Flying Dreams (poem)

 

They begin when I am eighteen, dreams
Refusing subtlety, rising from books that say
You can leave your body, it feels like flying.

I don’t believe it. Then it happens to me.

The first dreams take me up, not like wings,
But suddenly, without warning, slowly at first.
Then faster and higher than I’ve ever been or will be
Like a comet, flying high over the trees until

The clouds turn hazy and I swoop, like a bat, 
Past branches, moss, leaves, a sky bereft of animals
Speed is all I have to pull me forward, spiraling
Like rice paper, lifted by the wind.

See more in my post for Medium.

Photo by Look Up Look Down Photography on Unsplash

Poet's Month

Did you know April is National Poetry Month? I had no idea when I started my Beat Street series with The Beat on Ruby's Street. 

In the book, Ruby is turning 12 on April 12 (her golden birthday). Her main ambition, though she doesn't quite know it yet, is to become a poet, and one of the things Ruby likes best is making up poetry.

Growing up in Greenwich Village, New York in the 1950s, Ruby is mostly aware of the Beat Generation poets around her, and that's the kind of poetry she tends to write. In order to write Ruby's poems, I had to read a lot of Beat poets, and then reimagine them so they were believably being written by an eleven-year-old on the cusp of turning twelve.

It was really one of the most fun assignments I'd ever given myself. 

"Sweet fleet beat of the street

Rising heat

From the white of the sidewalk

And the conga sound of the 

Bonga bonga bongos

BEAT BEAT BEAT

"Every spring

They sprout like toadstools 

In the key of heat."

In fact, I was remembering how people all over the streets in Brooklyn (where I used to live) pulled out their instruments (including congas) every spring and that's how you'd know winter was over.  I can't believe things would have changed all that much from Ruby's time in 1958. I think musicians need to play and the street acoustics can be so perfect when it gets warmer.

Writing Ruby's poetry has made me think about all sorts of poets through the ages and wanting to listen and quote more poetry, too. Yesterday I posted a photo of a goose standing on the edge of a lake around here and it made me think of Walt Whitman's poem:

"The untold want by life and land ne'er granted,

Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find."

Just two lines that speak volumes about wanting more out of life than you ever received. Which makes it a perfect poem for Now, Voyager-- a spectacular Bette Davis film? (Do not ask me who she was, please. Just google her).

These are just two poems I wanted to celebrate in April. I'll try to think of a few more next week! Now it's your turn to send me some.

Unsung Poetry

If you find yourself writing about a Beat Generation girl who wants to become a poet, you may get her poems popping into your head (now and again.)

And, now and again, you might need to write them down, even if they don't make it into a book like the Beat Street series.

Today, that's what I'm doing, and sharing with you.

Ruby's latest poem (song)? is still a work in progress, but here's what she's whispering in my ear:

New songs leap in before you wake, saying take me

To a store

To a party

To a place you want to go

Even if you're gone already

New songs burrow in like cats on your pillow

Teasing until you give in and try to sing them

All they want is to go home

To your room

To your party

To wherever you don't want to go even if you've been there 

To find out if they're your songs

Feed them all your dry grass and rain on them when you're crying

Also teach them to someone else and it can't be someone

Who loves you or even likes you all that much

If that who-ever likes your song and tries to sing it then you know 

It's yours, saying take me not 

To a store

To a party 

To a story

Just take me

Take me home

***

This won't be in book three, but I thought it could still be something Ruby wrote. Sometimes her poems leap in and burrow, too.

Imaginary Ruby photo:  Christina Welsh

Patience for the Poet

This morning brought a doe to our back yard, though they wander through our front yard at 3 a.m. all the time. I liked her boldness, showing up at 9:30 and taking her time. She nibbled away at the rhubarb patch under our evergreen and then ate some long grass and hosta by the garage.

I give her credit for staying away from the bee balm, which is one of my favorite flowers. I sprayed our front yard circle this morning with a liquid that smells like rotten eggs; it is supposed to repel the deer but we'll see. I just want my front circle, they can have the rest (except the bee balm).

