Reading Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar
Posted: August 23, 2011 Filed under: books 4 Comments »From Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar:
I remember the day he smiled at me and said, “Do you know what a poem is, Esther?”
“No, what?” I said.
“A piece of dust.” And he looked so proud of having thought of this that I just stared at his blond hair and his blue eyes and his white teeth—he had very long, strong white teeth—and said, “I guess so.”
It was only in the middle of New York a whole year later that I finally thought of an answer to that remark.
I spent a lot of time having imaginary conversations with Buddy Willard. He was a couple of years older than I was and very scientific, so he could always prove things. When I was with him I had to work to keep my head above water.
These conversations I had in my mind usually repeated the beginnings of conversations I’d really had with Buddy, only they finished with me answering him back quite sharply, instead of just sitting around and saying, “I guess so.”
Now, lying on my back in bed, I imagined Buddy saying, “Do you know what a poem is, Esther?”
“No, what?” I would say.
“A piece of dust.”
Then just as he was smiling and starting to look proud, I would say, “So are the cadavers you cut up. So are the people you think you’re curing. They’re dust as dust as dust. I reckon a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of those people put together.”
And of course Buddy wouldn’t have any answer to that, because what I said was true. People were made of nothing so much as dust, and I couldn’t see that doctoring all that dust was a bit better than writing poems people would remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick and couldn’t sleep.
I have a weakness for writing about writing. I can’t get enough of it. Any time a novel touches on the timeless topic of why we write in first place, I am right there lapping it up. And Sylvia Plath writes so beautifully. The dialogue (and inner dialogue) is right on, and so many of the details throughout the book are written in a straightforward, but poetic way.
One of my favorite lines is when Esther refuses to return to the psychiatrist who gave her shock treatments, and her mother replies, “I knew you’d decide to be all right again.”
Whoa. Now that’s writing.
Haiku North America
Posted: August 12, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized 5 Comments »a href=”http://artichokeseason.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/photo-141.jpg”>
Seattle gum wall
searching for words
that will stick
Haiku poet Garry Gay with Michael Dylan Welch just next to him and mostly out of view.
Haiku North America, which took place in Seattle on August 3-7, was an incredible experience. I will not try to chronicle the events here, but if you are interested in a detailed and witty account of HNA, please visit Melissa Allen’s blog at http://haikuproject.wordpress.com. While I had a lot of fun reconnecting with old acquantances, meeting new people, and hanging out with good friends, I felt as if I was only half there at times. A difficult few months with my mother, who has suffered some intense health problems, kept me from feeling fully present. In any case, I am so glad I managed to get away. Among the highlights of HNA for me were: Carlos Colon’s Elvis poems, seeing Jerry Ball designated as the next honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives (well-deserved), meeting Minako Noma and Makoto Nakanishi from Japan, attending presentations by Terry Ann Carter (on teaching haiku), Eve Luckring (on video renku), Abigail Friedman, Carmen Sterba, Debbie Kolodji, and Tanya McDonald (on how to start and run a haiku group), Emiko Miyashita (on food kigo), Jessica Tremblay (on haiku comics), and Fay Aoyagi, Melissa Allen, Gene Myers and Don Wentworth (on haiku blogging). As is always the case with haiku meetings, some of the most interesting and fun conversations took place at meal times and late at night over drinks. Not surprisingly, I returned home sleep-deprived, but reinvigorated.
Zuihitsu: Following the Brush
Posted: February 2, 2011 Filed under: books, haiku, Japan | Tags: haiku, Kimiko Hahn, Zuihitsu 6 Comments »A week between posts stretched to a month, then several months, and here I am returning to my blog with my tail between my legs. What happened to my good intentions? More importantly, how to get back on track?
Deadlines, even self-imposed ones, are generally the key for me to keep the flow of words going. A promise to a couple of writer friends is enough to unleash a sudden torrent of scribbling so I will have something to share when we get together. A larger, more formal writing group also pushes me to get words down on paper and nudges me to take the time to comb through what I’ve written to get the tangles out.
A blog is different, though. The promise to produce something worth reading is more ambiguous here, and my audience is less clearly defined. I don’t have to look you in the eyes and read what I have written out loud for you (but I can assure you I DO always read these posts out loud – even if only into the quiet air of my empty kitchen—before I click “publish”). Worst of all, perhaps, is how forgiving you are. Even after months without a new post, steady traffic continues through this site. How am I to be held accountable with such permissive readers?
