a new favorite poet

With a basket and a shoulder bag overflowing with bundles of chard and fresh bursting snow peas, a bottle of bee pollen and ginger kombucha, paper bags of cherries, blueberries and peaches, fresh bread and a cup of blue bottle coffee my summer roommate and I luxuriated in the bounty that is farmer's market grocery shopping on a lazy Californian Saturday. 

Sitting in the grass behind River Dog farm's stand Jessina began to read aloud from a slim volume of poems by a woman I hadn't heard of. Lisa Russ Spaar spins, articulates, and intricately weaves words in a web of compelling vulnerability and power. 

Jessina is in the habit of carrying around a large shoulder bag from which appear a seemingly never ending stream of notebooks and tantalizing volumes.

With no intention of giving the little book back I promptly extricated it from Jessina's hands with polite murmurs of curiosity. Read through at least 8 poems in a row...Ravished by every one. 

I have now rummaged through her bag to find the book again, a hostess sin I only commit in the face of irresistible poetry or prose...

Naturally, the following poem was an immediate favorite. (Jessina is all too familiar with my Woolfish-ness.)


Insomnia of Virginia Woolf


January 1941

All my spectres come out on a sleepless night.
Diary II


Night's a medieval carol--insular
     and superstitious--head a white vapor,
legs bent candles, the elms pulsing

their red omens on the dark, dove-fastened
     Downs. Look your last
on all things lovely,

back in the habitable world of day.
     The new year's a closed door,
she and Leonard cowering beneath dormers,

German planes dragging their terrible,
     crescendic scales up over Monk's House--
--never truly away--"We shall be broken

together." Where once wine flashed
     citrine and crimson in sceptered glasses,
water speaks now on the wavering wall,

as the Gods who must, when they have created
     happiness, grudge it, and the voices
of the dead begin, thin, milky, gnawing

at the nape, one thing tunneling
     into the next (ever writing to rhythm,
not plot), as in London, visiting the bombed

flat, she tasted in her mouth the blasted,
     white dust of bricks that were her walls,
carressing her grief with walking

through the City's char and gash, exquisitely
     wounded. Wind blows hungrily over the bed,
the voices tune up in the pit--and pain,

the first stage of intimacy, presides.
     She craves a kiss--a whole flutter
from the inner wrist to the elbow, the stumble

of the warm stone of her own voice, singing out
     ahead over the river's restless avenue
that she cannot help but follow.
  

and they told me to call it love

That love will be enduring. though all things. 

through all mysteries of fragility and paradoxes of curving spines 

and strong, intertwined fingers. 

 "for once in our 4000 mile apart lives, we had time to spare" 

- letter written to myself in June of last year.

{my fair ladies.}

words of immense comfort.

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience, your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully, mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

--ee cummings

the plan for now

Surround yourself with good-hearted people who know, and seek, and cultivate kindness. Read all your days. books about many things. never say, "oh that's not my field." be bold, and curious. go outside more frequently and stay outside longer than other people. write down what touches you, what is potent, good bad, challenging, heart-breakingly beautiful about this living. eat good food. always. go to the symphony, especially when they play Beethoven. go to the ballet too, especially when there are dying swans. be busy. know how to be still, quiet and be it. write real letters. put them in the post. fill other peoples' hands with the roses you grow. find mentors and listen. stay up late or get up early enough to watch a sunrise regularly. read. read. read. again. I say. it is one thing you can always do to keep growing. have too many stacks of books. own a picnic basket and use it. know what you love. and do a darn good job loving it. Have heroes, travel, and love your family - whether they are related by blood or not. play music. wear cozy sweaters. be ridiculous. be happy. be sad too. grieve when it is time to grieve. greet your friends with kisses on their cheeks. Go Backpacking. make sun tea in large glass mason jars. miss people, all the marvelous ways of their being. aspire. always aspire. live with passionate intentionality. Know that inside of you is a landscape that is dense, unique, and complicated. Do not be afraid that no one will see it.

{the plan. for now.}

favorite words, photo journal

 

Business. 

 Book.

 Old.

 Sister.

Light.

Narwhals and surviving finals

a few notes to close out the semester...

-wore overalls and pearl earnings. at the same time. You might think duguries are just a step up in dignity from baby onesies, but really, I felt like such a woman. Its so exhausting not being yourself most days isn't it? I should buy more overalls. (yes, you can all be embarrassed for me. I'm over it.)

-walked to the corner store after opening every secret-stash-hideaway-kitchen-cabinet-book-compartment-and-inside-zipped-purse-pocket and finding NO CHOCOLATE. Wished I could have had a glass of red wine to go with the newly acquired chocolate bar (which was shamelessly bitten into on the block and a half walk home.) 

-watched a documentary on whale communication. random. marvelous. I want one of these:

 (And no, 'arry Potter didn't make them up to poke voldie's eyes out. Selkie's honor.)

-talked my way into a library card for the Graduate Theological Union. (I feel cool now. and did I mention THEY STILL USE A TYPEWRITER TO PUT YOUR NAME ON THE CARDS. what? my people. we have found each other.)

-cooked my first chicken in the new studio. The chicken, myself, and the smoke alarm were all blessedly silent and content with the affair. (My attempt to sew a dress sans sewing machine, sufficient fabric, and pattern the same night in a bout of epic pent up creative energy did not go as well.)

-had a face to face conversation with Dr. Annemarie Weyl Carr after her lecture on the Icon of Kykkos. With a twinkle of real understanding in her eyes that matched the Byzantium gold of the many rings on her spindly, wrinkled hands she blessed my hopes...said to have a marvelous time with it all. I told her I would. I utterly would.

-spontaneously watched the sunset from the whale's back and got up the nerve to read a few poems at the release party for the Berkeley Poetry Review's 42nd issue. 

-bought my own copy of Huizinga's The Autumn of the Middle Ages which I have been lovingly scribbling in instead of studying for finals. Read 30 pages in the first sitting (good for yours truly dyslexic here.)

-still talking to the Marchmains, Mr. Flyte's teddy bear, and Charles late at night. If this goes on beyond this next week you should probably start getting worried (...that is if you aren't already.)

-got dressed up to go to the library...'cause, ok.

-MOST IMPORTANTLY just barely resisted rubbing my face from sheer delight into my JSTOR article print outs while squealing in a cafe as I read the blessed words that closed the case for my proposed thesis being possible... 

I looked like a girl who had been kissed for the rest of the day.

 (It is so essential to fall in love with something you can do, pursue, and unravel in life. Go out and find yourself some real work. Something that matters to you like manuscript illumination used to matter to the monks in their quiet cells...something with that much potent life in it and something that must be done carefully, honestly, and passionately. Something that needs being said and if not put just the right way, will be missed by the loud, busy, clumsy world.) 

xoxo,

lady D

the way it will always be Mr. Shelley

(The greatest joys of my childhood continue to enrapture my heart. 

I just wish to beg a few more stolen hours to be with the ghosts and talk aloud as we used to...

now I just have to wink as I pass them swinging their loafer clad feet off library shelves. Sometimes I believe a little too much in our life together. 

If you really knew me, you'd sense that I'm always slightly in danger of becoming quite a mad bird.)

blows you a kiss,

Lady D