The Unwritten

As I find my way back to getting words on paper, this poem by W.S. Merwin caught my eye this week. Enjoy. Then stop visit Tara, our host for the Poetry Friday Roundup at A Teaching Life.

The Unwritten
 by W. S. Merwin

Inside this pencil
crouch words that have never been written
never been spoken
never been taught

they're hiding

they're awake in there
dark in the dark
hearing us
but they won't come out
not for love not for time not for fire

even when the dark has worn away
they'll still be there
hiding in the air
multitudes in days to come may walk through them
breathe them
be none the wiser

what script can it be
that they won't unroll
in what language
would I recognize it
would I be able to follow it
to make out the real names
of everything

maybe there aren't
many
it could be that there's only one word
and it's all we need
it's here in this pencil

every pencil in the world
is like this

Tara host the Poetry Friday Roundup at A Teaching Life.

One Little Word for 2015

Resolution

Yes, you heard me correctly. I don't mean resolution in the sense of making promises to change my ways. I tend to break those before the end of January. I am thinking of a different meaning. My definition of choice is way down the list of possible options.

5. the act or process of resolving or separating something into constituent
or elementary parts.
6.the resulting state.

Technically, this is talking about breaking down a chemical compound, but recently I've been feeling like I'm a chemical compound that needs a little breaking down, a little figuring out. What are those constituent parts?
I also like this one:

: the act of finding an answer or solution to a conflict, problem, etc. : the act of resolving something
: an answer or solution to something

So, yeah. There are a few things I'd like to see find some resolution this year. One has been a serious, ongoing case of writer's block. I think perhaps I've had a few constituent parts out of place. I'm looking forward to reclaiming my joy in putting words on paper. Another is a shoulder injury that requires patience, persistence, and balance as I pursue resolution and healing. And there are probably a few others that we won't go into at the moment!

Then, there is this one:

d : the passing of a voice part from a dissonant to a consonant tone or the progression of a chord from dissonance to consonance

Sometimes modulating from one key to another in a musical composition requires a period of dissonance before finding resolution in the new key. I recognize that my one little word for the year may cause some periodic dissonance, but I'm willing to risk it to get to the resolution.

Composing Life

I am the motif, the rif, the repeat.

I am the counterpoint of bass, bassoon,
or brassy cacophony that drowns gentler sound.

I am the movement, at once a skipping vivace,
the next a labored largo.
I am the dance.
I am the dirge.

I am the interpretation
formed in the mind of the maestro,
the transition, the modulation, the dissonant seventh,
seeking consonance.

I am the resolution.

                     © Doraine Bennett 2015

Below is a piece called "Resolution" composed by John Coltrane and performed by Musical Art Quintet. It's fairly long. If you don't have time to listen to the whole piece, slide through to the last 45-60 seconds and enjoy.

Join Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference for the Roundup today.

A Little More Holidaying on Poetry Friday

I'm still visiting with my daughters (plus hubby), so the holidays are not quite over. I'll be back to normal (I hope!) next week and will share my one little word for the new year. In the meantime, enjoy Poetry Friday at Miss Rumphius Effect.

One of the grands I didn't get to see this season!

from The Prelude

                                            ...All shod with steel,
We hissed along the polished ice in games. . . .
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle; with the din,
Meanwhile, the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron, . . .
While the star
Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away.

                          ---William Wordsworth

Happy New Year!

A pile of Christmas decorations collects on my dining room table. As I pass through a room, I collect a few bits of Christmas and carry them to the table. Before the weekend is over, I'll reclaim the mantle and the top of the TV cabinet. My Venetian lamp will replace the Christmas tree. And a new year will begin. It's not official until the Christmas decorations are gone. Of course last year, we missed the wooden Santa on top of the china cabinet and didn't notice it until June. So half of 2014 elapsed with Santa's approval. I'm doing my best this year to capture all of Christmas, store the treasures and carry the sweet memories with me into 2015. There are a few more meals to be shared before we walk fully into the new year. In the meantime, I'm watching the birds in my back yard and cherishing these last few days with family.

