Reading and Writing and the Occasional Recipe

Generating good

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:44:00 +0000

I just heard it again on a talk show. A newspaper editor, commenting on President Obama’s history-making statement yesterday, called support for marriage equality “generational.” With my generation coming out as the losers who are against. I beg to differ.

Yes, I’ve seen--and cringed at--all the photos of those of a certain age, pursed-lipped, their faces hate-contorted, waving Tea Party or anti-choice placards, cheering from the front pages of the papers. Maybe those were cheap shots. Maybe there were just as many earnest young haters in the crowd. Who knows?

What I know is this: my generation sat in at segregated lunch counters and marched for civil rights. My generation protested a war--the first in a series, as it has turned out--that threw away the lives of young people for dubious reasons. My generation worked for gender equality and women’s reproductive rights.

Hatred is always an equal opportunity handicap. I would assume, in fact, that the bullies who make life intolerable for gay teens are of a generation that prefers to see itself in a quite different light. No generation gets it all right. But I’m standing up for mine and the people in it who have tried to add their lives to the human evolution toward justice, human dignity, and respect. We’re all evolving.

Not a year for fiction?

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:35:00 +0000

I cannot pretend to guess why the Pulitzer Prize committee, in its great wisdom, decided not to award a prize in fiction this year. I had personally been hoping they might crown my friend Edith Pearlman’s magical year: her excellent “Binocular Vision” won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. My sister-in-law Susan, one of the most astute and adventurous readers I know, is urging me to read Denis Johnson’s “Train Dreams.” I had thought this year’s crop seemed pretty bountiful. No? Well, what do I know?

This morning Ann Patchett has a smart column in the New York Times making the excellent point that prizes, like it or not, help to sell books and selling books is what keeps the publishers and the bookstores in business. Patchett says it is fiction that gives us a way to imagine another life. It gives us a chance to be empathetic. And, she says, “staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than polar icecaps.”

Ah, quiet. Ah, alone. Alone with a good book--what could be better?

Remember the book that first opened that magic door for you, the one that showed you a world where another life happened and you, at least for the length of the story, were part of it? Doesn’t that still happen? Doesn’t a good story well told still have the power to grab us from our screens and plunge us deep into the page? What was your prize-winner this year?

Where the poem comes from: Ingrid Wendt

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:52:00 +0000

I’m part of a new Facebook group made up of authors with books out from Word Tech, the publisher who did my second book, Container Gardening. I invited the poets I’ve met there online to send me a poem and a “where the poem comes from” background on it. This one is from Ingrid Wendt, the author of several award-winning books of poetry, including “Singing the Mozart Requiem” (Oregon Book Award), “Surgeonfish” (Editions Prize), and “The Angle of Sharpest Ascending” (Yellowglen Award). Ingrid’s first book, Moving the House, was chosen for BOA Editions by William Stafford, who also wrote the introduction. Her newest book , Evensong, a finalist in the T.S. Eliot Award, was published in 2011 by Truman State University Press. Wendt is the co-editor of From Here We Speak: An Anthology of Oregon Poetry, and In Her Own Image: Women Working in the Arts. Her teaching guide, Starting with Little Things: A Guide to Writing Poetry in the Classroom, is in its sixth printing. She lives with her husband, poet and writer Ralph Salisbury in Eugene, Oregon.

Here is Ingrid’s poem, from her collection “Surgeonfish,” and her story of how it came to be written:

The Thing to Do

Though what I did that day was right,

reporting the rattlesnakes coiled tightly

together B diamond-backed lovers

blind to my step within a breath of

leaves crackling under the bush;

Though he did what he had to,

hacking them dead with his long-handled

garden hoe, flinging the still-

convulsing whips of their passion into

the bed of his pickup B that scene,

bright vulture of memory, stays;

picks this conscience that won’t

come clean: this wasn’t

the way the story would go

those times I wondered if ever

I’d see my own rattlesnake out in the wild,

having listened through years of summer

hikes, in the likeliest places, without

once hearing that glittering warning

said to be unmistakable; knowing

since childhood, the thing to do is not

flicker a muscle, to stare the face of danger

down as though it didn’t exist.

No rattlesnake ever had eyes for another.

And menace never multiplied, one season to next.

“The setting of this poem is the D.H. Lawrence Ranch 20 miles north of Taos, New Mexico, elevation 8600 ft. above sea level, where I spent a summer as the recipient of the annual D.H. Lawrence Award, living at the edge of a ponderosa pine forest, next to a meadow full of wildflowers, all alone except for the birds and wind, wild turkeys, coyotes, and the bear whose track I found one day on the road but never saw. On the other side of the meadow, far off and hidden in trees, were cabins where families from the University of New Mexico came for vacations and conferences. I never saw a soul, though I sometimes heard the far-off voices of children playing.

“Born and raised in Aurora, Illinois, I was captivated throughout childhood by tales of the "Far West," especially by stories of dangerous wildlife --bears, wolves, rattlesnakes – none of which had lived anywhere near. So when I finally saw a rattlesnake outside of a zoo, I saw not just one, but two snakes, copulating. (Which they must do, of course, but who ever thought about that, or just how they do it? Not me!) I heard them before I saw them, and when I saw them, not far from the cabin, I felt no danger to myself, but reasoned that where there are two rattlesnakes, soon there will be more, and I didn’t want them going into the meadow and beyond, where the children played.

“So, being a responsible adult, I quickly jogged down the road and told the caretaker of the ranch, a crusty old guy named Al, about the snakes, expecting him to somehow trap them and cart them off to another location, far removed. What he did shocked and disturbed me, impressing itself on my memory, surfacing off and on for years, until I finally decided to bring some “closure” to my guilty conscience.

“The actual writing of the poem was something like putting together a quilt. I’ve long kept a notebook of “saved lines”: those necessarily cut from other poems, as well as “good lines” and images that come to mind totally on their own, waiting for a poem to put them in. One of those that never had a home was “bright vulture of memory, picks these bones that won’t come clean,” and intuiting that the vulture image fit the setting of the poem perfectly, I copied this line (by hand) onto a blank sheet of paper, somewhere near the middle, intuiting that’s where it belonged. The challenge then was what to put before and after.

