Moments of Irreversible Change

Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge in poemcrazy: freeing your life with words asks the reader to think of a time or irreversible change – a moment when you knew that everything afterward would be different, and there was no going back.

I can think of several such moments, so many, in fact, that it might be more difficult to think of moments when irreversible change didn’t happen. Still, I followed my assignment and came up with a list of the major things.

The night I became a Christian. Even if I chose to backslide, the moment would change everything.

The day I got married. I knew, standing at the front of Mildred Crowe Baptist Church in Shreveport, La., and waiting for Janet to walk up the aisle with her father, that everything after this would be different.

When I moved from New Orleans to Baton Rouge for school, and then to Beaumont for my first job, and then to Houston, and then to St. Louis.

The birth of our first child changed a couple into a family. The birth of our second child seven years later changed our family yet again.

When we left the church we attended, and the church we loved.

The births of our first and second grandchildren.

At work: the day I wrote a speech that changed everything, and then a second speech that changed everything yet again.

The publication of a first novel, and then the second.

The day I first posted a poem on this blog, and the raw vulnerability I felt when I did it.

Family changes – like the changes involved in caring for an elderly parent.

I likely had the impression that change slowed as you got older. What I’m finding is that it’s happening faster – the changes seem to accelerating. I’m not sure what that means; maybe it’s a common phenomenon. It is perhaps one reason why I write, or try to write, poetry – to help make sense of change. It’s certainly one reason why I read poetry.

The lines, some rhyming

some not, become a ship,

a small ship, perhaps only

a boat, a means to simply

travel or travel simply,

to where he does not know,

does not see but accepts

with mind, soul, heart,

all components of love.

Sometimes he sails, his hand

sweating on the rudder.

Sometimes he sails, rudderless.

Sometimes he is asked

to build the boat and allow it

to set sail into the wind

on the waves, his heart

contained inside.

Today we finish our discussion of poemcrazy at Tweetspeak Poetry. Please visit the site to see what assignments others took on, and the places to which they set sail. (And yes, Wooldrige lower-cased the title of her book in homage to e.e. cummings.)

Photograph by Sharon Apted via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Words and Images: A Poemcrazy Collage

Over at Tweetspeak Poetry, we’ve been reading poemcrazy: freeing your life with words by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge. The readings come with exercises. So far, I’ve made two stabs at communing with nature, one to name the plants and trees in our back yard and the other to have a conversation with a tree, but they didn’t work out so well. What worked better was to select a place of beauty or mystery and write about it.

This week, my choices for a practical exercise included listing where you need freedom in your life; seeking out children and jotting down what they say; interviewing a fellow discussion participant with questions like who were you in my dream (which sounds rather vaguely like a writing prompt for a poetry jam on Twitter); writing about the center of your childhood home; weeping in the grocery (the only thing that makes me weep in the grocery is the prices); assembling a collage of things around you; looking at what the “image angel” has placed in front of you; and making up a string of words because you like the sound of them (like “woozel” in the Winnie-the-Pooh stories; except A.A. Milne already made that up).

I decided to combine a couple (no, I did not go weep in the grocery). I looked at all of the words and images surrounding me in my office at work, and made a list.

Here are some of them: Emergency Procedures for the office; photo of a raindrop; a framed print of Stump Speaking by George Caleb Bingham; replicas of three “Lewis” chessmen found on an island off Scotland; the Gettysburg Address (framed); a replica of the Eiffel Tower made from chicken wire; a world atlas; An American Heritage Dictionary; a pen-and-pencil holder in the form of an LSU football helmet; red Arizona quartz stones two stone sculptures by Iowa artist Isabel Bloom; a Celtic cross; and pictures of grandchildren.

And books – some representative titles: 101 Things I Learned in Film School; Union of Words; Creating the Corporate Soul; Beyond Bullet Points; Writing Space; Electric Rhetoric; Lend Me Your Ears; First Break All the Rules; and Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement.

I saw the common themes almost immediately. I have surrounded myself in my office with words and memory, including books about words and even images about words.  

And while it looked simple at first glance, I wondered how I was going to distill a poem form all that – a poem that made sense. Or didn’t make sense in a sensical kind of way. I think I know what I mean.

Words and Images: Old and New

Words old and new swirl

with images old and new

surrounding my mind

old and new, words and

images of a hundred speeches

old and new, led in procession

by Lincoln at Gettysburg,

old yet still new, red rocks

old in age, new in possession,

my Lewis chessmen, old

in memory, new in replica,

dictionary and atlas new

at the end of old evolution,

a cross old and new each day,

words, always words,

surrounded with words,

always old, always new.

