Odes For Poetry Month

“If you love it so much, why don’t you marry it?”

In middle school- If you love it so much ,why don’t you marry it was the typical response for proclaiming your affection for a thing out loud. It was dangerous to love something, to care, to gush with enthusiasm, to swoon, or feel overcome with awe and appreciation. But hating and proclaiming your hate? Completely legitimate. It was okay to be enthusiastic about what you didn’t like- to make known what you thought sucked. And if you added a word like fuck, no one would dare tell you to marry anything, or murder anything, or do anything at all. If you were brave enough to utter a proclamation like“I fucking hate math” you’d earn the respect of your peers and maybe even get a few laughs. But loving weird things like certain words, the existence, iridescence, and built-in eyes of peacock feathers, characters in books like Pippi Longstocking and Harriet the Spy, textures like the warm, smooth metal slide at the playground making glinting low-hanging tiny stars in collaboration with the sun, or the appealingly giant pom poms kids made out of yarn to put on their roller skates, well that was about as uncool as you could get.

Mary Ruefle writes:

“O ruthless thistle, match in the dark/ you can talk to anyone about the weather/but only to your closest friends/can you mention the light.”

But, today, in honor of poetry month, I want to share my enthusiasm for the ode; the poetic form made for the sole purpose of housing enthusiasm. I like to think of the ode as enthusiasm’s apartment. Also, our 16-year old dog Miette died earlier this month, and the day before our five-year anniversary, my partner’s hand was severely burned. Not to mention the war and suffering in the world at the hands of greedy, fascist maniac which, of course, has been a faucet of perpetual astonishment and despair, enough for a million or more laments. So, I figure, maybe I’m not the only one who could use some celebratory odes.

Here are a few I like: This one is called Ode to the Ear by Joseph Millar

And this is by Ross Gay

Next, The Sweetness of Dogs by Mary Oliver is not titled an ode. but I think of it as an ode all the same. An argument could be made that most of Mary Oliver’s poems are odes.

Here’s a poem by William Stafford that for some reason I remembered incorrectly as being by Stanley Kunitz.

Ode to Garlic

By William Stafford

Sudden, it comes for you
in the cave of yourself where you know
and are lifted by important events.

Say you are dining and it happens:
Soaring like an eagle, you are
pierced by a message from the midst of life:

Memory - what holds the days together - touches
your tongue. It is from deep in the earth
and it reaches out kindly, saying, “Hello Old Friend.”

It makes alike, all offspring of powerful
forces, part of one great embrace of democracy,
united across every boundary.

You walk out generously, giving it back
in a graceful wave, what you’ve been given.
Like a child, you breathe on the world, and it shines.

But, in looking for the Stanley Kunitz poem that doesn’t exist, I remembered Sharon Old’ has a whole book of Odes aptly titled Odes. She has odes to tampons, buttermilk, condoms and cleavage- stuff rarely celebrated, She even has an ode to Stanley Kunitz:

Finally, here’s a poem from my book about so many enchanting things:

Enchantments

There are enchanting objects and this is true regardless of all the so much less than enchanting things which abound in contemporary life and sometimes recognizing the enchantment of objects that enchant can create a feeling (however, unrealistic, however fleeting) of enchantment because there are pens that not only write with the ink inside them – and ink of course is the blood of pens, but which also light up on the other end, so that the owner of the pen may write in the dark, on a train, or in a small corner of a dark bedroom late at night where loved ones are sleeping nearby.

And speaking of things that light up, and which also happen to be objects of enchantment – there are tiny, tiny chandeliers meant for doll houses, but there is no rule that anyone has to have a dollhouse in order to have a light like this and so anybody could just procure a tiny dollhouse chandelier and keep it with them in case they are in need of a bit of enchantment, which really, when you consider the state of affairs, who isn’t in need of enchantment, just who isn’t?

Also, think of wristwatches, which are, in reality, tiny clocks that wrap around wrists like wrist-belts and consider how enchanting it might be to have a wrist belt and a waist belt that match exactly and the idea of something like a matching watch and waist belt set is so enchanting that to even to think of such things is an enchanting activity on its own.

And, what about the nests secured within the limbpits of many trees as well as the branches they balance on, and the nooks they fit it into. Nests are utilitarian sculptures made by bird mothers who don’t even have arms with which to carry all of the supplies necessary to create them. Enchanting.

And many nests have eggs in them which will break open at some point to reveal birds with damp newly sprouted feathers which are the body flowers of birds and if that is not enchanting, I don’t know what is, except of course the delicate work of the spider who has been been crocheting something she calls her Festival of Rectangles for hours between the spokes of a bicycle wheel propped up near the graffitied, metal bench.

Other news:

Spring: Weather

This isn’t a great video, but I swear when I wake up after a storm like this, all my little seedlings on the balcony have grown taller and the green everywhere has spread wider and longer like a green bedspread flung on the bed of the world.

And here is a red-winged blackbird singing among the dandelions. I imagine he’s singing about how his yellow stripes (One on each side) match the dandelions and how rude it is to name his kind- red-winged, when the yellow on him is so buttery and obvious.

Finally, a few other tidbits:

-A poem I wrote about the gingerbread house kits my kids loved when they were little, (those houses no one ever actually ate) will be published in an anthology honoring the late poet Hal Sirowitz, put out by Moonstone Arts.

- I received the galleys for my book!

-I’ve completed some solid drafts of picture books for kids ages 3-7 and I’m beginning to look for an agent. Know anyone?

- I have two shows coming up two Tuesdays in a row in May:

5/12- Serving the Sentence at Jarvis Square Tavern in Roger’s Park and

5/19 Cooler By The Lake at Space on May 17th