“Many writers talk about writing as “the act of discovery,” which I used to think meant starting with one line or sentence and following the “golden thread,” as William Stafford used to say, letting the words come one after another, down the page, and seeing where they’d lead. For me, the discovery is often is in finding the exact words to shape the context in which some new perception or inner “moment of knowing” occurred: to let the reader step into the scene and live that experience with me.

“Rhythm has a lot to do with setting tone. At some point, early in the poem, maybe after the first two lines, I realized I was working in an accentual pattern of 4 beats per line, and I decided to “go with it” for the rest of the poem. This helped 1) to create a somewhat “heavy” tone, a deliberate tone, a regularity, and 2) to rein me in, to tighten the language, to avoid the maudlin. I wanted the weight of the poem to reflect the weight of the issue. I’m hoping it’s worked that way for readers.”

A new haggadah

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 19:56:00 +0000

I bought the New American Haggadah today. I had time this afternoon for only a quick look through it, as my dining room is currently Haggadah Central, with two haggadot that I’ve compiled lying in various stages of readiness for the holiday ahead. One, for a celebration with my extended family, is a version I wrote in the late 1990s; the other, written just last year, is for the seder Dr. D. and I have with friends and our families. Each has its own specific tone for its intended group. They are the result of a year of study of a variety of haggadot, old and new, consultation with my rabbis and cantor, and much editing and writing, not to mention photocopying, pasting, and shaking out of old matzah crumbs.

So I was interested to see this new haggadah, which is the work of respected writers who are also committed Jews: Jonathan Safran Foer, who was the editor; and Nathan Englander, the translator; with commentary by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein; Jeffrey Goldberg; Nathaniel Deutsch; and Lemony Snicket (who knew?). There is some lovely language; two of the plagues are rendered as “a maelstrom of beasts” and “a clotted darkness.”

The book was designed by an Israeli artist, Oded Ezer. The authors apparently all come out of very traditional upbringings and much serious scholarship is in evidence. One of my favorite aspects Mia Sara Bruch’s timeline that tracks the observance of Passover from around 1250 BCE to the entry in 2007 noting the publication of the first haggadah for Jewish Buddhists. Some will, I predict, find the artwork hauntingly beautiful; others will wonder if the pages have arrived with wine blotches already on them, and, indeed, the book’s introduction refers to those very spills of Concord grape. Strangely, the design of the pages, with commentary and timeline, requires you to read in three directions, though, happily, not simultaneously. The Hebrew is offered without transliteration, which will make it inaccessible to some families, but which carries an optimistic message about the persistence of the language, not to mention the Seriousness of the Project.

The biggest surprise for me as a Reform Jew was its masculine references to God. Really? In 2012? Was Rebecca Newberger Goldstein in the kitchen when that decision was made? For me it a chance to celebrate my own experience of a holiday in which my grandmother and other female relatives always sat around the table as full participants.

Haggadot have proliferated astonishingly in the past decades. Where once it was Maxwell House or nothing (cue Obama’s in-joke to Jeffrey Goldberg) there is now a version for every conceivable gathering. Each carries a history, clues to the time in which it was written and the thinking of those who wrote it. Every one I read brings me new understanding of the holiday that has always been my favorite. The New American Haggadah is no exception. I won’t be using it at my table, but I will be reading it and learning from it.

Oh no--Lady Marjorie is on the Titanic!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 16:49:00 +0000

This is a spoiler only if you, like Dr. D. and me, had never watched “Upstairs, Downstairs” and are just now seeing it as consolation for the absence of “Downton Abbey.” Strangely, although there are predictable parallels, we are finding that the earlier series, broadcast from 1971-75, is edgier and grittier, and shows downstairs life as possibly a little closer to what it might have been.

“Why couldn’t they have just killed James?” he asked. We knew the answer: James’s death wouldn’t have resulted in enough interesting plotlines.

Dr. D.’s and my shocked reaction to Lady Marjorie’s fate made me think of an old New Yorker cartoon in which parents are watching a young girl race from the room sobbing as the mother explains, “Beth just died.”

Fiction, on the page on or the screen, exists to draw us in and then play fast and loose with us, kick our feelings to the curb. And the more drawn in we are, the harder we fall.

Isn’t it wonderful?

Other People's Memories

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:14:00 +0000

Who isn't captivated by memoirs? For years my most frequent book recommendations have included two memoirs. One was “The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World,” by Lucette Lagnado. The other, from the same general area of the world, was “My Father’s Paradise,” Ariel Sabar’s story of his father’s life that began in a 3,000-year-old Aramean-speaking Jewish community in Iraq. More recently I have been among the many readers fascinated by Edmund de Waal’s story of uncovering a remarkable family history he never knew about in “The Hare with Amber Eyes.”

Why do we want to read other people’s stories? The exotic details certainly have appeal. (How exactly did Lucette Lagnado’s grandmother cook those apricots down to a fragrant essence?) But I don’t think it’s just curiosity.

A line I think about often is this one by Willa Cather: “There are only two or three human stories and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” Certainly I am discovering something about my own life as I read these stories. In a strange way it feels as if the memoirs lead me to discoveries not just about my life as it is, but about what might have been, trying on other circumstances for the satisfying strangeness of the fit.