There are also reports in my neighborhood of bear scat, which is less appealing to me than the deer, though I do like bears as long as they're as socially distant as possible. I'm sharing all this with you because I live twelve minutes from the city's capital and can't believe there are still all these animals here.

I'm told there is a man who bought up all the land in this neighborhood and let it stay wild, bless him, so that's why the animals are congregating. Growing up in New Jersey I saw rabbits, squirrels and birds, but the world was too populous and living close to New York City meant even less animal life, except for pigeons. So it's fun for me to have moved to the Midwest and see all these animals here.

My friend Beth, who is a journalist, remembers a journalist conference here where she says nothing but rabbits were discussed for two hours running. People were so impressed by the size of our rabbits. I cannot even imagine it.

Deer in the yard this morning made me think of the Denise Levertov poem The Breathing so I want to share it with you, since she was kinda-sorta a Beat Generation poet and I'm starting to work through more character development on book three of the Beat Street Series. In any case, since my main character Ruby wants to be a poet eventually, she should know this poem. Don't you think?

The Breathing

An absolute
patience.
Trees stand
up to their knees in
fog. The fog
slowly flows
uphill.
White
cobwebs, the grass
leaning where deer
have looked for apples.
The woods
from brook to where
the top of the hill looks
over the fog, send up
not one bird.
So absolute, it is
no other than
happiness itself, a breathing
too quiet to hear.
--Denise Levertov

Sometimes I think (more than sometimes, actually) poets like Levertov were easily as good if not better than the male Beat Generation writers like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, and the rest--and just didn't get the attention they deserved, because, well. You know why. Maybe writing the Beat Street series about a young female poet is my way of saying that.

Book three brings Ruby into her own as a poet, and it's my job to get her there. I just know I'm going to need that absolute patience Levertov is talking about.

Psychedelic Car Wash

Last weekend I drove to THREE car washes, ladies and gentlemen, and ALL were out of order. I don't know if that's because everyone and their brother AND sister in this city was as desperate to wash their car as I was - after a winter when it was way to cold to get anywhere near a car wash? But I had no luck.

Finally, my husband found one not too far from our place that was open. And I was delighted to see all the different color soaps - a psychedelic display at a time when there aren't many psychedelics any more (let alone people who know what that means). But the picture above should give you an idea.

All this reminded me of a story about Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a poet and co-founder of the legendary City Lights, one of the first bookstores to publish Beat Generation poets like Allen Ginsberg and others. 

(Here I am making a pilgrimage a few years back).

This past March, btw, the bookstore celebrated Ferlinghetti's 100th birthday. That made ME remember how much I loved his poetry when I read it in school - and how I bought Ginsberg's poems Howl and Kaddish at City Lights and read them in my hotel room, and how Kaddish moved me. Howl is more famous, but Kaddish, with its story of 12-year-old Ginsberg struggling with his mother's mental illness, made me cry.

But... that wasn't what I was thinking in the car wash. What came to mind instead was how Ferlinghetti is supposed to have written a poem (and I have yet to find it at the moment) about taking a shower in a car wash when the water was turned off at his apartment. I KNOW I read this somewhere - it's either a "legend" or true but I'm pretty sure it's true,? If not, it's still a great legend.

I don't think HIS carwash had all these colors, but that's probably a good thing? Don't the colors look sticky?

In any case, if you want to take a look at Ferlinghetti's more famous poems, go here.

Though I haven't been to San Francisco in a while, I DID go to the Keys last winter with my husband, in a desperate attempt to escape the Polar Vortex. While there, we checked out Hemingway's house, but that's going to have to wait for next week's blog.

Right now, though, I hope you can share some of Ferlinghetti's stories and poems with your family--and let them know how brave he was in publishing Allen Ginsberg's Howl poem. In fact, customs officials seized 520 copies of the poem and City Lights' bookstore manager Shing Marao was arrested and put in jail for selling the poem to an undercover police officer. Then Ferlinghetti was arrested for publishing the book, on the grounds that it was "obscene."