While deadlines help keep me going (and yes, I will have to manufacture some to keep myself on track), a force pulling in the opposite direction is my desire to publish only polished work. I have to let this go. Of course, I want to keep an eye on quality, but when it gets to the point of stifling the flow of words, I need to quiet the inner critic and remind myself this is a blog, not a book.
This brings me to a topic that has been on my mind recently after reading Kimiko Hahn’s powerful book of poetry, The Narrow Road to the Interior. She uses a Japanese literary genre known as Zuihitsu, which literally translates to “following the brush,” in which the writer’s thoughts flow in a seemingly random, diary-like way that is intimate and casual, while still well-crafted.
The concept of following the brush—as opposed to forcing the brush (or pen or keyboard) to follow some preconceived notion of narrative—is incredibly appealing. In fact, the end result is pleasurable to read in a very different way than a story or novel or even traditional poetry is enjoyable. The fragmentary nature of zuihitsu reflects more accurately the flow of consciousness. It is human nature to jump from one topic to another without necessarily tying together our various strands of thought.
So, here is the question. Can zuihitsu guide me in recreating my efforts to maintain this blog? Instead of trying to craft complete haibun (prose pieces with haiku), what if I just wrote whatever happened to be on my mind on a particular day? For now, I will keep the timing flexible and see how it goes. No promises to post weekly or even monthly, just the permission to post whatever strikes me (though I do intend to keep the posts at least loosely connected to writing and haiku).
To help get the flow going again, I have also decided to take part in NaHaiWriMo, in which participants pledge to write one haiku a day for the month of February. So as not to clutter the blog with these daily poems, I have signed up for Twitter and am “tweeting” my daily haiku (see the most recent tweets on the sidebar or follow me @susanantolin).
The other factor I didn’t even mention that really keeps me from blogging is time. Who has time for all this? Right now I am in between deadlines for the newsletter I edit and produce (see www.hsa-haiku.org/newsletter.htm), so I temporarily have time to resuscitate the blog, but once the next deadline hits, who knows…
“Good” Poems?
Posted: September 29, 2010 Filed under: haiku, Uncategorized | Tags: haiku, Rilke 4 Comments »While giving a workshop on haiku to teachers in Richmond on a recent Saturday afternoon, one of the teachers asked how to evaluate whether a haiku is “good” or not. My answer – that haiku, like all poetry, is intuitive and touches you in inexplicable ways – failed to satisfy the desire for some objective criteria. I had written a long list of common elements of haiku on the board and emphasized that those were to be used as tools – not as strict rules – for writing haiku. The problem in evaluating haiku is that some poems that meet all of the objective criteria for “good” haiku might still fall flat, while some of the very best haiku might lack some of the key criteria on the list. So, what makes a good haiku? Who can judge the quality of a poem?
One teacher suggested that if a student’s poem fails to get a positive reaction from the rest of the students in a particular classroom, then it is not a good poem regardless of how much the student who wrote the poem likes his own work. Aaagh. No! Wait! I may not be able to give a satisfyingly clear answer to the first question of what makes a “good” haiku, but on this point I am adamant; if a student likes his own haiku, that is a successful poem. A poet writes first to please himself; whether the poem touches other people in a profound way is secondary – it is wonderful, of course, but still secondary to the initial joy of satisfying your own need to write.
This past week I read Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, in which he offers the following advice to an aspiring poet:
You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. Now (since you have allowed me to advise you) I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not now do. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself.
Rilke goes on in this series of letters to advise the young poet to trust himself, to write of common everyday things from his own life experience, and to read great literature. It is natural to want to rate our work, to see how our own efforts stack up in comparison to the poems of our classmates or of the whole literary world. Rilke’s advice is right on, though, and a good reminder not only to teachers and students, but to all writers. Trust yourself. Don’t let anyone else – critics, editors, classmates – dampen the pleasure you take in creating your poems.