To see what others in the discussion are writing about, please visit Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: My three replicas of Lewis chessmen, purchased from the British Museum, September 2012.

Back to Nature?

Our back and side yards look fairly typical for suburban St. Louis. Our lot is about one fourth of an acre, and the house and driveway take up a good chunk of that. But the yard is manageable, and we have flower beds, trees, plants – what you’d expect. Well, almost. We do have a lot of plants. The trees are mostly in the backyard, along the fence – an ornamental cherry, hollies, river birches, and two magnolias.

On Sunday, I wandered outside ostensibly to pick up small branches after a recent storm, pull up grass growing where it’s not supposed to, picking up leaves and the long brown pods from that wretched catalpa tree across the street that sends every loose pod straight into out yard. I say “ostensibly,” because I had a secret mission.

I was really there to commune with nature, and do the field work for this week’s assignment from Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge’s poemcrazy: freeing your life with words. (Yes, the title is supposed to be in lower case; the author has an e.e. cummings fetish.) We’ve been discussing poemcrazy this month over at Tweetspeak Poetry, and I’ve already learned to be wary to some of the assignments, like giving names to your plants.

Outside, I first look to see if any of the adjacent neighbors are in their yards. They aren’t; everything is quiet. I’m careful because of what the assignment is: I’m supposed to find a tree and start talking with it, using the familiar “thou” instead of you. Of course, had I been completely diligent in the first assignment, I would have given the trees their own names, and wouldn’t have to worry about “you” and “thou.”

Goldsmith suggests an oak tree, but we had two of them cut down. There’s one on the neighbor’s property that still isn’t speaking to me several years after we had its sisters cut down and hauled away. But the electric company had already butchered them because they grew through the wires (and the street department required the trees to be planted there in the first place).

So I finally decided on one of the magnolias. I’m supposed to tap its wisdom, asking questions like, “Tree, what can thou tell me about roots and leaves?” I’m supposed to wait and listen how thou responds.

I could be here a long time.

So I have my yard waste bag and will do a little weeding, cleaning and general sprucing up while Maggie (the magnolia) comes up with an answer.

Except she’s not in a particularly talkative mood. To be honest, I can’t say she’s ever been in a talkative mood. Maggie is more the strong, stoic type, and she’s not known for being much of a conversationalist. But Susan Wooldridge says she will eventually answer.

I keep up the conversation my end, asking her about a few new branches I see, telling her how pretty her flowers are, removing small river birch branches from Maggie’s branches. I’m chattering away, as difficult as that is (ask my wife how much of a chatterer I am), when I think I hear her respond.

“Hey, Young, whatcha doing?”

I shudder. No, it’s not Maggie. It’s my neighbor.

“I’m talking with Maggie,” I say.

“Maggie?” He asks, looking around.

“The magnolia,” I say, pointing to her. “I’m asking her to tell me something about her leaves and roots.”

My neighbor stares for a moment, then finally speaks.

“Weren’t you talking with a dandelion a couple of weeks back? You named her Irma?”

I nod, with a sinking feeling that this is not going to end well.

“Is work getting to you? Maybe you should go in and lie down.”

No, this isn’t going to end well.

“I’m doing an assignment,” I say. “I’m supposed to talk with a tree, and listen to what it tells me.”

My neighbor makes a gurgling noise as he turns red and his shoulders begin to shake.

No, this is not going to end well.

We’re discussing poemcrazy over at Tweetspeak Poetry. Visit the site to find out if anyone else has been talking with trees.

The Place Was a Poem for the Boy

It was a place of eternal fascination for me as a child.

My grandmother in Shreveport had a small house with a detached one-car garage. The garage was where she parked her 1940 Ford, which was 20 years old by the time she and I would go the grocery store or the bank, and the car inevitably breaking down. The garage had no door.

But the parking area was only half of the structure. The other half, probably a good 15- by-30-foot space, was kept locked and untouched, until I would come for a visit. At some point in the visit, my grandmother would invariably say, “You know where the key is.” And I did – it hung on a string on the wall of the garage.

I’d unlocked the door (the lock was a padlock type), swing it open, and spend a few minutes simply staring.

It was my grandfather’s workshop.

I never knew either of my grandfathers. My mother’s father died of a ruptured appendix when my mother was 12; all I knew of him was a few stories and a very few old, fragile photographs. My father’s father died when I was nine months old, and I was part of his deathbed scene – until my parents could travel in from out of town, the only thing he said that anyone could understand was “I want to see the baby.” We arrived, they put me on the bed with him, he touched me, and then a few hours later he died.

There were more stories about him than my maternal grandfather, but he had also lived longer. And one physical expression of who he was – his workshop.

