Funeral Songs, Part II.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

The great poet died. He died in November, the day after his 55th birthday. His youngest son had sent him a birthday present--a recording of all the songs his poet father sang to him while he was growing up. When the son came to his father's apartment, after his death, he found the padded envelope on the coffee table, still unopened. It had just arrived.

The poet had been getting ready to the opera. He was to see Turandot, perhaps his favorite. He'd written about Turandot, and mentioned it now and then during class. The great poet's beloved found him dead in the bathtub, fully clothed, and alone. He was probably fixing his hair, had just finished brushing his teeth, and his heart failed him. His heart failed him violently and suddenly, and he stumbled and faltered, and fell into the tub. The great poet had written a poem about the shower; his cat (named Asterisk) had attempted to jump to the top of the shower curtain rod, but missed, and slipped, and fell to the floor, taking part of the curtain with him.

He had been doing well, the poet had. We had talked on the phone regularly. He had rescued me--as much as anyone could have, at that point--from a lack of focus and literary purpose. He was a born poet, but also a born teacher, something extremely rare. Not all great poets make good teachers, but this one did. He was a gentle, wise, and generous teacher, and he loved his students and they loved him back. We had made some tentative plans. And then, shortly after our last conversation, I heard that he had died. Our last conversation ended with the great poet telling me I hope so after I told him we'd see each other very soon. That was the last thing I ever heard him say. I hope so.

But within a day or two, at a reading held by the great poet's colleague, I heard a young woman whisper that the great poet had died. I remember being suddenly blind with rage, as if she had just told an unsavory joke at his expense, because this man wouldn't die, not now, not after he'd survived his surgeries, and given up his cigarettes and alcohol, not when he sounded so healthy and chipper on the phone. Why would you say that? is what I demanded angrily. The girl looked at me, confused at my anger, confused as to where it was directed. The lights burned, and the air was sucked from the room. I went outside, where it had begun to rain. I stared at the wet sidewalk, at the headlights floating past on University Place, the spray of rain and city filth hitting the hem of my coat.

There was a memorial held for the great poet. Other great poets attended. I walked there with Deborah Digges, she too now gone, and Gerald Stern. We walked down Amsterdam Avenue, a strange trio: blustery, curmudgeony Stern in his houndstooth coat and scarf, and beautiful, passionate Digges with her arm around me, waving her cigarette in the air to punctuate her sentences. I can't believe we won't be able to call him anymore, she said. We can't call him, where he is.

The service was held in an elegant but modest room. At the front, with the urn which held the poet's ashes, were the poet's family and closest friends. His two sons were there, his beloved, his mother--his mother!--and Billy Collins, and Russell Brand. In the middle of the room, occupying the greatest percentage of space, were the other poets. Stern and Digges were there, and Stanley Plumly, and Carolyn Kizer, and Sharon Olds, and Marie Howe, and Jean Valentine, and Galway Kinnell, and David Lehman, and almost every well-known poet in the city of New York.

In the back of the room were the rest of us, the students. We were crying and stunned. I stared at the little urn containing what was left of the poet, and cried because now he had no body. He'd stood in front of me, sat next to me, patted me on the arm, but now there was nothing left. There was nothing left of his body, and now his body belonged to time.

The Art of Flaking.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Yesterday was a big day. It was Alton Brown Day. He was signing his new book at Brookine Booksmith, and the line snaked from every single aisle in the store until it went out the door and down the street a block or two. There were hundreds of people. My picture was taken with him. He's lost 45 pounds. I felt fat next to him, and I look sort of chubby in the pictures. I am growing increasingly aware of the aging process and am often startled at how much I look like my own mother, but with a massive mop of frizzy hair. As I approached Alton Brown, my face turned a brilliant and hot shade of red. He noticed how flustered I seemed. It did not stop him from being gracious. Of course, I was one in hundreds, and just another silly person having him sign my book. He has flown back home in his little prop jet and might remember bits of the evening in flashes later--perhaps the extremely nervous and highly theatrical woman at the Q&A who would not stop flipping her hair (this is not me...I came across as almost autistic), or the cute little boy who had to stand on his seat in order to be seen. Maybe someone had a curious name or haircolor, and every now and then, Alton Brown may remember these people. I don't think he will remember me. I wouldn't. But it was still a big day and I have the picture my friend snapped, the one of me and Alton Brown talking. God knows what I said.

