ONE YEAR ON YORK AVEnUE

TERRIBLE NEWS--WE MUST MOVE FROM ENGLEWOOD AVENUE

When I was in the second grade we were forced to move when the three-decker that we lived in was sold. 

 We could not find a place to rent in our neighborhood. I was only six but I decided to go from house to house and ask if there was any open rental in the house. I could not find anything.

  The neighbors must have told my mother of my secret activity. She yelled at me for my doing it secretly, but she also said that it was a good idea and wished that it had worked. This is a good example of the double messages, and also shows me how at the age of  six I had already accepted that if  our family had  a problem, my job was to help to find a solution.

 We moved to another parish Saint Teresa and another school and rented an entire house on a busy street, YORK AVENUE,  that ran along railroad tracks and was semi-industrial. My mother hated it there—all the familiar friends and nearby stores were gone.

 I realized on some deep level that my parents were unhappy. Once I recall my mother standing at our kitchen window watching my father as he walked down the street to the bus stop, and she was praying that he would be hit by a car. I must have gasped or cried because I was very close to my father. 

 She said she was sorry then added --you are his daughter that's for sure. In some ways you are just like him.  I never knew what to make of the mixed messages. My mother redoubled her prayer  efforts and built a shrine to Mary in my bedroom and each night we all knelt and said the rosary there before going to bed. She had been to some kind of  Catholic rally and often repeated the phrase "THE FAMILY THAT PRAYS TOGETHER, STAYS TOGETHER."

That year was filled with  change not all for the bad. I had my own room, there was a  shrine to Mary on one of my walls. The school Saint Teresa's was in an old  public school  building awaiting the new school's construction. So we had double classes. Although I was in the second grade that grade  was combined with the  third. So to keep busy I did all the third grade work as well and I was never bored.

There was a movie theater close enough to walk to 

THE DARLTON on Newport Avenue. One  week night they featured old movies and it was a cheap ticket. I took Janie with me to see movies from the 30s and 40s And even now when I see Cagney or Cooper or Robinson in an old film on TCM, I remember that I saw them first at the DARLTON.

We were praying for some improvement in our lives. Our prayers--those daily rosaries-- were suddenly answered when our next door neighbor. Marge White,  from the old street came by and told my mother that we could move back and into their second floor. She and her husband had bought the house where they had been tenants and she wanted to help my mother. 

Her husband, John White, was an extremely kind man, and he knew the problems that my father created for our family . He told my mother that he would never raise the low weekly rent that he charged us as long as he owned the house. With this undreamed of security, we all joyfully moved back to the house just next door to our old one, I was convinced of the efficacy of prayer and of the power of the rosary.

Another unexpected result of the move back to my old parish school is that I was skipped into the fourth grade. This happened because the second grade in the new parish was combined with a third grade, and I had picked up all of the third grade lessons  and so was able to move from the second to the fourth.

 This felt good at the time and it banished all my secret fears that I was also intellectually delayed in some way--a fear that I got from the fact of my stuttering. I was glad to be back with the nuns that I knew and had missed in the new school,

 One disadvantage was that I was suddenly with students who were a year older than me, but at least I was not to be bored.  And the big reward was that I was now in  the same class as --my new girl friend LUCILLE.

Of course, the devotional practices at home increased. My mother put up another shrine to the Blessed Mother in the bedroom that I shared with my sister Janie. My mother also took up a devotion to the Infant of Prague and my mother made several different garments in different colors to change through the liturgical year. We also began constant Novenas to the Infant of Prague.

 Another new devotion started since my mother who was born on 28 October learned that Saint Jude was her patron saint. She became devoted to him—especially since as she explained to me-- he was the patron of the hopeless and despairing.

"Angels Unawares" and Other Childhood Spiritual BELIEFS

I know that my mother felt that she was caught in a very helpless situation with her two daughters with Down Syndrome and her gambler husband. She enlisted me to help more with my sisters care. She read a book by Dale Evans about her experience of having a child with Down Syndrome.

 She explained that Janie and Sheila were incapable of sin and that God had entrusted their care to us. They were the”angels unawares” that we were sheltering. Repeatedly, she would explain to me that I must never yell, or get angry or hit either of my sisters. She said that at the judgment after death God would ask us only about how we had cared for Janie and Sheila—the innocents that He had entrusted to us. “We will be judged by them.” I believed her—on some level – I still do .