At the trial, however, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union and testimony in the book's favor from various authors, Ferlinghetti won the case when California State Superior Court Judge Clayton Horn ruled that the poem was of redeeming social importance.

That's not a good enough reason to share Ferlinghetti's work, though. You need to share it because it's BEAUTIFUL!

And for more information about the Beat Generation... I found these for you:

This is the Beat Generation (excerpt from New York Times article, 1952) by John Clellon Holmes

The Beat Book: edited by Anne Waldman

The Portable Beat Reader by Ann Charters

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Ten Favorite Literature Quotes About God

Putting books on shelves these days after a year of taking them down from our built ins at the old house. Moving into a new one makes me feel the books are new, too. 

Looking at Wuthering Heights reminded me of some of my favorite quotes in literature (from Beats and others) about God - so wanted to share them with you.

10--from Jack Kerouac's Lonesome Traveler

"For when you realized that God is Everything you know that you've got to love everything no matter how bad it is, in the ultimate sense it was neither good nor bad (consider the dust), it was just what was, that is, what we made to appear."

9. From Allen Ginsberg's Kaddish and Other Poems

"Naomi: ‘And when we die we become an onion, a cabbage, a carrot, or a squash, a vegetable.’ I come downtown from Columbia and agree. She reads the Bible, thinks beautiful thoughts all day.
‘Yesterday I saw God. What did he look like? Well, in the afternoon I climbed up a ladder—he has a cheap cabin in the country, like Monroe, N.Y. the chicken farms in the wood. He was a lonely old man with a white beard.
‘I cooked supper for him. I made him a nice supper—lentil soup, vegetables, bread & butter—miltz—he sat down at the table and ate, he was sad. 
‘I told him, Look at all those fightings and killings down there, What’s the matter? Why don’t you put a stop to it?
‘I try, he said—That’s all he could do, he looked tired. He’s a bachelor so long, and he likes lentil soup.” 

I could quote the entire poem, I love it so much, and remember weeping the first time I read it. So much of Ginsberg's relationship with his mother rings true and the entire poem is a knockout. But this one quote gives me an idea of how the mother and son connected, whether or not it was true. 

8. From Psalm 90:12

"Teach Us How to Number Our Days, that We May Get Us a Heart of Wisdom."

Psalm 90:12 reminds me daily that time (and space) are limited, and that living with compassion and kindness are the wisdom part you get after you realize how limited your time will be here.

7. From Allen Ginsberg's Death and Fame: Last Poems, 1993-1997

“I know I'm not God, are you? Don't be silly.

God? God? Everybody's God? Don't be silly.”

Amen.

6. From the song "What if God was One of Us?" by Eric M. Bazilian

What if God was one of us, ust a slob like one of us, Just a stranger on the bus, Tryin' to make his way home?...

...Nobody calling on the phone, 'Cept for the Pope maybe, in Rome.

Because we always want to believe that God is with us, somehow, somewhere. I think the song conveys that perfectly.

5. From Walker Percy interviews Walker Percy - when asked about his comment that his belief is a gift from God

"You want me to explain it? How would I know? The only answer I can give is that I asked for it, in fact demanded it. I took it as an intolerable state of affairs to have found myself in this life and in this age, which is a disaster by any calculation, without demanding a gift commensurate with the offense. So I demanded it. No doubt other people feel differently."

I'm not Catholic -- but whenever I'm in a philosophical mood about belief, I read Walker Percy. He always seems to articulate my feelings in ways no one else does -- and I too, cannot explain it except to say he gets it right, every time. 

4. From Martin Buber's Tales of the Hasidim

A rabbi named Zusya died and went to stand before the judgment seat of God. As he waited for God to appear, he grew nervous thinking about his life and how little he had done. He began to imagine that God was going to ask him, "Why weren't you Moses or why weren't you Solomon or why weren't you David?" But when God appeared, the rabbi was surprised. God simply asked, "Why weren't you Zusya?"

Because we were meant to be ourselves. Right?