My grandmother would not clean it out. She left it exactly as it was the day he died. I remember the smell – wood and motor oil. And dust everywhere. The two small windows had become dirty enough that only a little light filtered in. It was definitely a gloomy place, but it was also a magic place for me.

I imagined him sawing wood – the saw, rusting, was still there, and numerous pieces of old wood. His toolbox was right where he left it, and it contained several hammers, a file, screwdrivers and the usual assortment of tools. These were the tools he used to build the house for my grandmother and himself.

I could see him hit his finger with a hammer, and unsuccessfully trying to stifle a swear word or two.

I can recall a box of old bottles, too, with the necks of several liquor bottles sticking out. A couple of old calendars hung on the walls. Boxes were haphazardly stacked in a few places, as if he just hadn’t had the time to sort it all out yet. And the peg on the wall where he hung his broad-brimmed hat.

This was the place he came to think, to be by himself for a time, and to worry. This is where he’d debate and argue with himself, and where he’d work out problems by working with wood.

I never moved anything, but I think I probably touched everything in the place. That dusty workshop was the closest thing I had to a grandfather, and sometimes, if I listened intently enough, I could hear him speak.

The key hangs on a string on a nail

on the wall, waiting until the boy

returns for the mystery. The lock

springs, the door creaks open,

the dark interior, a masculine womb,

beckons as always. Smells of wood

and oil and dust mingle with remnants

of cigarette smoke and a small pipe

or two. The tools carefully rust

in their box, tools worn and old but

still tools, still useful. It is here

the boy imagines the man; here

the man imagines the boy.

Over at Tweetspeak Poetry today, we’re continuing our discussion of poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge. There were numerous assignments we could choose, and I selected the one that said to “think of a place that has the mystery or beauty of a poem to you.”

The workshop had both mystery and beauty, and it was the poem of part of my grandfather’s life. When my grandmother died, someone – aunts, cousins – had to clean out the workshop before the house could be sold. I hope someone kept at least some of the tools, but it doesn’t ultimately matter, not really. What I have instead is the poem of the grandfather I never met, but whom I think I knew.

You can see and join the discussion by visiting Tweetspeak Poetry.

Tell ‘em Phyllis sent you

Over at Tweetspeak Poetry today, we’re embarking on a weekly discussion of poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge. It’s about poetry, and creativity, and words (of course). The book is divided into five sections – convenient for five Wednesday discussions in April. And it’s chock full of practical exercises.

Well, mostly practical exercises.

I read each chapter (they’re short) and looked through each of the exercises, trying to select one I could write about.

Like write words on slips of paper, and make tickets out them, hanging them from lamps, shelves, paintings, kitchen utensils and other convenient spaces around the house. Or put the slips of paper into boxes, and place the boxes around the house, pulling out a word now and then and having a discussion.

Obviously, Susan Wooldridge doesn’t know my wife.

“What is THAT?” she would ask, pointing.

“THAT,” I would proudly say, “is one of my word tickets.”

“It’s hanging from the dining room chandelier,” she would say.

“Yes,” I’d nod. “It’s about creativity. Think of the fun discussions we’ll have about words as we dine.”

Later, after being discharged from the hospital, I would dutifully remove all the word tickets hanging around the house.

Another possibility: Go outside, and name everything. And I thought, why not? It’s been three years since the last time I communed with my garden (as urged by L.L. Barkat in God in the Yard).

“Hey, Young,” the neighbor would say, “whatcha doing?”

“I’m naming everything in the garden.”

“Doesn’t everything already have a name?” he’d say.

“Yes,” I’d reply, “but not a personal name. Like this hydrangea here. Doesn’t it look like a Betty?”

“Betty?”

“Definitely a Betty. And this river birch looks every inch like a Phyllis, don’t you think? Oh, and this dandelion, it has to be an Irma. Irma, what do you think? Is Irma a good name?”

“You’re talking to a weed, Young,” my neighbor would say.

You can see where this might end up. Don’t scare or otherwise shock the neighbors.

Then I found one that wouldn’t alarm my wife or the neighbors: find a painting, choose a feeling, and let your words paint the feeling. 

So I did. I turned to the artist Gerhard Richter.

The cold slides into my bones,

the cold that drives old Ebenezer

to his stove fire, what there is

of it, until he falls asleep, and

dreams of chains, until only

ashes remain, and charred wood.

Maybe I should go back to Irma and Betty in the backyard. Phyllis is still sulking in her corner.

To see the discussion and links to other posts, please visit Tweetspeak Poetry. Tell them Phyllis sent you.

Painting: December by Gerhard Richter (1989), St. Louis Art Museum.