Case in point, the memoir I am reading right now, “Sipping from the Nile: My Exodus from Egypt.” Yes, another exodus from Egypt. How could Jews leaving Egypt be anything else, and it IS close to Passover, after all. Jean Naggar, the author, grew up under unimaginably privileged circumstances. Her family had lived in Egypt since leaving Spain in 1492 and had, during those centuries, amassed wealth and power almost beyond belief and created a family life of enormous luxury. But here’s the strange thing. While I’m reading of her little footsteps echoing down the endless marble staircases and the kitchen used only one week a year, for Passover, and the countless comforts and pleasures of her golden childhood, I am thinking how much my childhood was like that. Yes, my relatives came to the United States from Russia in the early years of the 20th century with hardly a penny or a belonging aside from my great-grandparents’ wedding samovar that is now in my dining room. But I, like Jean, was a coddled child in a family of loving adults in very close to the same years. I remember the glow of taking my place at the family seder, of taking in the family lore and customs. Not the same customs by a long shot, but nevertheless some of this is my story, too.

As fiercely as if it had never happened before and yet, because it has, a connection exists across miles and cultures. And maybe that’s what memoir does most significantly for us, shows our deep human connections, how, aside from the astonishing details, our stories can be the same. We understand them.

What women want

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 17:03:00 +0000

The morning news today brought its usual package of anti-woman (anti-person!) outrages. This one was the closing of women’s health clinics in Texas, but no matter. Take your pick--it could have been any one of a hundred stories of ways in which women are ground down around the world. Including here in the United States quite noticeably where it’s open (election) season on women’s rights.

And just in time, my friend Susan Donnelly has sent me this wonderful poem by Ellen Bryant Voigt. Voigt is among the poets I admire greatly when I come across her work and then somehow I forget to seek out more. Not this time though, thanks to Susan’s reminder. What this woman wants right now is more of Voigt’s wise and finely-crafted poetry.

The Wide and Varied World

Women, women, what do they want?

The first ones in the door of the plant-filled office

were the twins, fresh from the upper grades,

their matched coats dangling open.

and then their more compliant brother, leading

the dear stuffed tottering creature -- amazing

that she could lift her leg high enough

to cross the threshold to the waiting room.

Then the woman, the patient, carrying the baby

in an infant seat, his every inch of flesh

swaddled against the vicious weather.

Once inside, how skillfully the mother

unwound the many layers --

and now so quickly

must restore them: news from the lab

has passed through the nurse's sliding window.

The youngest, strapped again into his shell,

fusses for the breast, the twins tease their sister,

the eight-year-old looks almost wise as his mother

struggles into her coat with one hand and with the other

pinches his sweaty neck, her hissed threats

swarming his face like flies.

Now she's gone.

The women who remain don't need to speak.

Outside, snow falls in the streets

and quiet hills, and seems, in the window,

framed by the room's continuous greenery,

to obliterate the wide and varied world.

We half-smile, half-nod to one another.

One returns to her magazine.

One shifts gently to the right arm

her sleeping newborn, unfurls the bud of its hand.

One of us takes her turn in the inner office

where she submits to the steel table

and removes from her body its stubborn wish.

We want what you want, only

we have to want it more.

-- Ellen Bryant Voigt

in The Lotus Flowers

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ellen-bryant-voigt

Naming rites

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 15:45:00 +0000

I recently had the opportunity to be part of a program in which James Carroll was the guest speaker. It was my honor and pleasure to introduce him. Because he is a friend, I call him Jim. Because he is a respected public figure, people around me who do not know him personally referred to him uneasily as ... James or ...JamesCarroll. At one point in my intro I decided to refer to him as Mr. Carroll, just to try to make it easier for people to be able to call him that if it seems comfortable for them.

Calling someone Mr. seems so startling that it’s hard to figure out if it’s reactionary or revolutionary. It feels a little odd because we’re so used to first-naming everyone we meet as soon as we meet them. And we use not simply first names, but casual familiar names, just to show how casual and familiar we all are. We have Presidential candidates named Rick and Ron and Newt. (Mitt is actually Willard’s middle name--not Mitten as many people reportedly believe. And the “Willard” part is apparently for a close family friend, J. Willard Marriott, once again underscoring his “man of the people” cred.) Lucky the George, John and Barack, Michelle and Hilary whose names don’t don’t get nicked.

In the late 18th century the French Revolution brought us the leveling “citizen.” The 1960s took informality further. The Dear Sir or Madam letter to someone you didn’t know suddenly sounded bizarre. Children were calling adults by first names. Goodbye Mr. and Mrs., hello Everyone. Hello (insert first name here) for just about everybody but the Duchess of Grantham.

Of course when a title is involved you can retreat to calling someone duchess or doctor or senator. There are still, after all, times when we need a more formal model of name-calling. That’s evident when you get a letter that falls somewhere short of personal and the salutation is, “Dear Ellen Steinbaum.” Or when, as in the situation around James Carroll, you want to address someone in a way that indicates respect and a little distance.

Maybe that’s part of the problem. Especially in a time when we can call almost anyone “friend” even if it’s just in a limited Facebook sort of way, there’s an illusion of closeness that deep down, we know just doesn’t always work.

The other day my rabbi Elaine (yes, first name, but an earned and comfortable one) was talking about the story of Moses first speaking to God in the burning bush moment and basically asking, “What shall I call you?” The power of the name, the foundation of all relationships. When we use someone’s first name, it seems to our 21st century ears friendly, democratic, open. What’s closed off, though, is the possibility of calibrating to suit the specific situation. There are still people you feel respectful of. And I imagine there must have been pleasure in being granted the right to “call me Tom.” We grab that right for ourselves now and never think of using Mr. or Ms. with someone we are being introduced to. Awkward moments are created, but for the most part, it’s fine. It’s the way we live.

But now that everyone is Everyone, we don’t always know what to call anyone.

The Occasional Recipe: Baked Apples

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:52:00 +0000

I should have posted this in the fall. That’s when I start thinking about baked apples for dessert. But, since that thought and resulting dessert continues right through until spring, it’s not too late. As long as the weather is cold it’s one of my favorite desserts.

First of all what kind of apple? Everyone has a favorite, but I was surprised to find that the one I like best for baking is Golden Delicious. It holds its shape well and seems to have more flavor baked than raw.

Like all my favorite recipes, this is very easy. It’s delicious, but another part of the reward is the way it makes the house smell.