Books
Posted: July 1, 2010 Filed under: books, haiku, Uncategorized | Tags: books, haiku, Orhan Pamuk, summer reading 7 Comments »Just out of a matinee showing of a popular but entirely forgettable movie, my teenage daughter and I stepped into a large bookstore next to the theater and bought iced coffee. We browsed the bookshelves for a while to pass the time until the others in our family, who were seeing another movie, came to meet us. We headed first for the cookbook section, where my daughter exclaimed over one book after another, each one more desirable than the next. Cookbooks tend to be large, heavy and expensive, so we didn’t linger too long. We were on vacation in Tacoma, WA visiting relatives, and anything we bought would have to fit into our suitcases for the flight home to California. With no aim in particular, we ended up in front of a shelf of books on writing. Immediately my daughter pulled on my arm, saying that if I started looking there I’d be there for hours. She knows me well. Shrugging her hand off of my arm, I followed her toward the teen books, most of which seem to have some relation to vampires, and then passed her and went in search of something interesting for myself. High on coffee by that time, I had a strong desire to find something exciting to read. But what exactly would I find exciting? I headed to the poetry books and found several possibilities. I ended up with a thin volume of Rilke that I carried around the store for a while, until I changed my mind after reading several poems and not finding the rush of adrenaline I craved. What is it I seek in books? Escape to another world? The chance to peer into the mind of a brilliant writer? The meaning of life? Why not? Simply put, I want a book that will make me gasp. Is that too much to ask? Finally, after I gave up on finding just the right book for my mood, I found my daughter browsing a display of bargain priced books near the front of the store. I glanced down and picked up a hard cover book by the Nobel winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk. I read the preface and suddenly had the urge to pull out a pencil and underline a passage. It was just the book I needed.
tucked under my arm
the way into another world
summer breeze
Seiko Baba
Posted: June 22, 2010 Filed under: family, food, haiku, Japan, Uncategorized | Tags: haiku 1 Comment »I stand at the kitchen sink as the dim early morning light brings the backyard into focus through the window. For this first half hour of my day, the only sounds in the kitchen are my sounds as I pack lunches for the kids and my husband. Today I cut and peel an apple for our youngest child. As I go through the ritual of slicing and peeling away the skin, I deliberately leave a few bits of skin on the otherwise bare slices. This habit of leaving some bits of skin on the apple is an act I refer to as “Seiko Baba.” Seiko Baba was a teenage student in one of my English conversation classes in the late 1980s in Tokyo. She was petite, beautiful and fun loving. She was one of the few students I met outside of school for social events. One day she and a few others ended up in my small apartment where I served tea and snacks. She offered to peel an apple for us to share, and as she did so, she left bits of the peel intact. She explained that she had attended a finishing school for girls and had learned to peel apples this way. The skin left on the slices shows the color and freshness of the apple and that not too much was cut away. She laughed at the absurdity of teaching young women to peel apples with such care, even as she continued to peel away most of the skin leaving artfully thin strips behind. Her ability to laugh heartily at her own culture, while still embracing it, has stuck with me all these years.
I embraced feminism whole heartedly during college and envisioned a life focused on intellectual pursuits. I came from a household where my single mother spared no time for packing lunches. Time was short and better spent with the important things, like work and reading the Washington Post cover to cover every day. Yet here I am alone in the kitchen feeling honestly satisfied as I tuck these apple slices into my daughter’s lunch box. I wonder what ever happened to Seiko Baba. Does she peel apples just this way for her own kids? I know she would laugh if she knew her name has become a household word in our home.
hazy moon—
the things I once thought
were possible
Piano Recital
Posted: May 28, 2010 Filed under: haiku, music | Tags: haiku, piano recital 3 Comments »
the missed note, too, shapes the melody—spring birdsong
Sunny and Careless
Posted: May 17, 2010 Filed under: books, haiku, Uncategorized | Tags: A.A. Milne, Christopher Robin, haiku, Winnie-the-Pooh Leave a comment »“Christopher Robin came down from the Forest to the bridge, feeling all sunny and careless, and just as if twice nineteen didn’t matter a bit, as it didn’t on such a happy afternoon, and he thought that if he stood on the bottom rail of the bridge, and leant over, and watched the river slipping slowly away beneath him, then he would suddenly know everything that there was to be known…”
–from The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie-The-Pooh by A.A. Milne
sunny afternoon—
slipping away suddenly
everything known
Did You Hear Me?
Posted: May 14, 2010 Filed under: food, teenagers, Uncategorized | Tags: haiku, spring moon 1 Comment »That’s it. Stop pacing—I can’t stand it. Just get something substantial to eat—there’s plenty in there. Don’t hold the fridge open, grab something and shut the door. If you’d just eat something, a whole meal, you won’t have to keep standing up and pacing around the kitchen. Look, there’s salmon, chicken curry, potato salad, pasta salad, green beans, all ready to eat. Get a plate. Stop pacing. Or sit back down and get the homework done. Just knock it out instead of letting it drag on like this all night. C’mon. I mean it.
spring moon—
I said I love you
did you hear me?
