I get to sample the results of many experiments around here.
Author: Jnana Hodson
In downsizing to a remote fishing village in Downeast Maine, this eclectic writer feels everything's coming together.
Acid test poet: Aram Saroyan (1943- )
My first encounter with concrete and minimalist poetry came as an art exhibit in the late ‘60s. Maybe I already knew of otherwise traditional verse presented typographically to represent a visual image on a page – a vase or bird, perchance – but this time, the words themselves took on an independent visual wonder. Think of Robert Indiana’s famous LOVE as a cube of giant building blocks.
The writer I most appreciate in this field is Aram Saroyan, the son of a famed Depression-era novelist. Aram came to fame at age 20 with a one-word poem:
lighght
which became a source for right-wing scandal when it won a $750 award from the National Endowment of the Arts. As conservatives charged, it wasn’t spelled right and it wasn’t a real poem anyway. Things got ugly.
Others, me included, find it a vibrating both in the thought and the image. If that silent “gh” adds something to the sense of the word, either as illumination or as featherweight or even carefree, why shouldn’t two intensify the sensation?
It revives that wonder and puzzlement we’ve all felt, but many writers, I think, more keenly, when we first encounter many quirks of the English language but then later glaze past.
In this vein, Saroyan also has a playful
aaple
as another entry.
His small collection, Pages, has traveled from one side of the continent to another with me. A downside of these works is that they don’t work at an open mic or featured reading. They really do belong to the page.
For my own ventures along these lines, check out Sun Spots and Drumming at my Thistle Finch blog as well as the weekly Kinisi entries here at the Red Barn.
Kinisi 194
Where do fruit flies come from
even in the dead of winter?
Time to meet her, the Louis R. French
So who was Louis Robbins French?
Father of the three sons
who built this in South Bristol, Maine
The French is 101 feet overall, 65 feet on deck, with 19 feet of beam, as the brochure proclaims. She draws 7.5 feet with a full keel. A proven vessel in all conditions, she is a nifty and quick sailor, having won the Great Schooner Race many times. The French has also participated in recent Tall Ships gatherings in Boston. It spent part of its life based out of Lubec just south of Eastport.
the French was largely stripped and gutted
and rebuilt for passengers
what’s left?
As my buddy Peter grinned at me at the end of our week:
“Your first love. You never forget.”
MICE contradance
That’s Moose Island Contras Etc., a very fine traditional country dance band with a very fine caller. We do have fun around here.
Hard to believe, but it’s really happening
With a sense of despair regarding the roof project and our lack of a contractor on the horizon, we went ahead and set about erecting raised garden beds for what would be my third summer of dwelling here. We would try to leave some space for a contractor to get at the house, should we ever, ever, find someone.
During one of the inevitable conversations with passers-by while installing the garden and its fencing, a trusted neighbor mentioned that she had just had some carpentry done by a former student, someone who had returned home after living and working away. She gave us his name and phone number, and an introductory conversation followed.
Yes, he could do the project, and he thought in could start at the end of August. I was startled when he said that was the upcoming August, not a year off. Could it truly be?
Naturally, there were delays while he wrapped up some other commitments, but we did find ourselves in a stunned state of disbelief when work finally began in earnest at the beginning of this past October. We finally had a contractor who not only showed up on the morning he promised, but also on the dot of the hour.
He hit the ground running, methodically, precisely.
At the heart of our big project is a new roof on the house. Not just the asphalt shingling, which itself has needed replacement – we could have found someone to do that – but the actual shape of the supporting rafters themselves. To gain much-needed interior space, the walls on the second floor are being raised. That structural work’s the complication. And how, as you’ll see.
When we were considering making an offer on the house, we were told to check out the rafters for signs of charring, a consequence of the 1886 fire that destroyed the canneries, wharves, and downtown. Sure enough, ours was one of the homes suffering damage though left standing.
A few weeks before starting on the renovation, our contractor stopped by with his mentor slash consultant for a closer look. More concerning, from their point of view, was the lack of a ridge beam. The rafters from each side were simply mitered together. In addition, they were further apart than current coding would permit.
Our project would be taking place in two phases – the back half of the roof last fall and the front half in the spring. Without a ridge pole, there was nothing to hold up the remaining half and nothing to support the new raised framing.
You’ll discover where that leads.