Baked Apples

--Preheat the oven to 350. Then, to prepare apples, start by cutting them a tiny bit at the bottom so they stand up straight. Then cut off a small circle of the peel around the stem and core the apple. It’s easy to accumulate too many kitchen gadgets, but I think a corer is really useful.

Then--here is an important step that helps the apples hold their shape--make small horizontal cuts at several points into the fattest part of the apple. You just want to slice into the skin so that it doesn’t break during baking.

Put the apples into an oven-proof baking dish.

--I’ll tell you how I flavor the apples, but you may decide to just squirt on a little lemon juice, add a dusting of cinnamon, pour in some apple juice or cider, or dab a little butter and let it go at that. I like to pour a little maple syrup into a bowl and mix it with enough brown sugar and a little cinnamon to make a not-too-thick paste to glob onto the apples. I also like to fill the hollow cores with walnuts and raisins. If you do that, be sure all the raisins are tucked down far enough so they won’t get overdone in the baking.

-- Cover the apples loosely with foil and bake for about 25-30 minutes. Basting is nice to do if you have the time. Then take the foil off and bake for another 20 minutes or so, until a knife goes easily into the top of the apple. Again, basting during this part is good to do, but not absolutely necessary. Depends what else is going on the kitchen and in your life at the time.

That’s it, the whole thing. You can serve baked apples just as they are, which is what I do. Some people like a little heavy cream or vanilla ice cream. It’s easy to modify this as you wish for taste and calorie count. Some say potayto, some say potahto. I say enjoy a baked apple for dessert tonight!

Where the poem comes from: Catherine Morocco

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 20:55:00 +0000

Catherine Morocco and I met because she is a close friend of a close friend who decided we should get to know each other since we are both writers of poetry. Meeting both Cathy and her poetry was a great pleasure. We also share the coincidence of being former students of Ottone Riccio (“Ricky”) and having poems that are part of the book, " Unlocking the Poem," by him and Ellen Beth Siegel.

In addition to studying with Ricky at the Boston Center for Adult Education, Cathy has also studied with some other poets and teachers I admire, including Afaa Michael Weaver, Tom Daley, and Kathleen Spivack.

Cathy teaches an introductory and an advanced poetry writing course, has seen her poems appear in some well-respected journals, and recently completed a collection of poems that grew out of an experience of illness. This is a poem from that collection:

Son’s Story

I’m shaking scarves over my mother’s bed,

where there’s no evidence of thought.

In one of seven silken scarves, lithe women

sway around a mandala. Their skirts are painted

amber, apricot, and blue. Each sylph is named

after a continent: Antarctica’s fur headdress flames,

blue dolphins leap, swim at her feet.

My mother’s eyes are closed, while Oceana’s

teasing head is crowned in grass and leaves.

She holds a plate of purple fish. I spread

Toros Magnifico around my mother’s feet. A picador

thrusts his pic to pierce the bull into the ring.

In corners, matadors and bull horns’ swelling.

Velvet ladies hurtle roses to the bloody kill.

Just lying here, my mother is a dreamless spot

without a nerve. I cannot stir her. Is she struggling

with shades? Will she open up her eyes to see the golds,

smell fish, flowers, blood? I tie a corner

of the bull fight to a corner of the dance, join seven

scarves into one rope, lands billowing. If I throw it,

she must cling. I’ll pull her to her body, knot by knot.

In talking about how “Son’s Story” came to be written, Cathy says:

“This poem is part of a larger collection of poems, “Brain Storm. Poems of Injury and Recovery.” The poems draw on a diary I kept in the hospital, full of questions, observations, and "to do" lists to help me cope with fear and uncertainty. The diary, as well as memories, observations, hallucinations, and stories from my family members, became subjects for poetry. That material included moments of intense beauty and humor. "Son's Story" appears in The Spoon River Poetry Review and recently won the Dana Foundation prize for poetry about the brain.

“Son's Story was triggered by an experience with my son, who visited me in the hospital when I was recovering from surgery for a hematoma (bleeding around the brain). I was comatose part of the time. My son brought me presents of face cream and feather butterflies from Vogue, where he was working at the time. He also brought seven silk scarves from the Vogue clothes closet that is full of shoes and dresses for photo shoots. The scarves have colorful prints of bullfights, mythology, and the Statue of Liberty. Although the scarves are real and I treasure them, much of the poem is from my imagination--the son lays the scarves over the sleeping mother, he joins the scarves to pull the mother out of her deep sleep. Later, when I asked my son what my illness was like for him, he said, ‘I didn't understand any of the medical stuff. I thought I could help your metaphysical self’.”

Words of advice

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 22:07:00 +0000

When I was a child I became intrigued by a book on the family bookshelf, a big thick one, dark blue, by Emily Post. Its words of advice have never failed to steer me in the right direction on the critical everyday questions of leaving a calling card or addressing an ambassador. They have also, gentle reader, given me insight into the later novels of Henry James.

I found--and continue to find--the book a wonderful glimpse into another age. And what I took in, too, was the underlying message, not of snobbishness, which it often stands accused of, but of consideration for one’s fellow human beings and of a democratic idea that establishing rules everyone can know can allow anyone to feel at ease no matter the social situation

Of course fast forward to the 21st century and the rules have become a little muddled. It’s still easy to know which fork to use, but other issues are less clear. Which is exactly why we’re drawn--and by we I mean me--to advice columns. How to navigate the intricacies of ex and step and blended familial ties, the appropriate reaction to the cell phone on the dinner table, the friending and unfriending of friends and unfriends. We need advice.

Some of my favorite comes every Sunday in Philip Galanes’ Social Q’s column in the New York Times Styles section. His answers feel like the perfect mix of snark and compassion. He seems to recognize that since we’re all in this together why make anyone’s life harder than it needs to be.

Galanes has a new book coming out soon, a compilation of the columns. It’s called " Social Q’s: How to Survive the Quirks, Quagmires, and Quandaries of Today." Ah, quite. I’m looking forward to reading it. Maybe you’d like it, too.