Cleo
Posted: April 21, 2010 Filed under: dogs, Uncategorized | Tags: dogs, good-bye, haiku 6 Comments »
I sat with the phone in my hand for at least twenty minutes before I got up the courage to call the vet to ask for an appointment to talk about putting our old dog down. Of course, I had agonized my way towards that call for many months. While it was clear the right time was near, it was difficult to determine the moment to take action. The slow decline of an aging dog comes with distinct events (the poop on the floor, the dog’s weak legs splaying so she ends up in the poop on the floor, the waking in the night to go out, the pacing, the stumbling, the quiet look into my eyes before closing hers) but nowhere is there a clear line to be crossed telling me now is time to let go. I feared the vet would suggest diagnostic tests or medication, but as it turned out, she was compassionate and supportive. She said the dog would be spared further suffering by saying good-bye now. And so I did.
a break in the rain—
returning from the vet
with only a collar
The Countdown
Posted: March 23, 2010 Filed under: family, haiku, moving, Uncategorized | Tags: clutter, haiku, longing, moving, spring morning, stuff 7 Comments »I haven’t allowed myself to yearn. It wouldn’t do any good or make time pass more quickly to indulge in longing. So I tell myself this living situation is only temporary, and then I tuck away any further thoughts of returning home; I go about the business of keeping the family routines going, and staying busy helps to keep the yearning from creeping in. But now we have only one week to go, and I am giving in. I yearn to return to the house we have been away from for six months, although to be honest it doesn’t at all resemble the place we left. It is beautiful. But what I long for isn’t so much the lovely surroundings as it is the solitude. I want to find a quiet space and close the door behind me.
Returning to the house will also mean unpacking the boxes we stacked high in the garage a half a year ago. I barely remember what I so carefully packed away, but I do know it is all stuff we can easily live without. Living with about one drawer full of clothing and a few books these past six months has been fine. In fact, having all of the belongings that normally clutter the house packed away has been liberating. I haven’t had to play the role I so dislike, that of Manager of Stuff. Now I fear that with our return home I will slip back into the role of endless sorting, straightening, picking up and getting rid of possessions when we return to normal. Bleh. I long to have peace and quiet; the stuff can stay in boxes a while longer.
spring morning—
the pale gray
before sunrise
From a Strip Mall Parking Lot
Posted: March 6, 2010 Filed under: haiku, Uncategorized | Tags: Judy Garland, rainbow 1 Comment »
late winter rainbow
a part of me sings
in Judy Garland’s voice
Reflections
Posted: February 28, 2010 Filed under: haiku, teenagers, Uncategorized | Tags: game day, reflection 4 Comments »My thirteen-year-old son opens the passenger door, steps out of the car, and begins to close the door when he is suddenly startled by the reflection of a man in a button down shirt and necktie in the side car door mirror. For a moment, he freezes and is about to look over his shoulder at the man standing just behind him on the driveway. It only takes a few seconds for him to process his mistake as he realizes the man in the mirror is his own reflection. In his second year on the school basketball team, he still hasn’t grown accustomed to wearing a shirt and tie on game day.
on the bleachers
the thirteen-year-old girl
still inside me
Reviewed
Posted: February 18, 2010 Filed under: books, haiku, Uncategorized | Tags: Artichoke Season, Frogpond, George Swede, Modern Haiku, reviews 4 Comments »Antolin’s joy in home, pets and family shines through all her work with an immediacy and reverence for the ordinariness of simple things. With a shake of a tablecloth she invites us to a family picnic that is so pleasant we linger until stars appear, with white crumbs scattering to mimic the night sky and its promise of never-ending.
the tablecloth
shaken over the lawn
starry night
Yet with a slight turn of perspective, Antolin lets us know she’s not unaware of how transitory life is.
heading home
a pair of coyotes
circles closer
The above is an excerpt from the latest issue of Modern Haiku in which Linda Jeannette Ward’s review of my book Artichoke Season appears. When I sent my book off for review in the fall, it felt a bit like dropping my kids off on the first day of school. I couldn’t go along with them through their school day making sure everyone would be nice to them. So I parted at the door, turned away, and trusted the world would treat them well. Now I see my book has made it through the day mostly unscathed.
As I was digesting this first review of my book, I found the new issue of Frogpond in my mailbox. In a brief review of Artichoke Season, George Swede, Editor of Frogpond, calls the book an, “arresting debut collection.” I love it. Of all the adjectives I would have thought of to describe the book, “arresting” is not one of them. Now the word “arresting” swirls pleasantly around in my mind as I move through my day.
