaming, a book of poems. Info about purchasing it and a sample poem are available here at Everything's Jake.

61st Birthday Post: Grandbaby Luciana

Dear family and dear friends,

Usually what I do here for my birthday is post a recent photo (that shows you I haven't changed a lick in 30 years) and tell a little about what I've been doing.

Well, the biggest news is that Linda and I are now grandparents, and we're happily spending a lot of time with our daughter Lillian and our granddaughter Luciana.

Here's a photo of Lulu and me:



Here's a photo of me and Lillian that Linda took in 1979:

 

And here's a letter that Lillian sent out about where you can see some more photos of Luciana, Lillian, Linda, and Me.

Subject: one month old!

Luciana is one month old today, and I thought I would finally send out the updated website with tons of pictures. I have been putting it together in the evening after she goes to sleep and before I finally collapse into bed.

http://web.me.com/lcguzlowski

She seems to be getting bigger and changing everyday and it is hard to believe that she is already a month old. Although, at the same time, I can't remember what life was like before she got here. I seem to remember more sleep, but I don't remember being this happy.

I hope everyone is doing well.

love,
Lillian

Baby's Working For the Man Every Night and Day

My granddaughter is now three weeks old.

Last friday when she was 17 days old, she received her first bill in the mail. It was an insurance bill. She owes $237 to her insurance company for in-hospital baby doctor visits.

I don't know how she'll be able to pay off this money. She's currently unemployed and doesn't have much chance of getting a job locally. Unemployment where she lives in Danville, Virginia is about 14%. I think she would have to move someplace else to get a job. Her mother probably wouldn't be happy with that.

I figure the insurance company will bill her and continue to bill her adding 2-3% to the bill each month. I'm not much good with math but I calculate that she will probably owe Anthem Insurance about a million bucks, maybe two, by the time she's out of high school.

The good news is that her Great Aunt and Uncle (Joan and Bruce) sent her a baby gift of $50. I'm sure my granddaughter will be able to put some of that toward her Anthem Insurance bill.

By the way, if you have some spare change, please send to me, and I'll pass it on to her.

I promise.

And on the Seventh Day God Didn't Mow

Sunday morning.

The rain falls and falls.

My lawn calls to me. A green siren. Mow me! Mow me!


I try to ignore it. The crazy grass, the clover. The tufts of weeds I can't identify.

What did the great gray poet Walt Whitman say about Leaves of Grass?

"Pretty to look at -- long as you don't have to mow!"

I mean who invented mowing? I can't remember Noah talking about it, and Moses definitely never wrote a commandment regarding mowing.

And Shakespeare -- a guy who thought and wrote about everything -- never said a thing about mowing. He never wrote: "Oh that this too too thick grass would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew--or that the Everlasting had fixed His canon against mowing!"

So I'm not mowing today, and I'm not mowing tomorrow either.

Baby Has a Name

After much thought and discussion, Lillian has decided the baby will be named Luciana Calendrillo Guzlowski.

And Luciana seems happy with it!

Lillian's Baby's Here!

The baby's here--all 20 and 3/4 inches and 7 pounds and 11 ounces of her. And boy, are we happy!