3. From Isak Dinesen's take on the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel in Out of Africa

 "My life, I will not let you go except you bless me, but then I will let you go."

How many times a day do I feel this way? Too many to count.

2. My second-best favorite is something I can only quote from memory - I cannot locate it but know it is from a play about Jacquiline du Pre, a cellist stricken with multiple sclerosis. She is talking about God and says she doesn't believe, but when she hears music, she knows where the idea came from.

Wrestling myself these days with belief and other things, so a reminder of how music works on us nonverbally is most welcome.

1. From Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

"I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy."

Why is this my favorite? Something about Cathy Earnshaw's stubborn insistence that the life she has on earth is better than anything else that could be imagined; something about her passion and defiance of the norms of her time, and even our time. I love that there was a heaven, first of all, and that she rebelled against being there, requesting another kind of heaven. I love that the angels got tired of her and threw her out.

I just love that.

And if you have your own quotes you want to send, I'd love that too.

Photo of moors: Chris Combe


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Not Kidding: Getting Your Kids into Poetry

Mention the “P” word to a group of parents and you’re likely to see Panic, if not outright dismissal.

“Poetry? Are you kidding? My son would rather die than read it, let alone write it. He’s into running and baseball. That’s it!”

“I have to work really hard to get my kid to crack a book that isn’t assigned. War stories and adventure is about all he’s up for.”

I know, believe me. I had to work really hard to get my son interested in books too. The only way he would read The Sword in the Stone was if I read it to him (which prompted him to tell me I looked like the picture of Madam Mim. Not my favorite).

So why I am saying you should try and get your kid interested in poetry? Simply put:

1. Poetry’s easy. If you find the right poem or poems, you can read them pretty quickly.
2.  If you’re trying to get your kid to write (and what parent isn’t)? – poems can be written quicker than almost anything else, including essays, blog posts, creative writing compositions and all the other stuff they make you write in school.
3. Poetry is a gateway drug. I started writing poems when I was mad at my mom for not letting me do any number of things as a tween. The poems became an outlet for me when nothing else helped.

You don’t have to start with Wordsworth or other classic poets (unless you want to) and there are a lot of fun, interesting writers out there to choose from. I wrote about Beat Generation poets in The Beat on Ruby’s Street because they did such interesting work with language. If you want to explore them and your kid is younger than say, 13 or 14, you may want to be selective, as many of these poems are for adults.

Allen Ginsberg, for example, has written some of the most beautiful, devastating and superb poetry I’ve ever read, but some of it may be too intense for an 11 year old. On the other hand, some of his poetry can be read by people of any age. My choice would be My Sad Self.

Besides reading poetry, you might want to encourage your kid to write it when his or her emotions seem too high to contain in regular prose. Is he mad at you? Does she want something she’s likely never to have? Are two siblings fighting incessantly?

Ask them for a poem. Two poems. Ask them to spill all their emotions into those poems and have a read-off to see whose poem captures those emotions the best. Share poems you think are similar to the ones they wrote and talk to them about the lives of those poets.

Will that make your kids love poetry? I have no idea. But years from now when a teacher or boss asks them for a writing sample, you can pat yourself on the back because at least you got them started. And who knows, you might discover one of your children has a really fine inner poet and all they needed was a little prodding to get it to come out.

For more on introducing poetry to your kids or your kids to poetry, try these sites and links:

Sharing the Power of Poetry with Your Child

How to Get Boys into Poetry

Fun and Easy Ways to Get Kids Interested in Poetry

The Heart of Beat Street

Just getting back from a trip to San Francisco and thinking about the Beats in The Beat on Ruby’s Street. I of course had to make a pilgrimage to City Lights (and my husband agreed as long as we could stop by Jerry Garcia’s former home later.)

I expected something like the indie bookstores in New York, with books (and sometimes cats) crowded on tables and shelves in tiny, dark rooms filled with chatter and street noise. But City Lights was quiet. The rooms were light, like most rooms in California, there was ample space to read and the staff was kind and inviting. Most of all, I noticed the hushed, reverent atmosphere of a shrine. Pilgrimage, indeed.