It’s been what you might call a zig-zag path
My professional life didn’t follow the conventional course, where the goal was to land on a major metropolitan daily. If not the New York Times, then the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, or the down the line from there. What were also called “destination” newspapers, with decent pay and more focused work in contrast to the sweatshops in smaller communities, or what are now called markets.
I had some near misses, but my route instead led me into places that remain largely unexplored, at least as far as literature or public awareness are concerned.
In my case?
- Binghamton, New York, along the Susquehanna River and the Southern Tier of the Allegheny foothills. What I encountered there appears in Pit-a-Pat High Jinks and, with a heavy New York City connection, Subway Visions.
- The Poconos of Pennsylvania, when I took off for a few years in a monastic setting based on yoga practice and back-to-the-earth community. This is the foundation of Yoga Bootcamp as well as portions of Subway Visions.
- Fostoria, a railroad crossing in the flat but very fertile farmland of northwest Ohio. Gives rise to Prairie Depot in Nearly Canaan and to the opening novella in the Secret Side of Jaya. And, personally, the bride in my first marriage.
- Back to Bloomington, this time not as a student but as a public policy research associate make that social sciences editor at Indiana University. My experiences as an undergraduate frame Daffodil Uprising and What’s Left, while those as college staff feed into Nearly Canaan and the middle novella of the Secret Side of Jaya, both extrapolated to the Ozarks in Arkansas.
- Yakima, Washington. It’s the Promised Land in Nearly Canaan and the final novella in the Secret Side of Jaya.
- Dubuque, Iowa, along the Upper Mississippi. Adds some detail to Daffodil and What’s Left. Personally and professionally, it was a disaster.
- Warren, Ohio, in the Rust Belt. Hometown News. And how!
- Baltimore, Maryland, my base as a field representative for the Chicago Tribune’s media syndicate. More detail for Hometown News.
- Manchester, New Hampshire, and later commuting from Dover an hour to the east. Revisions to the manuscripts and earlier versions.
- And now, Eastport, Maine, in supposed retirement.
Curiously, my professional locations before Baltimore all infuse my fiction. Strangely, I’ve never written about Dayton, where I grew up, or the places later, at least as fiction. Poetry is another matter altogether.
As we’re seeing today
No man is allowed to be the judge of his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.
James Madison in Federalist No. 10
Forced bulbs are a welcome tradition
This time of year, the fresh green is as welcome as the eventual flowers.
Vincent Katz and my little red journal
When I set about planning and packing for a week on the water last year, I knew I wouldn’t be bringing my laptop. The electrical power on the schooner was mostly from some powerful batteries and two small solar panels. We could charge our cell phones and had small lights in our cabins, but that was about it.
I did pack a Paris Review and a Harper’s magazine, should I feel like indulging in reading, but the heart of my “literary” life focused on a small red journal I had picked up a year or so earlier plus a few printouts of Vincent Katz poems that set a direction that has intrigued me.
Katz, like his father, the American painter Alex Katz, can look at mundane things in a seemingly flat tone that feels seminal.
Consider the line, “I wish I lived here but I do live here,” from “Francis Bacon.” It’s a feeling I know.
As he says in “Back on 8th Ave.”:
The job of the poet is not easy:
be utterly observant, tracking,
and to note down, in plain language,
with minimal emotional distortion,
what s/he sees.
For me, it had been ages since I’d sat down before a blank page and started off without any idea of where the words would be going. My usual journaling at least has a calendar full of events to catch up on, plus notes I’ve scribbled out, maybe even emails. And my more public writing has been things like this, with a purpose.
My goal was to fill the little notebook in a week. Quality or substance was not the measure. Just look and listen and try to be very much in the present moment.
It was a harder assignment than you might think. But it did provide much of the text for many of the posts you’ll be seeing this year.
Here are a few samples of what I entered:
looking for the obvious can be a challenge
~*~
Yellow house
behind a brown one
on a hill
flagpole and staircase
down to a wharf
the dreadful verses
you attempted
page after page
of aspiring youth
reached and fell
that stuff now is flatter
but more secure
likely no more profound
or less
don’t worry, Jnana, nothing’s happening
you’d think I could fill this small notebook with drivel in a week
but I’m halfway short
I did end the entries
[to be continued]
Hopefully, on an upcoming cruise in late summer.
Jnana's Red Barn 