THE POWER OF THE NON-DIT

Silence can be a plan

rigorously executed

the blueprint to a life

It is a presence

It has a history of form

Do not confuse it with any kind of absence (Rich 1980).

(PDF) IMAGINARY EVIDENCE: FINDING THE NON-DIT IN FICTION. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266882989_IMAGINARY_EVIDENCE_FINDING_THE_NON-DIT_IN_FICTION [accessed Aug 27 2018].

Ever since I first heard the term NON-DIT I have been fascinated by it.  What is not said. As a student and teacher of drama and playwriting for  almost fifty years, I have been well aware of the presence and power  of the SUB-TEXT when  discussing a play.  The sub-text is the text that lies under  the spoken text. It  may be the unspoken thoughts of the character--what he or she could say. and it can be the web of those unspoken thoughts that actually  drives the engine of the play's thought and development.

Oftentimes, the contrast between what is said aloud and what is said to oneself has been the source of comedy--"what he said" vs.
"what he was thinking"Or animal humor--"what the owner says" vs  "what the dog hears'.
The playwright  Eugene O'Neill  made use of that divide in his play
STRANGE INTERLUDE in which characters get to express in soliloquies the exact thoughts they are having while saying other words.  It is very effective in showing the divide between what people say and what  they think. It demonstrates that there is always  a mask on the human face that prevents any real intimacy.  Mask meets mask, souls and hearts do not know each other.

I have come to understand how the web of what was not said to me shaped my personal life and fate. The silence conveys  not absence but a strong sense of aversion or taboo.  Silence about my father's life before he met my mother; silence about my mother's romantic life  before she met my father. Silence about my sisters and silence about things that might shame us.

Dig at the roots of that silence -- especially amidst the IRISH -- and  you will always  find SHAME. The  ME TOO movement is  uncovering  whole populations of women who have been silenced. 
The BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT  uncovers the rage of another silenced group. 
To go back to the  warning in the poem by Rich that I placed at the top of this entry: Silence is a presence.... never mistake it for an absence.
Where are the  voices of Native Americans in American Life?
The voices of the slaves snatched from Africa have been silenced and their  culture, languages and religions erased or rarely acknowledged.
So never mistake SILENCE  for consent--it is not Golden--it is the bitter iron of chains and the "Mind-forged manacles" that prevent each and every one of us --women, Irish, Catholics, gays, Asians, Africans. those born in places that others call  "SHIT HOLES"  of the World  from telling our stories.

The NON-DIT --the word left unsaid --sticks in our throats and will choke us and our children. We are here for such a brief time on earth.  
Why should we waste any of our finite time or  measured breaths telling lies??

FAIZ Ahmed FAIZ Greatest Poet of Pakistan

VERY HARD TO SUM  UP THE  QUALITIES OF FAIZ


I felt so pleased when I went to Amritsar, Punjab, India  in 1975
with my husband to teach at the Guru Nanak Dev University
 and learned that  this was the same city where the poet
 FAIZ taught college too. 
His work speaks directly to me and I hope I picked up his
 blessing, I certainly would bless him if I could.


Here again I am indebted to a newer collection and translation of
  THE BEST OF FAIZ translated by Shiv Kumar  (old friend of
 my husband Yashdip Bains)

  To have said that Hafez is the great poet of Love and then to turn 
to Faiz is to find the working out of that idea in another time and
 place.The closest equivalent to Faiz as a poet of beauty and love
in English tradition would be the English Romantic
poet John Keats  who wrote in a  poem an aphorism that I read as
 a teenager and was too young to understand :

BEAUTY IS TRUTH; TRUTH BEAUTY. THAT IS ALL
YOU KNOW AND ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW.

Faiz's  message is also about  the reign and ultimate 
victory of  beauty.

.He expresses a  passion for enjoying the beauty of life,
 his deep paradoxical attachment to love of people and the
 agony of the world, his love of humanity, his patriotism,
 his passion for revolution, his sense of justice, are all
 metaphors of the agony of love.

