Memorial Day Poem

"A million young workmen," by Carl Sandberg, 1915

A million young workmen straight and strong lay stiff on the grass and roads,
And the million are now under soil and their rottening flesh will in the years feed roots of blood-red roses.
Yes, this million of young workmen slaughtered one another and never saw their red hands.
And oh, it would have been a great job of killing and a new and beautiful thing under the sun if the million knew why they hacked and tore each other to death.
The kings are grinning, the Kaiser and the czar—they are alive riding in leather-seated motor cars, and they have their women and roses for ease, and they eat fresh-poached eggs for breakfast, new butter on toast, sitting in tall water-tight houses reading the news of war.
I dreamed a million ghosts of the young workmen rose in their shirts all soaked in crimson … and yelled:
God damn the grinning kings, God damn the kaiser and the czar.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. As you can guess from the lateness of this post, I have the day off today! (Can you also guess how late I slept? Apparently I'm a teenager again.)

2. Happy Birthday to Dashiell Hammett! I prefer Chandler, but we must keep in mind that Hammettt gave us Nick and Nora.

3. This is so true of me and my boyfriend Sherlock Holmes:
(Found via Kara's Pinterest.)

Sing It, Bob!

Even though Bob Dylan is one of my absolute favorites, I haven't featured any songs here because I know he's not for everyone. But Tuesday was his 70th birthday, "Maggie's Farm" has been in my head all week*, and this performance is pretty great, if only because he seems so pissed.

I don't think this is the 1965 Newport Folk Festival performance where he went electric (because the crowd cheers in the end) but it seems to be from about the same time.




*Gotta love lyrics such as "He hands you a nickel, he hands you a dime, he asks you with a grin if you're having a good time [...] They say, 'sing while you slave!' and I just get bored."

Happy Birthday, Theodore Roethke

My buddy Ted was born today in 1908. His work was one of the first poems I did a close reading of in high school (thanks, Mr. Bickmore!) and I had never experienced anything like it before.

Here's the end section of that poem, "The Shape of the Fire," which the close reading told me was about the move from chaos to order (oh, and life? take a hint from that theme):

To have the whole air!—
The light, the full sun
Coming down on the flowerheads,
The tendrils turning slowly,
A slow snail-lifting, liquescent;
To be by the rose
Rising slowly out of its bed,
Still as a child in its first loneliness;
To see cyclamen veins become clearer in early sunlight,
And mist lifting out of the brown cat-tails;
To stare into the after-light, the glitter left on the lake’s surface,
When the sun has fallen behind a wooded island;
To follow the drops sliding from a lifted oar,
Held up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward;
To know that light falls and fills, often without our knowing,
As an opaque vase fills to the brim from a quick pouring,
Fills and trembles at the edge yet does not flow over,
Still holding and feeding the stem of the contained flower.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Japanese Print Edition

For as much as I like Japanese prints, I don't sew with them them very much (I think the last clothing item I made in such a print was a shirt last June?). That's a shame, because Japanese prints make anything better--even a comfy knit dress:
(You can get a close up of the print here.)

I used a Simplicity pattern and just tweaked the sleeves on view F so they would be squarer and shorter, for more of a kimono feel:
This is even brighter in person--which is fine with me!

Check THIS Out

Look what was delivered Saturday:

Just look at it:

Another view:

Other than my washer and dryer, I think this couch is the nicest thing I own. I am so happy with it.

Somebody else likes it, too:

Friday Unrelated Information

1. It's still raining.

2. You may have already seen this, but I remember watching Kill Bill and thinking, "I wish I knew the movies Tarantino was referencing." Well, this video tells you! (Warning, it's clips from Kill Bill so it's going to be violent.)

3. And finally, some writer has determined what your email salutations really say about you. For example:
“Greetings:” denotes that I signed up for your dreadful boutique’s mailing list in hopes of impressing somebody in the store, and now I resent all of the parties involved, myself most of all.

I Agree, Ray

I think Ray Bradbury dislikes rain as much as I do--he wrote the wrenching "All Summer in a Day," about missing out on the only clear weather in a decade, and last night while listening to the rain I remembered "The Long Rain," about a group of Venus explorers who get lost, go crazy from the constant rain, and die.