Speaking to the crowd

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:55:00 +0000

One of the most fascinating things about the Occupy movement is the method it has developed to communicate with large crowds without using microphones. Since most of the spaces occupied (Occupy-ed?) are in the middle of business and/or residential neighborhoods and since permits are usually needed for sound amplification, care has been taken to keep the volume down, literally and figuratively.

So how do you speak without amplification to a crowd that stretches beyond the reach of the lone human voice?

Occupy’s stunningly simple answer is a lesson in public conversation. The people nearest the speaker echo his or her words and the people behind them do the same and the people behind them do the same and the words are carried out to the far edges of the crowd by It’s the most ancient and low-tech way imaginable. Effective, too.

I’m wondering about what it feels like to have someone else’s words coming out of your mouth. What does that do to the potential for anger, disagreement, misunderstanding? For concurrence, empathy, acceptance? What if you didn’t agree with them, but still had the responsibility--a basic part of this social contract--to pass them along accurately?

“I hear you” has long been part of our conversational repertoire, but that is a non-committal response that basically says, “Okay, you said it and I stood here and heard it and now we’re done.” And when someone we don’t agree with is speaking, listening doesn’t really describe the situation. What we’re more likely doing is waiting, not too patiently, for a slight pause into which we can inject what we want to say. In its Occupy incarnation, hearing is active. It leads, not to responding, retorting, rebutting, but to repeating. You listen to the words coming to you. And you hear them again, in your own voice, going out beyond you.

What could that kind of listening do to our most banal daily interchanges, not to mention our most heated or heartfelt? (What if we could get them to do that in Congress?) What if this were the great legacy of Occupy: hearing and helping your neighbor hear. Listening and helping your neighbor listen. Feeling the power of someone else’s words in our mouths. Who knows what we might find out about each other? Who knows what we might learn?

Where the poem comes from: David Surette

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 20:55:00 +0000

Continuing my very sporadic feature that feeds my curiosity--maybe yours, too?--about how a poem comes to be written, here’s one by David Surette from his new collection, “The Immaculate Conception Mothers’ Club.” I’ve had the great pleasure of reading with David once and of hearing him several times.

David lives in South Easton and is a frequent feature in and around the Boston area. His two previous collections are “Young Gentlemen’s School” and “Easy to Keep, Hard to Keep In,” which was named a "must-read" at the Massachusetts Book Awards. His poems have been published in literary journals including Peregrine, Off the Coast, and Salamander and appear in the anthologies French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets and Cadence of Hooves: A Celebration of Horses. He has been a co-host of Poetribe, a contributing editor at Salamander, an instructor at the Cape Cod Writers’ Conference, and a contributor at the Bread Loaf Writing Conference.

Bookmaking

One of the Sisters of Notre Dame,

my mother's second grade teacher, was telling

the school kids about the value of books.

They were to be loved, covered, and cared for.

My mother saw her opportunity

and bragged, "My father is a bookmaker!"

He was, and he figured the odds

on happiness with a woman

who struggled with happy

and sad, and he left her, and

my mother and her brother

(who wasn’t his)

to be split up,

passed through

foster homes and relatives’ arms.

He died at 95, good news for my genes.

He hadn't seen my mother since she

was 24 and appeared at his bar to show

him how well she turned out,

pictures of my brother and me as proof.

He had already cashed out.

We didn't go to the wake or funeral,

and we go to everyone's.

We figured the over and under of whether

it would make my mother happy or sad

and skipped it.

In describing how this poem came to be, David says, “The poem was inspired by one of my mother’s many stories. She is a great story teller because she uses humor and language to reveal the sadness and poignancy of moments in her life. The humor is in the word bookmaker which she, as a grade schooler, took as meaning an author or publisher of books when, in reality, her father was a bookie.

“It became a poem when I decided to use the language of gambling to tell the rest of the story, suggesting we live by figuring the odds, the over and under, when to stick and when to fold and cash out. We also have to admit there is chance. Why else did my grandfather do what he did, abandoned my mother and her mother, closed off his life from her and his grandchildren, finally dying never reconciling?

“Gambling is seductive because it combines the rational and irrational so by using its language I want the reader to feel what my mother may have felt and later figured out about her father. The poem is set in the Irish-Boston-Catholic world that I mine for much of my poetry and so far is rich in inspiration, imagery and poetry. I also am aware that the poet is a book maker too.”

Remembering Ricky: Ottone Riccio 1921-2011

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:40:00 +0000

My poetry teacher died on September 23. Since then I’ve been thinking about him and wondering what I could say that could give some sense of him to someone who didn’t know him.

My meeting him was a serendipitous thing, a fluke. I was living in New York, about to move to Boston, and, after many years, renewing my interest in writing poetry. In trying to figure out what I was doing I came across a book, “The Intimate Art of Writing Poetry.” Just the thing I needed--a small gem filled with practical information of poetic form, sensible advice on writing and publishing, and soaring inspiration for anyone who, as Ricky did, thought, lived, breathed, and slept poetry.

I bought the book and then discovered he taught a workshop at the Boston Center for Adult Education, just a few blocks away from my new home. Lucky me! He taught me how to write poetry. Or maybe I should say he helped me learn how to write poetry.

His technique of teaching was always respectful, always made with the understanding that “this is your poem, not mine, but if it were mine, this is what I would do.” That said, though, he could be shocking in all the “darlings” he wanted us to murder. Cut to the bone, include no word that was not absolutely necessary--that was his approach. There is an apocryphal story that he once told a student with a three-page poem, “This would make a good haiku.”

When he turned 80 “Ricky’s people”--basically anyone who had ever studied with him--compiled a tribute anthology, “Do Not Give Me Things Unbroken.” This was the poem I wrote for him:

Generation

Receive

the secrets.

Trace

the path.

Apprentice

yourself to magic

and the skill

of making fire.