I bought Howl and Kaddish and an anthology of a number of Beat poets. Reading Howl to my husband later, I realized how much it was meant to be read aloud. I’ve talked about the story of Howl elsewhere in this blog—but reading Kaddish made a deeper impression. It made me realize that while Kerouac has become the face of the Beat Generation, Allen Ginsberg is its soul.

It was Ginsberg’s language that birthed the dark heart and the beatific rhythms of the Beats; and his courage at a time when being gay meant considerable danger and heartache, that encouraged future generations to come into the light. Kaddish shows us what Ginsberg went through growing up with a mother who was severely mentally ill. The sorrow is almost unbearable; the language precise and sublime.

I related to Ginsberg’s story because my grandmother was also mentally ill and spent years at Greystone, an institution in New Jersey where Ginsberg’s mother also resided at times. I never knew my grandmother and much of her story is lost to me; but Kaddish gave me an idea of what she must have gone through.

If much of Ginsberg’s work may not be accessible to middle school readers, why did I set Ruby’s story in 1958 in the heart of a Beat Generation family? I had been fascinated by the Beats myself at 12, long before I started reading them, because the world they lived in seemed freer and more alive than the one I was living in. The young character I created is reaching for something new and finds it in language and poetry.

Ruby’s story isn’t an easy one; but she finds solace, or at least glimpses of it, in art, writing and language. That’s what the Beat poets like Allen Ginsberg did so brilliantly, and that’s what I want my readers to find. However you find it doesn’t matter—just know it’s out there, waiting for you.

Poems you can share with your tween:

Constantly Risking Absurdity — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

My Alba — Allen Ginsberg

Weather — Hettie Jones

Trees — Jack Kerouac

People at Night — Denise Levertov

City Lights Bookstore: Graham C99

Bookstore Reader:  Christopher Michel

Have a Seat Sign: pp_l_qq

Still Howling After all These Years

In 1958 when The Beat on Ruby's Street happens, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the White House, and Richard Nixon was Vice President. The Supreme Court ruled that the schools of Little Rock, Arkansas had to integrate and the Yankees beat the Milwaukee Braves.

In New York’s Greenwich Village, the Beat Generation was making art, poetry and headlines. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road had been published in 1957 and 1958 saw two more of Kerouac's books out on shelves: The Subterraneans (my favorite) and The Dharma Bums.

Allen Ginsberg was making headlines, too. His poem Howl’s references to drugs and sex caused custom officials to seize 520 copies when they were being imported from a London printer. The poem was published with other poems by the author by City Lights publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Both the City Lights bookstore manager Shigeyosi Murao and Ferlinghetti were arrested in 1957 for publishing and selling Allen’s poetry. In essence, Ferlinghetti and Murao were tried for obscenity; but with help from the American Civil Liberties Union, Ferlinghetti won the case and California State Superior Court Judge Clayton Horn decided that the poem was of "redeeming social importance.”

Today Ginsberg's poem is more likely to be considered a literary classic than an obscenity—but in 1957, it was hugely offensive to conventional society. On the other hand, while Howl might not be on trial now, censorship of art in movies, books, cartoons and more is still alive and well in 2015.

Growing up, I remember hearing about parents who demanded that certain books be taken out of school libraries because they contained passages that were supposed to be too “adult” for kids. I used to wonder about the message they were sending their kids about freedom of speech and think that was a lot more dangerous than any so-called obscene words might be.

We may not have obscenity trials going on in the U. S. now, but do we still have a lot of people trying to censor art—and each other. I’d love to know what you think about the Howl obscenity trial—and if you’ve experienced any personal censorship in your life. (If you have, send me a note through my website at jennazark.com).

For more information on the trial, see this historical essay by James Sederberg.

To learn more about artistic censorship, see this article in HuffPo: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/16/art-censorship_n_6465010.html

Bookstore window: Jason Riedy

Black & white image – City Lights: Christopher Michel

Black & white exterior – City Lights: Simon Doggett