I'm not saying that that will happen to me, of course. I'm just saying that if I wanted it to be cold and rainy a week before Memorial Day, I'd live in the Northwest.

(PS, the opera last night was really, really good.)

Check Him Out

Oh yeah, that's my boyfriend and his open shirt in the Met's production of Il Trovatore, which I am seeing tonight. My mom and I have always wanted to see one of the live Met broadcasts to movie theaters, but the live date of this ended up being Skyler's birthday and we both decided we'd be too distracted checking for updates. Fortunately, the Met re-broadcasts them.

I haven't spent time with Dmitri since I re-watched Eugene Onegin at the end of March (which is both a good and a bad thing to do if you're railing against fate), so I am excited to go from really dramatic Russian drama to really melodic Italian drama. And for the chance to see more of him in his tunic.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Considering

I had a blouse project not work out, so that's thrown off my sewing schedule. (I moved on to a knit dress but it's not done yet.) So today, let's consider the afghan--people with craft blogs have been crocheting some really lovely, colorful ones:
(Photos all credited on my Pinterest.)

I (sort of) know how to crochet. I like colors. I think both Toby and I would love having a woolly blanket on the bed. But I am trying to go for a Hollywood Regency look in the bedroom; crocheted afghans are not particularly glamorous.

My other concern is that this would be a HUGE project, and I remember how it took me the better part of a year to finish the quilt. When there's no payoff to get to wear the item, I lose a lot of motivation.

Of course, it's not like I have lots of other things going on--I know I could get a head start on a fall sweater, but knitting sweaters when it is warm (or is SUPPOSED TO BE, WEATHER) just feels wrong. Hmm...

Monday Unrelated Information

If you haven't heard yet, Blogger went down Thursday (can you imagine the scene at Google trying to fix that?). Since I wish I had two more days off anyway, let's pretend it's Friday and I'll give you some bullet points.

1. Yesterday was the birthday of L. Frank Baum and Utah Phillips.

2. I am enjoying the "this is the universe" blog and its URL: ohscience.tumblr.com. Oh science, indeed.

3. I am looking forward to spending some time with my Russian boyfriend during a Met broadcast of Il Trovatore this week.

Indeed

Power through the rest of the week, because truly--meow is the time.

3+1 Things: The Late Spring/Early Summer Poem

Deciding to cut my yearly goals from 30 to 3 (because let's be honest, will I really do the +1 this year?) does give me a lot less to blog about.

On the other hand, I have a much better chance at success: That section of "Ash Wednesday" is memorized and ready to be recited at a moment's notice, which I have been doing for Toby at home during times of stress. (Eliot is really satisfying to declaim dramatically, I found out.)

That means it's time to move on to the next poem I want to memorize, "Meditation at Lagunitas" by my old buddy Robert Hass. I have sections of this in my head already but I want to fill in the gaps so I can say it straight through. To Toby. (Yes, it's probably just as well I am being realistic about that +1.)

Anyway, here's the poem, one of my favorites, with the most elegant use of "numinous" I've encountered:

Meditation at Lagunitas

All the new thinking is about loss.

In this it resembles all the old thinking.

The idea, for example, that each particular erases

the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-

faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk

of that black birch is, by his presence,

some tragic falling off from a first world

of undivided light. Or the other notion that,

because there is in this world no one thing

to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,

a word is elegy to what it signifies.

We talked about it late last night and in the voice

of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone

almost querulous. After a while I understood that,

talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,

pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman

I made love to and I remembered how, holding

her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,

I felt a violent wonder at her presence

like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river

with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,

muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish

called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.

Longing, we say, because desire is full

of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.

But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,

the thing her father said that hurt her, what

she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous

as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,

saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Shawl-Wearing Bandits

In the knitting world I've seen a recent trend where you make a smaller triangle-shaped shawl and then wear it backwards (with the point in front), making you look like a highwayman or a cowboy, thusly:

I liked the play between bandit styling and "grandma" knitted lace, so I decided to make one. Would you guess that I used the same pattern for the shawl above? (You can say "no" and I won't be upset.)