On moonless nights

reweave the stories

thread by thread:

begin to sing

In 2009, with Ellen Beth Siegel, he wrote “Unlocking the Poem,” a guide to writing that included some of his poem-provoking assignments (“Write a 32-line poem in quatrains, 10 syllables per line, using a linked mirror-rhyme scheme as follows: abab bcbc cdcd dede eded dcdc cbcb baba, any subject”)

As Ricky said in his introduction to “Unlocking the Poem,” “Anything less than total commitment, total involvement, is going to make the work of the poet more difficult if not impossible.” Ricky believed poetry was magic. Not some kind of facile conjuring, but something deep and mysterious, a life force. I will always miss him and be grateful to him. He was my teacher.

Who are the murderers?

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:20:00 +0000

I always picture killers as at some level deranged. Damaged goods. Maybe momentarily blinded by passion, maybe methodically malevolent, somehow off kilter. I am optimistic enough to believe that a “normal” person does not murder.

I am thinking about killers this morning, reading the news of the death of Troy Davis. Right to the end there was doubt and, as Nick Kristof, for whom I have great respect, said, “When smart people debate whether or not a man should be executed, that’s a good reason not to execute him.” Seven of nine witnesses who had testified against him later changed their testimony.

Still that was not enough to instill doubt in the minds of Georgia’s highest court. A judge presiding over a hearing last year said that although the case against Davis “may not be ironclad” and that there were doubts about his conviction, there would be no new trial. And, finally, the U.S. Supreme Court, too, remained convinced that, even with the “reasonable doubt” jurors are cautioned about, the case merited no further consideration.

And so last night Troy Davis was walked through the hallways, through the meticulous preparations, past the credentialed witnesses to his death. And this morning I am wondering who is a murderer.

One thing leads to another....

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:26:00 +0000

So there I was in San Francisco in June and there were two exhibits about Gertrude Stein, one about her life and the other about the art collection she and her family members amassed in 1920’s Paris.

Fascinating. I didn’t know much about Stein--rose is rose; the unforgettable Picasso portrait which, yes, she grew to look like; the salon where Picasso first met Matisse and where young Hemingway nervously came for opinions on his work; Alice B. and the cookbook. But not much beyond that. And nothing at all about her brother Michael and sister-in-law Sarah, who had a close relationship with Matisse.

When I got home I started reading Alice’s cookbook, which was delicious on many levels and had recipes I was tempted by and a delightfully matter-of-fact voice I was charmed by. And then I couldn’t wait to see Woody Allen’s film “Midnight in Paris,” where I could revisit the time and all those new-found friends. And that led to reading “The Paris Wife,” Paula McLain’s novel about Hadley Richardson, Hemingway’s first wife.

And, of course, then I had to read “A Moveable Feast,” Hemingway’s finale book, a memoir, which he labels “fiction,” about those early Paris years. And yesterday I read “The Old Man and the Sea,” which I found beautiful, although, as with his writing about bullfights, I am not entirely sure I see the Large Noble Truth in the killing of large animals.

Now I’m moving on to Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway’s third wife, whose life with him included time spent in Cuba, where, coincidentally, I will be later this fall.

And isn’t it so often like this--reading, like life, interweaving, meandering, leading to unexpected places?

An anniversary

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 20:02:00 +0000

It was 34 years ago today and it’s still amazing.

On the Wire

It was just after seven,
people rushing to their jobs
then suddenly the shouts, the
pointing, looking up and
there he was
a hundred ten stories in the air,
a quarter mile straight up, the towers
not yet finished.

The night before, the Grateful Dead
had played Roosevelt Stadium--
started with Bertha, on to Sugar Magnolia, U.S. Blues;
the Astros beat the Braves six-four; the next day
Nixon would resign,
but this

was morning
August seventh
a Wednesday,
and here it was just
the wire--narrow, high--
and thousands watching
as he danced like light between
the solid towers.

He was arrested, sentenced to
make magic in Central Park. Later
he went back, signed his name high on a beam.

The president would helicopter from the lawn
in just a day or two, head back to California, jowled and
grim; Faye Dunaway got married to someone from the
J. Geils Band, the new prime minister of Iceland was
sworn in, all that same Wednesday, and then
nearly three decades passed, almost ten thousand days.

It was in the morning that day, too.

(This poem of mine originally appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review.)

Punctuation rules!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 15:59:00 +0000

The news was shocking. To me, at least. Well, apparently to quite a few other people, too. A snarky piece in the HuffPo said that, ho hum, the serial comma is out and who cares.

The news was that Oxford University had updated its style guide and was discontinuing use of the serial comma, also known as the Oxford comma. This is the comma that comes--or not--before a conjunction in a series of three or more: e.g. red, white, and blue instead of red, white and blue. Or eats, shoots, and leaves.

News of the demise comes just as I am hearing the term Oxford comma for the first time. It’s a very good upgrade, I think, since serial has those unfortunate connections with words like “killer.” Though there’s always “serial drama,” which I like.

Whatever it’s called I think it’s a good idea. It just makes grammatical sense. There’s a symmetry in the way it looks on the page. And there’s a nice sense of pacing. It sounds, in your head, the way you’d say it. It doesn’t rush you to the final element. Will we need to say it faster without the comma?

The article is followed by a string of comments, some of them irate and one of them mine (“it’s a good day when people care so much about punctuation”). And many people were all a-Twitter about it.

You can also see a video of a song called “Oxford Comma” by the rock group Vampire Weekend. I’m learning a lot. And I also see that the Oxford comma is sometimes called the Harvard comma. How could I not have known that, right here in 02138 in the shadow of the Great University itself?

Anyhow, I have to apologize for upsetting you. Turns out to be a cruel hoax. Relax. Stand down. Oxford University issued a statement that, contrary to reports, no change in its policy on use of the serial comma is planned. Except maybe to start calling it the Harvard comma?

After the End of the World

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Wed, 25 May 2011 18:11:00 +0000

We’re still here, all of us, the faithful penitents and the scoffers, along with the doers of saintly deeds and the usual assortment of sins. Doomsday came and went. And here we are still, all our flaws intact.