In one poem he addresses the BELOVED
 and gives  the Beloved credit for all of his metaphors.

Agony of love is the soul of his imagination and feeling, 
 which illuminates the beauty of the world with
 the desolation of his heart.

Here is  how Keats sums up the power of longing
 for the unattainable:

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal – yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! (lines 17–20)


 For Faiz, the testing power of beauty is in its creativity.

Beauty is not mere artistic value, it is also a social and moral value:

The candle of a look, the star of imagination, 
All these illuminations
 have come from your gathering.
Whichever be the source of pain, we ascribe it to you,
Whatever complaints we have, are on account of you.
If it be the agony of the world, if it is the beloved's face
 or the hand of the rival,
We responded towards all of these with love.


When I was much older,I saw that Keats was expressing
 a profound Spiritual Truth,

 BEAUTY-TRUTH-GOODNESS-- LOVE--WISDOM

 are all attributes of GOD
.
To search honestly for any one of these attributes will
lead the Seeker to  the DIVINE.

AUGUSTINE expresses it in that line

LATE HAVE I LOVED THEE, BEAUTY ANCIENT 
AND EVER NEW.

For Faiz LOVE always TRUMPS hate.

Faiz wrote a sad revolutionary battle-song, the like of which is

 not be found in any language of the world:

For the love of your flower-like lips,
We were sacrificed on the dry branches of the noose,
For the desire of the candles of your hands
We were killed on half-dark paths.
And with revolutionary dignity:
On our lips the words of the ghazal,
And the torch of misery in our hands,
Gather our banners from the place of murder,
Caravans of other lovers will emerge,
For whose path our feet have shortened the distances of pain.



When he accepted  the Lenin Peace Prize speech he said:

  

    Human ingenuity, science and industry have made it

 possible to provide each one of us everything we need to be

 comfortable provided these boundless treasures of nature 

and production are not declared the property of a greedy

 few but are used for the benefit of all of humanity…

 However, this is only possible if the foundations of human

 society are based not on greed, exploitation and ownership

 but on justice, equality, freedom and the welfare of everyone

… I believe that humanity which has never been defeated

 by its enemies will, after all, be successful; at long last,

 instead of wars, hatred and cruelty, the foundation

 of humankind will rest on the message of the

 great Persian poet Hafez Shiraz:

 ‘Every foundation you see is faulty, except that of Love,

which is faultless’.     

And Faiz the secular Muslim  prays:

Let us too lift our hands,
We who do not remember the customary prayer,
We who do not remember any idol or God except love.


This agony of love is not only a part of the human condition
 but it is a relationship which extends from one end of the
 world to another. Faiz's love for humanity is free from the 
prejudices of race, color or nationality. 

The new literature of protest suggests a radical change
 and, in the words of Faiz, it confers on us the power
 of "forcefully spurning the hand of the killer".

 It does not accept defeat because it is convinced that
 darkness should and must end.

 
When personal sorrow drank 
the elixir of world-sorrow,
 the lovers' love became doubly strong:
My heart repents neither this love nor the other,
My heart is spotted with every kind of sorrow,
Except the mark of repentance.

rm of emotions is raging insid

• 
• 
• 

LOST IN ONE GENERATION

Things that are gone and  probably won't come back--and not just in the BUCKET
NO, THIS IS NOT ANOTHER LAMENT ABOUT THE LOSS OF THE PAWSOX, OR THE GAMM, OR MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, OR THE NARRAGANSETT RACE TRACK, OR ALL THE CLOSED  MILLS.
 No,  it is deeper and stranger than those desertions.

What strikes me deeply is the loss of cursive writing.
Yes,  the American  children born in the past 20 years do not  know how to write using the cursive form--they can only print.
AND they do very little of that, since they mostly  communicate through TEXT or TWITTER where their thumbs do the talking.

I know some elite graduate departments in subjects like Literature and History that are requiring that students learn cursive  in a summer program.  How else can they  read letters and documents that are often hand-written and are a big  part of archival research?

I hope I don't sound  too bitter but 
-- FULL DISCLOSURE--
I do not own a smart phone and I do not  know how to tweet or text:
I do not have the capability on my land line.  Yes, I still do have a landline.  And I still do have  a television and tv channels.
 I do not know how to STREAM and I have never listened to a PODCAST',
SO there I have made my confession,  OR ARE THEY MY BOASTS?

