Hurricane Sally

 

September 17, 2020

Vivaldi on the CD.

Deep rain from the disintegrating hurricane. 

After the customary maximum of three hours necessary to clean my house, I come home to find the cleaning girl still here. “Oh, I got here late,” she says, an excuse which might have carried more weight had she not been talking on the phone when I arrived. Lateness enrages me, especially on occasions–like cleaning Thursday–when I plan my day around those interrupted hours of the morning. More–or shifted because someone “got here late”-- hurls me into despair. On the other hand, she is 18, maybe had been at some mission of mercy that made her tardy, and I do realize that my on-time fetish is not fully humane. Still. . .  Despair. . . I made her my mail-in ballot witness. Voting by mail, not that I fear not being able to get to the polls, but because distance voting seems to irritate the President, a constant goal.   

Reports of a bear euthanized because people had been feeding it to lure it close for the sake of photography. I haven’t seen Buddy in so long I fear it’s him.

On her last birthday I gave my mother a bible, an odd thing, but one which seemed meaningful at the time. I remember the event, but I didn’t know I possess that bible until recently. The date in the cover is July 25, 1973. She died the following March. The inscription, “to mother from David,” and the date, is in her hand. I must have neglected to write anything in.

This is the first time I’ve written in the river office. It seems conducive enough. Didn’t anticipate how things are hampered without Internet. Apparently the thing can’t even save to itself without being connected to the outside world. Trust and be patient. I’m surrounded by the ruins of my studio and my school office, but all that reads cheerier than one expected.

Another slim volume of terrible poetry arrived today. Opened it, called it “terrible” after the first few pages, then wondered what I meant by that. The poems are not inept by any means, allusive and skillful and intelligent, aware of their surroundings, truthful, insofar as one is able to judge that. But at the same time, tiny Saharas of self-involved bitterness, self-congratulation, hauteur. The poems intend to slap the reader into submission. The timid attempts I’ve made to express these reservations in the past—beginning forty years ago-- met with furious contradiction, so I write my thank-you note and put the book onto the shelf.  

We no longer expect poetry to be good. Its least important role, self-expression, has become all-in-all. That it is good, if it is good, can be repellent to some, because “better” or “good” implies inequality. We’ve totally lost the concept of the subordination of one thought to another. Students arrive trebly assured from all sides that their perceptions are perfect and the attempt to change them is – what? Patriarchal? Bullying? Thus no education actually gets done. The idea of coming with an empty bowl in an anathema; therefore, no one is fed, no one eats but of the crust they brought along with them. Poetry should lead out, not in. Or, lead in in order to lead out. The student must stand empty, the mind without fence or baffle or wall. The poet must stand silent, waiting to hear the truth before he opens his lips. The entire enterprise as it stands now is contrary to itself.