Actually, the end of the world--originally scheduled for last weekend and now apparently postponed until October 21--had taken me by surprise. I’m not among those scheduled for rapture, so I had missed most of lead-in preparations. But as the fateful hour neared it became harder to ignore. The man next to me in the supermarket checkout line was saying that he didn’t want to be buying his groceries when the world ended. “I want to be in a better place,” he said. Hmmm....a better place? What if.....?

Since the day was sunnier and warmer than it had been in weeks, Dr. D. and I spent much of it in the garden. We tilled the soil, we sowed for the future, or at least for the next couple of months. Earthworms in generous numbers were there to help. A cardinal was sitting on her nest outside the kitchen door. The peaceable kingdom in the middle of Cambridge.

We were having some computer problems but, as often happens, they seemed to be resolved after we switched off and restarted. Which is kind of what the End Of The World day did, too, switched us from the mildly unconscious to the noticing mode. The next morning the bone-chilling drizzle was back, but we had pleasant things to do. It was good.

A couple of years ago I was asked to be among a group of poets responding to the question “Why do I write?” And, in the way writers find they are sometimes surprised to see on the page what it is they think, I was a little taken aback to find myself saying that I write to notice. Noticing is in relation to daily life the way poetry is to prose--a heightened state. Isn’t noticing what we do when we love? So here I am in a week when the world is not gone. Perhaps, in Wordsworth’s words, it is too much with us. Certainly we do lay waste our powers, frittering away the minute by minute building blocks of our lives. And whatever stops us in our tracks and makes us notice just a little more is a good thing.

The Last Day came and went. The faithful have much to do, picking up the shattered pieces of their belief, some of them now trying to find new jobs and rebuild the savings account. But we who never thought it was going to happen anyway have an unanticipated chance at a kind of redemption ourselves. Maybe it did make us think even for one nanosecond, “what if....” This week the world goes on, complete with its misery, injustice, poverty, oppression, and natural and human-caused disasters in place. But also with its possibilities.for good still standing, unscathed. And we can look around and notice what possibilities exist, in our own little worlds and in our large, shared one. So maybe, we are, after all, in a better place.

Pomp and this circumstance

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:54:00 +0000

Reader, I watched it. Woke up at 5:30--15 minutes before my alarm was set for--and joined the untold numbers tuning in to The Wedding.

Yes, I know, I know: silly, especially for Americans (though at least we don’t have to foot the bill); irrelevant; anachronistic; ridiculous in the face of poverty, oppression, injustice, and misery of all kinds going on now; horrifying in the face of all the aforementioned that have gone on in the name of this monarchy throughout much of its history; how many times in history, from Anne Boleyn to the groom’s parents, this whole thing has gone so terribly wrong; and yet...

The sense of history; the pageantry; the mesmerizing choreographed perfection of the moment were irresistible. Fascinating, too, was the balance of public spectacle and private event. And all the interesting images:
--the historic markers on the Abbey walls
--the earnest faces of the choir boys
--the hats!
--how the queen makes conversation with everyone
--the eternal question--what could she be carrying in the purse
--the moment when QEII was the only person standing silent as Philip, the couple at the altar, and everyone else sang, “God Save the Queen”
--Prince Harry whose red hair and impish grin remind me of my Zach
--wondering what her father was thinking as he walked her down that interminable aisle
--the Archbishop of Canterbury (just writing that!) taking off his hat, putting it back on

I am old enough to remember being ushered with my class into the elementary school auditorium to squint at Elizabeth's coronation on a tiny television screen and being told, “Children, you may never see this again in your lives.” Like Halley’s comet.

The young couple, attractive as they are, hardly need our good wishes. They have every humanly possible comfort and expectation of a good life. Still, who ever knows what awaits that may be out of human hands. And who knows if they will find a way to fill their years with satisfying endeavors. All that, particularly on this side of the ocean, feels beside the point. But, like those tiny feathered hats perched so fetchingly on the groomed heads, this event, too, was a fascinator!

Affecting images

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 19:40:00 +0000

Recently I went to a benefit dinner for the incomparable organization Facing History and Ourselves, which was founded by my friend, the incomparable Margot Stern Strom. Attendees were asked to name an image that has had a lasting impression on them. There were plenty of iconic ones to choose from and people mentioned the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the second plane hitting the World Trade Center, images from the ‘60s civil rights struggles in the South, RFK’s funeral train. This being Boston, someone even mentioned the Red Sox's curse-breaking moment.

Along with all the public images I thought about was a private one, a photograph that is a touchstone for me. I described it this way in a piece I wrote about my late friend Adele Margolis:

“I have an old photograph, a picture of a surprise party given for (my aunt) Alice. It is during World War II and she is about to move from Philadelphia to Washington where her husband will be stationed in the Navy and she will work in a government office. Adele is there, with all the friends and relatives and everyone is smiling, even the ones whose husbands are already overseas, even my father who has not yet gone to Italy and been wounded.

“At the moment of the photograph there is a kind of glamour about them, in their peep-toe platform shoes, drapey print dresses, and upswept hairdos that look deliciously retro now. Certainly no one was wearing anything expensive and probably many of the dresses were mended, but there is an elegance about them. They look unselfconsciously like grown-ups. I can't imagine any of them spending time wondering about the state of some celebrity's marriage or asking, "does this dress make me look fat?" They have dignity. Not in some stuffy artificial way, but they seemed to have a sense of themselves as people with a purpose. People who looked for the best of what a far-from-perfect world was offering them and who tried to make something beautiful, something large of their lives.”

What that photograph says to me is that we have only this one time, this finite moment we are given, and that we, at least to some extent, get to choose how to use it. We can fill our time with things that will have little consequence, even to us, in the long run. Or, as Adele and Alice were wise enough to see from a very early age, we can consciously create our lives. They both created art but they also both created deep, rich relationships that nurtured them and those around them through long and sometimes hard years. What keeps them in my mind as role models is their insistence on not frittering their time away, but in using it thoughtfully for pleasure, for greater understanding of the world, for being human in the fullest and best possible sense.