Merry Christmas

My daughter's Facebook post this morning! It was a lovely Christmas time.

Jen Meller with Espirito Meller and 2 others2 hrs · 

Signs no one under the age of 27 is in the house this Christmas: The entire household sleeps in, sits around leisurely, reads the paper, drinks three pots of coffee, trims a few branches in the yard, gets the turkey in the oven, makes and eats breakfast, drinks mimosas, cleans the kitchen and finally around 10:45 someone remembers that there are presents under the tree.
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Wishing you a Merry Christmas! May you know the promise, the miracle, the gift of God with us.

Talking Turkey

Several folks asked me to let them know what I thought of the In the Kingdom of Ice. I blogged about it here earlier this week. 

Becky hosts the Poetry Friday Roundup today over at Tapestry of Words. Stop by for lots of pre-Thanksgiving lyricism. 

I'm looking toward Thanksgiving and lots of cooking and lots of eating and lots of hugs. But all that turkey talk can be stressful on the body. Here is one of my favorite, fast ways to recover, even in the middle of baking pumpkin pie. 

Take a simple ten-minute break and restore your mind, your body and your spirit! 

Lie on the floor, knees bent, feet in line with your hip sockets about 12-16 inches from your buttocks, hands on your front hips. There is no work here, no pressing, just letting your bones sink down into the floor. Ten minutes. That's all. Your spine will begin to relax. Your nervous system will calm.

Just be still. Be conscious of God's presence. Let gravity and stillness work to restore balance and peace. Be grateful, breathe, listen.

Liz Koch in Constructive Rest Position

And now, poetry. This is the last stanza of John Greenleaf Whittier's "The Pumpkin." Read the entire poem here.

Then thanks for thy present! none sweeter or better

E’er smoked from an oven or circled a platter! 

Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine, 

Brighter eyes never watched o’er its baking, than thine! 

And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express, 

Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less, 

That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below, 

And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow, 

And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky 

Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie!

Enjoy your week. Enjoy your family. Carry a grateful heart with you through every moment. 

In the Kingdom of Ice--Reprise

Reprise, because I talked about this book in my last post. But at that point, I had just picked up the book. Now that the reading is done, I must tell you about this adventure.

USS Jeanette in Le Havre, France

I began slowly, reading in my free moments, relishing the deftness of Hampton Sides as he introduced the remarkable characters behind the USS Jeanette expedition to the Arctic Circle. George Washington DeLong, our captain, and his wife Emma; James Gordon Bennett, Jr., owner of the New York Herald and financier of the expedition; John Muir, environmentalist; August Petermann, noted German mapmaker and geographer.

He sets us firmly in the culture of a nation only a decade out of the Civil War, bursting with new technology, giant steam engines, prototypes of Edison's arc lamps and Bell's telephone, delighted with new tastes like Heinz ketchup and the strange new fruit called a banana, filled with a generation of young men men longing to prove themselves like their fathers and brothers had in the war.

By the end of the first section, we have a clear understanding of the current knowledge, or lack thereof, concerning the north pole and the arctic sea. From the mind-boggling assumptions of Symmes Hole to the concept of a warm, open polar sea.

By the time the expedition begins, as a reader, I am fully invested in the cast of characters, and even though I know something of the outcome, I'm committed for the ride.

Then I began finding time to read that wasn't free. I read over meals, between yoga classes, carried the book with me in the car when I left the house in hopes of catching a few moments to follow this incredible sea journey. It's a remarkable telling. Without ever dipping into subjectivity, Sides manages to make me feel like I'm in the heads of these characters. And I read desperately to understand the end, the struggle for survival, the international search and rescue of the men who survived.

One of the blurbs on the back of the book from Ian Frazier says: Read this book in two ways--fast, for the hair-raising excitement of what happens to the brave men of the Jeanette, and then slowly, to take in the clarity of the writing and the unshowy elegance of the structure. He's right! I was aware of the structure throughout, aware of the finesse and elegance of this telling, but I was reading fast. Now it's time to go back and look a little more closely at the technique.

A beautiful book, beautifully written. Read it.

Drawing of the Jeannette cairn in Siberia