I still read books--probably an average of two a week --and I am addicted to  a series of mysteries --like the BURREN MYSTERIES by CORA HARRISON. Now I am telling the secret pleasures.

MILITANT POET #4 from TURKEY

NAZIM HIKMET   Poet of Revolution in Turkey

First a little story to show how seriously these poets  are taken still.  When I applied  for a Senior Fulbright to Turkey  I wanted to show my love of Turkish  poetry and I  quoted with approval a line of Nazim Hikmet.  When I got  some feedback on the application, I was told that his  works were  not allowed to be taught in Turkey.  That was in the last century. Maybe things have changed for the better there--but somehow I have my doubts. Are things better here??

Written by Nazim Hikmet |  

Its This Way

 I stand in the advancing light,
my hands hungry, the world beautiful.


My eyes can't get enough of the trees--
they're so hopeful, so green.


A sunny road runs through the mulberries,
I'm at the window of the prison infirmary.


I can't smell the medicines--
carnations must be blooming nearby.


It's this way:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender.

This poet knew a lot  about the difference between capture and surrender. 

When I read these lines I  cannot help but think of the way Senator McCain was taunted by Trump about having been captured.  Especially shocking coming  from a man who has never served in the military and sought constant  deferments  during the Vietnam era.

Nazim Hikmet never surrendered , but he  spent many years of  his life in  prison and many of his poems  are  written from inside the prison experience.  In the one I  include above he tells us that he is  in a PRISON INFIRMARY.

In another  poem Hikmet explains  how great a treasure  he has in the gift of poetry:

ABOUT MY POETRY

I have no silver-saddled horse to ride,
no inheritance to live on,
neither riches no real-estate --
a pot of honey is all I own.
A pot of honey
red as fire!

My honey is my everything.
I guard
my riches and my real-estate
-- my honey pot, I mean --
from pests of every species,
Brother, just wait...
As long as I've got
honey in my pot,
bees will come to it
from Timbuktu...


Trans. by Mutlu Konuk and Randy Blasing (1993)

The two translators  noted here have a Rhode Island connection:  they teach at Brown University and at CCRI. They deserve the most credit  for  understanding the value of Hikmet's  work and  making it  possible to be read by English readers.  We owe them an immense debt of gratitude.  

DARK DAYS IN THE BUCKET

THEY ARE BAD SHEPHERDS WHO PASTURE THEMSELVES
"Thus says the Lord God: I swear I am coming against these shepherds....I will save my sheep,that they may no longer be food for their mouths." (Book of the Prophet Ezekiel 34:1-11)

When I sat down  to write this blog, I wanted this to be about the PAW SOX going to Worcester or about more poets whom I love and who changed their worlds.

No, those would be  fun and interesting topics-- baseball and poetry with may be an aside on the ongoing delights that they are dishing out  daily in the races at Saratoga.

 I cannot go there today because my heart and spirit are weighed down by the recent  disclosures about PEDOPHILIA  in the CLERGY of the Roman Catholic  Church.

Then I read the  Epistle in today's Mass-- read from every altar-- but I wonder how many chose to speak about it from that altar which many have  tarnished.
The Epistle today is from the prophet EZEKIEL and is a harsh judgement against those who use their position as  shepherd to fatten themselves and abuse their sheep.

I do believe that we are at a crossroad for the Catholic Church.  I think the resignation of Pope Benedict and the election of Pope Francis  was a recognition of the coming upheaval, God was sending reinforcements.

I believe that Pope Benedict  saw the corruption around him and knew that he was too old and tired and sick to bring about  meaningful change. So he made a strange move--he resigned and retreated to a  life of prayer.

 Following the promptings of the Holy Spirit the College of Cardinals elected  Pope Francis.  He was a breath of  fresh air  bringing a simplicity and  humility  to the post and an enormous sense of empathy for the sufferings of the poor, the sick and the imprisoned.  But he had inherited a  situation that would try and tax even his talents. 