Alton Brown is a hero of mine--mainly because he's smart. I like smart. Smart people are good. Smart, funny people are better. People who are skilled, clever, witty--these are the people I like. Alton Brown not only cooks food, he explains why food behaves the way it does when we cook it or bake it or grill it or mash it or freeze it. When I watch him, my I.Q. goes up about 15 points. He also seems to have a level of confidence that I find admirable. I have a very low level of confidence. If you were to limbo underneath my confidence level, you would have to be an insect to successfully clear the bar. I am working on this. There is a difference between confidence and arrogance. I've met a lot of arrogant people. I've met a number of confident people. The confident people know their limitations--the arrogant don't believe they have any limitations at all.

I've been doing a lot of research--partly for this literary project I'm working on, and partly for the release of the CD. I've been reading a lot of articles and scoffing a lot. People are ridiculous. (I include myself in this statement.) People want so very badly to be accepted and to fit in--no matter how old they are, no matter where they come from. People say things they think others will accept, and it takes a pretty strong person to be disagree publicly without being made into a pariah. There are also people who should be ridiculed for the things they do and say, but are revered. There are a few artists out there with fans who are absolutely frightening in their devotion. I wish I had fans like that. It might boost my confidence. If I had people telling me how fabulous and right and goddess-like I was all the time, maybe I might feel confident enough to finish something. I have a terrible habit of not-finishing, mainly because in the middle of something (or, even more likely, at the very beginning of something), I discard it. "It's stupid," I tell my husband. "It's NOT stupid, it's a very, very good idea," he says, and then I tell him that he is only saying that because he's my husband. This isn't true--my husband doesn't always tell me everything I do is awesome. So what is the problem? The problem is maybe what I said up there about having people blow sunshine up my ass is a bad idea, because it won't work if I don't believe them. I have to believe it myself.

In order to do this, I have to sort of harness my chi. Today I was talking to a woman who is a gardener at my church, and she was telling me how yoga is her favorite thing to do, because it centers her. She is more mindful, more at peace, and more aware of her surroundings when she practices yoga. I envy her--and anyone--who is able to sit still and meditate, who can calm their minds and focus just by breathing and listening. I do some yoga, but it doesn't make me still. I can't meditate either. I love yoga, and Eastern philosophy and have nothing but respect for people who successfully acknowledge and nurture the mind/body connection. But I am not one of those people. It doesn't work. I am not wired that way. Yoga makes me feel better physically, but it doesn't help my mind. My mind is terribly disquiet. Years ago, I was given a tape to listen to to help me meditate and control my breathing. It just made me fall asleep. I am either on, or off. There is no centering. My mind is a horse that refuses to be broken.

Except when I cook. Lately I've been talking a lot about cooking and baking. This isn't new, but it is something that I've only recently felt I can talk about. I don't know why I kept it hidden. I come from a family of cooks. Even the worst-tempered and most vicious members of my family were wonderful cooks (I like to think that whatever was good in them went into the food). When I was in college, I began to cook for my roommates and I was pretty good, but it wasn't until I was living in New York City that I threw my energy into food. I had been dating a man who was extremely difficult, but loved food, and though he was reticent most of the time and did not offer a great amount of affection, he had no qualms about expressing his joy over the food I'd prepared. He had good taste in everything, and the fact that he loved my cooking so much made me brave. He almost sent me to cooking school. "No," I said, "I don't want to turn something I love into something I hate."

And it wasn't until this past year that I realized that when my mind is running in circles like a little hamster on a wheel, and when I am depressed, and or confused, or bored, or unsure, I will cook something. That is how I harness my chi. Butter, sugar, flour. Rice, broth, the smell of celery and onions. Listening to old womany music while I make a batter, pour it into a loaf pan, and watch it rise and turn golden. It is the act of measuring, cutting, mixing, a sweat in a saute pan, the slow process of a risotto--which absolutely cannot be rushed--or the improvisation of a frittata.....these are what make me calm.

So meeting Alton Brown was sort of like meeting a priest. He's an Archbishop of food. I'm more like a third-order Domenican monk of food, but it's all the same in the end.

I remember.