This did not exactly work out...you see how the edge looks ruffled? Apparently I skipped a step of the pattern that has you take out the extra stitches you add--I kept adding stitches so that made the edge a lot longer and that produces ruffles.

In my defense, by the time I got to the border stitches it was March, and March was rough. My mistake also contributed to running out of yarn before the edging, so I cut my losses and just finished it(much like March).

But you know what? I like it. It's a little wonky but when you get it all bunched up I think it looks appropriately outlaw-like. Watch out for the shawl-wearing bandit!

Happy Belated Birthday, Gary Snyder

I was going to post this Gary Snyder poem a few weeks ago when it was still so cold at night, but then I thought, "No, I am not posting any sad hippy poems. I'm past that."

However, yesterday was the poet's 81st birthday and, oh look, it's cold again. So here it is--it's an old favorite, so the fond memories of first reading it cancel out my desire to shout, "Get a house to sleep in, hippy!" at the end.

Siwashing It Out Once in Suislaw Forest

I slept under     rhododendron
All night    blossoms fell
Shivering on a sheet of cardboard

Feet stuck   in my pack
Hands deep    in my pockets
Barely  able    to   sleep.

I remembered    when we were in school

Sleeping together   in a big warm bed
We were     the youngest lovers
When we broke up     we were still nineteen
Now our   friends are married

You teach  school back east

I don't mind     living this way
Green hills   the long blue beach
But sometimes   sleeping in the open
I think back    when I had you.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. It's been quite a week. For a while on Wednesday night, I thought it was really Friday night. I was sad when it was not.

2. This Baudelaire quote appeals to me, naturally:
One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters; that’s our one imperative need. So as not to feel time’s horrible burden that breaks your shoulders and bows you down, you must get drunk without ceasing. But with what? With wine, poetry, or virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.

Drinking With The Seasons

I am looking forward to coming home tonight, sitting on my postage-stamp deck, and having a glass of Lillet, my spring aperitif of choice.
Yes, it's delicious; but what I think I really love about it is the copy on the bottle:

It can be enjoyed anywhere, on any occasion; however, it is perfect for those special times when day turns to evening and evening turns to night! [emphasis and punctuation theirs]

I may not have special times! like that to celebrate but I like the spirit of it nonetheless.

I May Not Be In The Desert, But At Least It's Sunny

Today's poem is "Keys," by Nancy Henry, from Our Lady of Let's All Sing, found via The Writer's Almanac a few weeks ago.

When things got hard
I used to drive and keep on driving
once to North Carolina
once to Arizona
I'm through with all that now, I hope.
The last time was years ago.

But oh, how I would drive
and keep on driving!
The universe around me
all well in my control;
anything I wanted on the radio,
the air blasting hot or cold;
sobbing as loudly as I cared to sob,
screaming as loudly as I needed to scream.
I would live on apples and black coffee,
shower at truck stops,
sleep curled up
in the cozy back seat I loved.

The last time, I left at 3 a.m.
By New York state,
I stopped screaming;
by Tulsa
I stopped sobbing;
by the time I pulled into Flagstaff
I was thinking
about the Canyon,
I was so empty.
Thinking about the canyon
I was.

I sat on the rim at dawn,
let all the colors fill me.
It was cold. I saw my breath
like steam from a soup pot.
I saw small fossils in the gravel.
I saw how much world there was

how much darkness
could be swept out
by the sun.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Super-Fast Tunic Dress

I made this one in about three days after I finally finished those curtains. I'd used the basic pattern before for the giant paisley shift and just re-drafted the neckline. The slit means it doesn't need a zipper, so that helped keep things speedy.

The band at the bottom is leftover Liberty of London fabric from the scarf I made for a friend in December. I like how the William Morris pattern looks almost like an Indian print when you put it on this silhouette.

...and here's a gratuitous baby shot. Because dress projects kind of pale next to "here's a new human" projects.

Toby, Cover Your Ears

Forty-eight hours ago, if you had asked me who or what my favorite creature in the whole world was, I would have said Toby. But now someone is giving him some stiff competition for that spot:

Meet Skyler, the long-awaited nephew, born April 30. He may be my new favorite thing ever.

(Okay, uncover your ears now, Toby.)