Huh?
Posted: February 10, 2010 Filed under: family, haiku, Uncategorized | Tags: Facebook 1 Comment »On a field trip with my daughter’s fourth grade class, a girl my daughter has just become friends with this school year looks up at me and says, “I saw you on Facebook, Mrs. Antolin.” Oh, and what in the world are YOU doing on Facebook, I want to ask, but before I can get anything coherent out of my mouth, she continues, “Yeah, I Googled you and found a bunch of stuff.” Huh? These field trip conversations have changed over the years.
a new ringtone
to match my mood—
Devil Mountain moon
Scribblings
Posted: January 30, 2010 Filed under: haiku, Uncategorized | Tags: haiku, John Muir, scribbling 3 Comments »There is not a “fragment” in all nature, for every relative fragment of one thing is a full harmonious unit in itself.
–John Muir
Sounds like something a haiku poet might say, doesn’t it? A few days ago I visited the John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez and walked through the rooms where he lived with his wife and two daughters nearly 120 years ago. I lingered awhile in the room he called his “Scribble Den,” where, from his desk, he would have looked out over orchards and pristine rolling hills. This is where he gathered his thoughts after his many travels and composed letters, articles and books through which he inspired the environmental movement. Outside the house a light rain was falling, the tail end of a series of winter storms that blew through the Bay Area last week. Breathing in the damp air and imagining what the landscape might have looked like in John Muir’s time, I felt inspired to head home to write.
I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
–John Muir
a birdcall
from across the valley
and –there! –its answer
Between Storms
Posted: January 20, 2010 Filed under: haiku, Uncategorized | Tags: clouds Leave a comment »
passing clouds-
my thoughts
drift
The Radio
Posted: January 16, 2010 Filed under: family, haiku, music, teenagers, Uncategorized | Tags: hip-hop, radio 2 Comments »As soon as our kids were old enough to ride in the front seat of the car, they began wrestling for control of the radio. Since then I have been listening to the latest hip-hop hits on the way to and from school, swim meets, water polo, soccer, and basketball games. Whoever is in the passenger seat reaches instinctively for his or her preset buttons of choice, and then turns the volume as loud as I will tolerate it. Just as instinctively, I hit the volume down button on the steering wheel. And so it goes.
This morning, while our older daughter was in another room, my husband told me in a whisper that he had changed all the preset buttons in his car to his favorite station, which plays only classic soul. On a day with grim news filling the newspaper spread out on the table beside our breakfast, this was a welcome moment of lightness.
a hint of a smile
in the way she rolls her eyes—
midwinter morning
Flipped Off
Posted: January 8, 2010 Filed under: haiku, Uncategorized | Tags: flipped off, minivan, Smart car 1 Comment »I was driving on the freeway the other day in my minivan listening to a haiku podcast when a tiny Smart car passed me on the left. I glanced over at the car as it passed and saw the driver reach his hand to the rear window and give me the finger. There was nothing subtle about it—he put his middle finger up and thrust his hand towards me and held it there more than long enough for me to notice. I was shocked, of course, and puzzled as I wondered what on earth I might have done to piss the guy off. I hadn’t changed lanes for several miles, so I couldn’t have cut him off. As he sped off down the freeway, he left me contemplating, with an amused smile on my face, the various things that could have caused his anger. Was it that I was driving a gas-guzzling minivan? Or could it be the Obama bumper sticker? I shrugged my shoulders and laughed, glad in a way for a break in the day’s routine.
the drive home—
lyrics I didn’t know
I knew
The Dog
Posted: January 3, 2010 Filed under: dogs, family, haiku, Uncategorized 1 Comment »The holidays are over. So, too, is the five-day break I had from the routine of caring for our aging dog. Now I am back to springing out of bed at any hour of the night to take her out for a walk when I hear the jingle of the license and name tag dangling from her collar. Staying with my mother, as we are now, there is no yard to let the dog out, so every time she needs to relieve herself, I take her out and pace along with her at the side of the road. Her decline has been gradual, but when it came time to arrange for her care while we left town, it was obvious she would need more attention than I could comfortably ask anyone to give. I had resigned myself to staying home to care for her while the rest of the family went to visit relatives over the holidays, but at the last minute my step-mother insisted we bring the dog to stay with her and my dad. They hadn’t had a dog in the house for some years and I am afraid that after those five days, it may be some years more before they do again.
ambling along
with her nose in the grass
blue moon