Monday, August 10, 2009

I had not been sleeping. I rocked back and forth a lot. I lined things up on my dresser in a straight row and then lined them up again. She was around, my mother, but she was not with me. She dragged me around with her like an extra bag, sighing from the weight of my existence. We went to church, and we prayed. She took me along with her when she met friends at diners to complain about my father. She put me in the corner, gave me a Pepsi and told me to be quiet. She took me to department stores where she bought herself new clothes. She would be spinning and spinning in front of me. She gazed at her own beauty. She lamented the loss of her youth. Quite frequently, these moments were interrupted with her sudden seething, her face contorted into fury. I would never know what provoked her—I still don’t know. But the palm of her hand would meet my three year old cheek, my four year old cheek, my five year old cheek, her screams would coil me into shame. When no one was looking, she would hit me so hard I could not even cry out—words would not come. To assert her power, to frighten me, she would rattle the drawer in the kitchen where she kept the large stick she liked to use. When she had made up her mind to use it, there was no chance that she might let it go. There was no chance that she would have mercy. Then there was the dread. The dread, and then the pain, and then it was over. For now. I was never sure when it would happen again...in five minutes, or an hour, or six hours, or a day. But it did. It always did.

Cacoethes scribendi

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses
--Plato's Ion

It is now 6:12 a.m. In an hour or so, I will have been awake for 24 hours. Insomnia runs through my blood the way hot tempers run through other's. The first time I had insomnia, I was nine years old. It was impossible to sleep in that house. I would lean over my bed, and read the Peanuts Treasury by the pathetic pink glare of my Fred Flintstone nightlight. (I stopped sleeping with a nightlight at the age of ten. Is that too late? It doesn't matter.)

My body is exhausted because through the last couple of months, I have slept very little. This is due to physical illness. Last night's insomnia was not due to mental or physical distress....I could not sleep because I had to write. It was a wonderful night.

My music and my writing, for some time, battled each other. One would think that they inform each other--indeed, when I've reached that state where all insecurity, doubt, fear, apprehension and self-consciousness are gone, they do inform each other. But that state has been increasingly difficult for me to reach within the last several years. It has been difficult because my voice was stolen--it has been difficult because I gave my voice away.

Before it was gone, writing was my home. Writing poetry, writing music, scribbling on sheets of paper, humming to myself, narrating everything before me. Everything unfolded as a poem asking to be written, or something asking to be explained. As I was a very lonely girl, I was able to find some solace in writing--writing as a witness, writing as painting, as a camera. Poetry came out my fingertips and the ends of my hair. In some ways it was like an addiction; each poem I wrote fueled another, and I loved and was inspired in the strange lyric possession and the flimsy ecstasy of composition. After I was accepted at NYU, it seemed my future was mapped out, and quite beautifully.

But upon arriving in New York, I began to feel the muse slipping away. She slipped away almost immediately. There were several small blows, most of it having to do with feeling lost in a city I didn't want to live in, and would never come to love. In order to write, one has to feel secure. My equilibrium was off. I had been separated from a city I loved, and wondered if I had made a mistake, if I perhaps should have asked for a deferment. But oh, I didn't want to give up. I didn't want to disappoint all those professors in Boston who had believed in me.

Since I loved his poetry so much, and since he had been my literary hero for years, I was hoping to be placed in Philip Levine's class. I should have been more careful; I got my wish. Philip Levine and I, well....we were like cheese and chalk. Mr. Levine is a glorious poet. But he is a rather cruel and unjust teacher, allowing his prejudices and reverse-biases to color his criticism. NYU is one of the foremost and most formidable graduate writing programs in the country. Their admissions process is, like all top graduate programs, extremely selective. And thus Mr. Levine's cruelty seemed completely unwarranted. If a student wrote in a style Mr. Levine didn't like, nothing would stop the barrage of obscenity and insult spewing from his whiskey soaked mouth. He made one girl burst into tears. He made another student so angry, the student's face turned an alarming red, his hands forming into fists, a vein throbbing on the side of his head.

Students pride themselves on whether or not they're strong enough to handle Levine's abuse--or talented enough to escape it. But we all have different voices, we will appeal to different audiences, and even the most popular figures in any art have dissenters. Students who were beloved by Levine were not more talented, and they were not stronger.....they simply slipped by his radar. He expended enormous amounts of energy berating the students whom he had arbitrarily chosen as undeserving of any praise. Nothing he said to these students--and I was one of these five students--was at all helpful, beneficial, useful. It was just meanness, for the sake of being mean.

