Monday, March 21, 2016

Stretching Back and Forward

So already, on this first gray day of spring, I post the first poem I've written in some time. It's a rusty poem after a long hiatus from writing verse, but its existence is a mark of progress.

I wish to thank my friend and colleague, NL (I'll replace her initials with her name if she permits me to) whose soulful blog Memory of the Heart has reminded me that blog posts may be poems--and whose rich, evocative poems inspire me in of themselves.

I wish to thank the South Shore Scribes, the local writing group I've joined in the last month. Attentive, discerning, and kind, they've encouraged me to get back into the poetry saddle, and the poem I'm about to share is better because of them.

Finally, a cautionary note. In his review* of Robyn Schiff's A Woman of Property in this week's New Yorker, Dan Chaisson explains that "a poem is a place where conscious and unconscious thought, reality and dream, fact and symbol all jostle for attention on the same busy stage. A poet goes where the language leads: this kind of vulnerability is both exhilarating and scary." I'm not there yet, but here's my poem: 
 
Stretch

1.

After the wizard Pedro
Trained his powers on my sprained shoulder,
I gave thanks every wince-free time
I reached for a top-shelf jar.

So when a wayward thigh muscle
Made sitting and standing acts to dread,
Jabbed me each time I urged
Left foot toward left sock,
I remembered Pedro –

How with knowledge and craft and plan
He’d coaxed my stubborn joint to open
A little, and then some more,
And finally full and wide,
As if it had exhaled into a still place
Of warmth and strength.

Pedro stretched and then soothed
Troubled muscles,
Prescribed gentle regimens
To extend the work,
Reconciled feuding bone and tissue.
Progress fed on increments of
Stretch and burn.


2.

I have a routine now.
Early morning on the living room floor,
Gaze toward the wall with windows.
Except for my breathing, silence.
Besides mine, the only movement:
Gliding gulls drawing arcs
On the neutral, just-dawn sky.

Breathing in, I stretch and hold,
Then keep breathing, stretching,
Feeling for the bar
My whispering muscles set and reset.
Strength and flexibility increase slowly.
My muscles spread and lengthen,
Sometimes relax into a deep place
That feels like destiny.

What started as cure
Begins to feel like a way
To live in my own body.

3. 

Might stretch and burn
Coax a cramped writing muscle
To flex and flow?

A blank or scuttled page.
The sense of nothing important or beautiful.
But you begin—
And you stay in that knotted crouch,
Keep at it, keep writing,

Keep breathing,
Aware that breath’s the sign of spirit,
Creator within
Whom many shun, for fear of being
Unworthy or unready to create.

Anxious but hopeful,
You keep the pen moving
Across the face of the waters

Because, maybe, one day,
Pen and page will merge, expand,
Unleash a cascade of words
As your mind looks on,
Apart, amazed.

What will become of it,
What it will become: unknown.
But you’ll exhale, relieved
By the flash of fire
And what followed it,
Evidence that something in you
Stirs and yearns.
Post-exhilaration, you’ll keep writing,
In new relationship to yourself,
Your work, your world.


* Chiasson, Dan. "The Tenderness Trap." Rev. of A Woman of Property. New Yorker 21 Mar. 2016: 89-90. Print.

5 comments:



  1. Joan, your words remind me of Kurt Wolff's questioning of our mundane subject-object understanding [Surrender and Catch, Experience and Inquiry Today]:

    My whispering muscles set and reset.
    ...................................
    My muscles spread and lengthen,

    For Wolff ones "individuality, including motives and attitudes --is irrelevant for our understanding" because "the only thing that counts is the pursuit, with its results and questions." Continuing, Wolff claims that we effect
    movement from naive realistic or mundane subject-object understanding when we have /Reconciled feuding bone and tissue./ And no longer must we wait

    As your mind looks on,
    Apart, amazed.

    because

    What started as cure
    Begins to feel like a way
    To live in my own body.

    because the "I" /...in that knotted crouch/ is "replaced by the subject which is exhaustively defined by its concern" or writing which allows:

    My muscles spread and lengthen,
    Sometimes relax into a deep place

    Because, maybe, one day,
    Pen and page will merge, expand,
    ................................
    As your mind looks on,
    Apart, amazed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've been enjoying reading the Kurt Wolff stuff I downloaded, Charley--very interesting and applicable. Thanks again for letting me know it was out there and connected.

      Delete
  2. Hi, Charley--

    Thanks so much for introducing me to Kurt Wolff and his ideas--I just downloaded a pdf of an article by him.

    Meanwhile, your own comment to me--you've also written a poem--reorganizes, then combines pieces of my poem with Wolff's ideas in such a way that my thinking is already engaged and expanding.

    Now I'm completely glad I published this poem because it prompted you to write back something so worth my consideration--and I suspect to others'consideration, too.

    Thanks so much, Charley.

    ReplyDelete
  3. -- Dear Joan Soble, Thank you for this inspiring poem. I love the Dan Chaisson's statement that "a poem is a place where conscious and unconscious thought, reality and dream, fact and symbol all jostle for attention on the same busy stage. A poet goes where the language leads: this kind of vulnerability is both exhilarating and scary." I can tell from this lyrical and insightful poem that "language" took the lead.
    I love the way your poem leaves the reader wondering and explores the writer's anxiety and enchantment as the words flow from within. I have so many favorite verses, I do not know which one to choose. I will end by sharing my admiration for the following lines:
    What will become of it,
    What it will become: unknown.
    But you’ll exhale, relieved
    By the flash of fire
    And what followed it,
    Evidence that something in you
    Stirs and yearns.
    Post-exhilaration, you’ll keep writing,
    In new relationship to yourself,
    Your work, your world.
    Thank you so much for sharing. Wow! A "new relationship to yourself." I hope this poem lead you to this "new relationship."

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks, Memory. I think retirement has been a huge experience of developing a "new relationship to yourself," and I think I've wondered a lot about how much writing (poetry or anything) could help uncover (not sure if I should say "forge" or "uncover") that new relationship, or how much writing was itself hostage to the vagueness (not sure if I should say "vagueness," "fragility," or "uncertainty" of that relationship. Thanks so much for your phrase "the writer's anxiety and enchantment"--you nail it!

    ReplyDelete