They might have been astonished that I hold them as role models. They didn’t think they were doing anything unusual or heroic, just living their lives the best way they could. But that’s exactly the thing that shines out from that photograph, that continues to be a beacon for me.

Small Connections

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 18:50:00 +0000

One of my little favorite New York Times features is Metropolitan Diary, a column of little stories of the city that appears on Monday. Over the years I’ve been in it a couple of times and am even in the book of collected columns.

In today’s Metropolitan Diary a contributor named Mimi Alperin, wrote that, in the '70s, her son would travel to and from school on the Fifth Avenue bus. During his daily trips he made friends with two of the route’s bus drivers. Alperin related how her son insisted on inviting one of the drivers to his bar mitzvah. And she told how, just recently, the other driver saw her husband and asked about the son, who is now an adult with his own children.

The story involved two things I like to think about. One is what’s now called “free range children.” Back when I and my children grew up they were just called “children.” But now that the world feels dangerous to us, we are reluctant to let children do the things we took for granted, like taking a bus or walking around the neighborhood alone.

It’s astounding how we no longer notice the absence of children. Not little children who appropriately cling to a parent’s hand when they’re walking down the street. But children who are old enough to begin, one small supervised step at a time, learning how to navigate in the world on their own. There’s a street near my house where, from time to time I have glimpsed a boy, maybe about 10 or 12, walking. Just walking. By himself! A free-range child! I am always happy to see him and I applaud the courage of the parent who has gone against fears of danger and criticism to allow him this freedom.

I also live near a college attended by some of the world’s smartest kids who seem not to know how to cross a street safely. I always think they could have benefitted from a little dose of free-range activity when they were younger.

The second thing I loved about Alperin’s story was the way it acknowledged the relationships we have with all the people in our lives with whom we share an almost unseen connection. We don’t know their names and we hardly do more than nod or smile to each other. The person bringing our mail. The supermarket cashier we like to go to even if her line is a little longer. The gas station attendant who knows right away that we want regular and we’ll be paying cash. It’s these almost unseen interactions that make a neighborhood, that help make us who we are. If we move or if they retire we won’t say goodbye. We might not even notice the absence for a while. But these faces we recognize make our daily lives recognizable to ourselves.

Our ancestors were wandering Arameans

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 20:18:00 +0000

For those of you who haven’t spent time around a Passover seder table, the reference to wandering Arameans comes from a classic line in the seder narrative. For me, Passover 2011--or, more properly 5771--carries faint echoes of a book I just finished about a father who was, at least in terms of language, a wandering Aramean.

The book is “My Father’s Paradise” by Ariel Sabar. Sabar is an American-born, California-raised journalist. His father, Yona Sabar, was born into a 2700-year-old Kurdish Jewish community in Iraq and ultimately became a world-renowned scholar of Aramaic, the nearly -extinct language he grew up speaking.

The book is a fascinating account of Yona Sabar’s journey and of Ariel Sabar’s often fraught relationship with a father different from all the other Southern California fathers. Its references to Baghdad and Mosul and other places so prominently in the news in our new century, remind us of another aspect of the area’s long history. It tells us of a time when such harmony and respect existed among Muslim, Christian, and Jew that Muslims would share the “holiday bread”--matzah, of their Jewish neighbors. And, for me, it opened a door on a community I knew nothing about.

But at this season of sitting around a table and handing down ancient tales, the book was a reminder of how much can be lost between generations and how much the transmission of our history--human, familial, cultural--relies on retelling the stories. Retelling and listening.

The puzzle of poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 16:53:00 +0000

The phone rang and Cameron, age 8, wanted to know if I could tell him the name of a specific type of poem. Oh, the pressure. He described the poem: four lines, one word per line, one letter changed in each word, and all the words somehow related. I had no idea. “Umm .....puzzle poem?” I tried. "No," he said, “every poem is a puzzle.”

So true and how wonderful that he already knows this. Mention poetry in any random group and you can see people’s tension levels rise like boat-lifting tides. The truth is, even the savviest people can be nervous around poetry. But I’m thinking that Cameron is on the right track. A poem is a puzzle. It should be. It shouldn’t give itself away too easily. It should hold something in reserve for a second, a fifth, a fiftieth reading. And the reader shouldn’t approach it as a fence to scale--or worse, to be shut out by. It should, instead, be a puzzle to pick away at, getting satisfaction with each piece that drops into place.

I tried the puzzle challenge Cameron gave me:
bare
bark
lark
lurk

and:

love
live
life
lift

There was no name for it. Cameron finally confessed that he had made up the form. So we're calling it the mind-twisting thought-confounding letter-changing four-line poem. Try one!

Elizabeth Taylor, AIDS Crusader

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 21:22:00 +0000

Maybe you don’t remember what the early 1980s were like in AIDS history. The briefest timeline: July, 1981, the first New York Times mention of a strange illness affecting gay men; September, 1985, President Reagan finally mentioned AIDS publicly for the first time in response to a reporter’s question. There was no cure, only prevention and there was public squeamishness about using the words that could educate enough to save lives.

It was a time when landlords evicted sick tenants, when funeral homes refused to handle the bodies of those who had died of AIDS, and when hospitalized AIDS patients had their meal trays left on the floor outside their rooms. Each year brought frustratingly few answers and rising numbers of deaths.

In this atmosphere Elizabeth Taylor spoke out. She was brave, she was relentless. She raised money, she raised awareness. She appeared in public with AIDS patients, touching people who had been pronounced untouchable.

At the time I lived in New York and was a volunteer for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. It was a remarkable time. Among all the hateful things that happened, I also saw astounding courage. I knew people whose willingness to respond was nearly unimaginable. There were others I did not know personally whose humanity shone like a beacon in those dark times. I will never forget them. Elizabeth Taylor was one.