I began to forget how to write. Instead of writing what inspired me, I wrote to escape his criticism. I stopped reading. The muse stopped whispering. Mr. Levine licked his lips with gross anticipation of his weekly verbal flogging. It went around in circles for months.

So I went to visit Mr. Levine one day, to see if I could talk to him and reach some sort of understanding. "With all due respect," I said to him, rather immaturely, but humbly, "I'm not learning anything." Mr. Levine rolled his eyes, indicating that this clearly was my fault and had nothing to do with him. He asked me to hand him a poem or two that I had been working on. Admittedly, my poems had become increasingly piss-poor with each passing week. But instead of noticing the decline of my work, instead of understanding that I had been admitted to the program, and that he had been on the admissions board, and therefore there must be something redeemable or commendable or salvageable in my work, Mr. Levine exhaled impatiently and looked at me with disgust.

He said: "You're a talentless weakling and you have no business being at this school."

He added, "You'd make a better ballerina than a poet, and I don't even know how well you dance."

Then the muse was dead. Everything was gone. I went back to my apartment and threw all of Mr. Levine's books out the window, watching them fall like wounded birds into the alley below.

Eventually, I finished the program. With the help of William Matthews, whom we lost the following year and whom I loved very much, and with the help of the nurturing Marie Howe, I finished the program. William Matthews did his best to reassure me. ("What he said is not only untrue, it's just plain cruel," he told me. I worried that Bill was just being nice.) Never mind the other crap I was dealing with, the depression, the torment at the hands of my own mother--I hadn't even gotten there yet, hadn't gotten to the point I would even admit that crap existed. Writing kept me safe from seeing, and I was able to escape into writing the way one sneaks into an attic. And so when it was gone, my world began to fall apart. It didn't fall apart all at once. It unraveled. My entire life began to unravel for years.

I made many attempts to write after that. But approaching my notebooks, my computer, even a volume of poetry I used to love made me feel incredibly nauseated and sad. I found excuses not to write. I began to get sicker and sicker. The depression drew me in deeper and deeper. I was quickly turning into nothing. So I did what I could just to survive, and made wrong decisions that I thought were the right ones, disillusionment and consequence crashing into me like bumper cars.

Years have gone by now, and the things I should have done I am doing at last. I have made myself safe. And the music came back, and the writing came back. There are moments when I chastise myself for not being strong enough to withstand my mother's fury, and by extension, Mr. Levine's fury, I chastise myself for allowing them to take what was mine. Every slap that landed on my face, every shove, every scream, every sneer, I did what I could to love the hate right out of her, and gave her my voice as collateral. It didn't work. And that day, in Mr. Levine's office, the sunlight pale and weak through the filthy window, I let what was left of my voice fall to the floor and roll under Mr. Levine's desk, leaving him to scowl at me as I shut his door.

But it was always mine to begin with, and it didn't die. It was buried for a long time, and it has been exhumed. It's moldy, and it's tattered, and it needs a bath, but it's mine.

Sketch No. 9.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Death was a woman, she came to comfort the children before taking their mothers or their fathers. She carried a staff. There was a long line of children, in nightgowns and pajamas, and she touched their heads. One little girl with dishwater hair came to her and said, “Take me instead.” “You?” asked Death, wondering if the child was secretly ill or just very brave, or insane. The child said “Yes, take me, not my mother, I don’t belong here.” And Death took the child and gave her a new life. Then she took the child again, and gave her a third life. Then she took the child again, and it was in the fourth life that she belonged.

Magdala

Thursday, April 2, 2009

In the morning, years ago,

I rose to paint my face,

painting over channels of diffidence

and sin. The task

was to be discriminately flawless:

my face on one day

was to look the same as every other,

and in failing,

I could find no work

or company, if there is any separating the two.

First my eyelids

with an eyeliner pen,

severe and defined, tugging

at my skin and dripping

under the lids, but I’d be damned

if I didn’t finish, despite.

Then the lashes,

which would surely clump within minutes

and undoubtedly leave black rivers

to run down my face later in the afternoon

when I forgot to defend myself.

The lips, lined, the breasts firm

and pushed and within reach

always for seven demons:

Who did they want me to be today?

How old? Where from? How long?

and I couldn’t speak except to demand recompense.

What was my worth?

It varied with the man.

With each man’s entrance

I might have believed I was saved,

that it would be soft and easy.

All the time I was a woman—

do you see this woman?—

knotted through the stomach

with their subtle weapons, and wives

who sat like tokens in their homes.

I never feared those who were worthy of it,

but the gentle rabounni who could cast them out.

It is not the sin itself

that separated me from him,

it was my dependence upon it—

for in its letting go,

I would lose what I hated,

but understood, the most.

Who could know

where a homeless man would lead me?

To his dying place, and later,

right behind me, whispering my name.

Funeral Songs, Part I.

Friday, March 27, 2009

A man who works in my husband’s office passed away this week. I am not sure how, or exactly when, but it seems that it was unexpected, as no one was aware that he had any terminal illness and he was not in an accident. When my husband came home that night, he looked sad and frightened. His coworker’s sudden death had shaken him. What if that happens to us? he said. Don’t worry, I told him. It won’t happen, I told him. How do you know? he asked. I don’t, I answered, but let’s not spend our days worrying about that possibility.

We began talking about health and death and life insurance. I made a joke about Forensic Files. He was mildly but genuinely amused. On Sunday, we will be attending the wake of this poor man. My husband has never attended a wake. He is Jewish. I have attended a great many. I am Catholic.

Most of the wakes and funerals I’ve attended (which may be more than ten, even in my thirty-odd years) happened within a relatively short period of time. By the age of 18, I was very good at it. My first wake was my grandfather, whose hand I’d been holding very shortly before he passed away. I was about twelve years old. I wasn’t particularly close to him (or to any of my grandparents, for that matter), but I was fond of him. To see this man—this funny man who could skillfully carve an Easter ham, who refused to eat corn because it was served to the pigs in his home country, who let out a jolly, good-natured laugh whenever we had breakfast together and I chugged the milk from my cereal bowl—to see him reduced to nothing more than an overgrown infant affected me permanently. Right before he died, I visited him on his deathbed, and he was unaware of anyone’s presence in the room. He kept making a motion with his hand like he was punching a timecard, and then he put a box of tissues under his arm. He did this repeatedly.

He thinks he’s a young man, going to work in the steel mill, said someone in the room. The box of tissues was most likely his lunchbox. I watched him for a few minutes, and when he stopped, I took his hand, and kissed the top of his forehead. Not long after I left him, he passed away, and I felt sadness, but also relief, because his being ravaged, mind and body, must have been a point of great suffering and confusion for him. I was glad it was over, for his sake.

At his wake, which was open casket, people stood around, whispering. Someone said that my grandfather didn’t really look like my grandfather. I did notice that he looked better than he did on his deathbed. I knelt beside the casket and touched his hand. It was cold and waxy. I noticed how nicely his makeup had been done.

I don’t like open caskets. When my closest and most favorite relative passed away, I refused to view the body. My uncle was, to be quite honest and to make things even more bewildering, more like a grandparent than any of my actual grandparents had been. We were very close, and I am not sure why. He was never, ever cross with me. While the rest of the family disturbingly called me "that girl," he affectionately called me "Jack." He was always genuinely pleased to see me. We were good chums, doing the dishes together, watching movies together. I loved him with all my heart. I still love him with all my heart.

When he died, I was so grief-stricken that I was unable to function. In New York City, on the subway, in the middle of summer, the day after he died, while I was going to the airport to attend his services, I nearly vomited and fainted.

But I would not go into the viewing. Though I had been to many funerals and wakes at this point, I would not look at him reduced to a shell—my guardian, my protector, my defender now nothing more than a bloodless man in a box. I was chastised by his sisters (one of them my grandmother), but I knew what would happen if I went in and looked. I knew it would change me—like every other wake had done—but I was certain that whatever grief and anguish I was feeling would become some kind of insanity. There are some losses from which we simply never recover. I thought it wisest not to subject myself to psychological torture.

So on Sunday, at the wake, I will pay my respects to my husband’s coworker and offer support to his spouse and family. I will be there mainly to support my own husband, but there will be something stirring there, some need of mine to remember, to shut off, to empathize, to weep, to think.