 The emergence and the growing parameters of the pedophilia scandal show how deeply the  priesthood has been compromised.
To change this situation  will require  extraordinary courage and deep changes in  practices that are seeking to destroy the sanctity of the Church  from within.

IF GOLD RUSTS, WHAT WILL SILVER DO?

I do not  write  out of any personal sense of outrage I did not experience any abuse  from the priests of my childhood. 

I found the distance between the clergy and the laity really repugnant and I disliked  the way that the nuns seemed to fear the pastor. And I noticed how the priests  enjoyed the company  and favors of the richest in our parish.

 I think they label this strange divide "Clericalism". It can only be altered  by making deep changes:

1. Immediately allow all deacons who wish to be ordained as priests--married and unmarried--to do so,

2.  Allow all  nuns and brothers to become deacons. 

3. Start new  training programs to create steps to bring members of the laity into the clergy.

4. Remove that fake and harmful barrier that prevents  lay people from knowing and scrutinizing the actions of the clergy. Let the laity  help govern and not just be in work crews.

5. Learn how ro support married priests --both men and women from the Orthodox, Protestant, and Jewish practices.

The Church will become a secret sad sect if they do not begin  to move in those directions. Ordain women, let priests male and female marry, and  bring the lay people into the Church governing circles.

Pope Francis must embrace and  instigate these movements. I pray that he does. I do not find his recent  words very encouraging.  I will watch very carefully what he says and does in his visit to Ireland this weekend.

I will pray and I ask all to join  me in asking that  Pope Francis finds inspiration in the example of the Saint whose name he chose and was the  first Pope to do so.--- Saint Francis of Assisi.

Remember it was  Francis who in a dream was  directed to rebuild  and repair a derelict  Church.  AND HE DID.

I 

NO JOY IN MUDVILLE---

warning--this is a very gloomy blog entry.

Well, it  is definite now the PawSox are leaving Pawtucket.  
WE have sort of known it was coming.  Little notes in the sports pages and  Patinkin's  columns  in PROJO  speculating about what could be dome with the stadium after the  DEPARTURE

But still I felt a little stunned when I saw the definite news  on Friday.   Anyone who reads this blog knows how much I cherish the presence of McCoy and the  Paw Sox here in my  native city
Today when .journal rolled out several features, they focused on some local people. I was touched to see a Palagi speaking  up and  I was soon  recalling  their ice cream  trucks--bright  yellow --that toured our neighborhood when I was young.
 I do not really feel able to write about this event. It feels like a gigantic betrayal led by the wicked SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE  and mostly ignored by the elitist Governor.

I keep on asking myself a question that I cannot answer:
WHY DO THINGS KEEP GETTING WORSE  IN PAWTUCKET?

A version of this question  was asked  about a century ago
  by the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova

Why Is This Age Worse...?

Why is this age worse than earlier ages?

In a stupor of grief and dread

have we not fingered the foulest wounds

and left them unhealed by our hands?

In the west the falling light still glows,
and the clustered housetops glitter in the sun,
but here Death is already chalking the doors with crosses,
and calling the ravens, and the ravens are flying in.

Translated by Stanley Kunitz (with Max Hayward)

WORLD CHANGER #3 Pablo Neruda

GREAT LOVER AND GREAT FIGHTER

Perhaps like many English readers I came to  know Neruda's work through his amazing love  poems.

THIS IS ONE OF HIS GREATEST  LOVE POEMS.

WHY ? Because it captures the repetitive even obsessional nature of a lover longing for a lost love.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her. 

Pablo Neruda

Here are some biographical facts--

Pablo Neruda was born Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in southern Chile in 1904. He moved to Santiago at age 17 and at age 23 was sent as a consul to Rangoon and then Burma.³ In 1934, he moved to Madrid and encountered the “Generation of ’27,” the politicized avant-garde poets who defended the Republican cause against fascism in the tense times before and during the Spanish Civil War.⁴ It was there that Neruda emerged politically, on the side of the Republicans. Deeply affected by the 1936 murder of his friend, Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, his political engagement increased dramatically—though it was not until over ten years later that he officially joined the Communist party.

In a speech about Lorca on January 21, 1937, Neruda foreshadows the politicization of his later work: “I am not a political man, nor have I ever taken part in political contention, but my words, which many have wished to be neutral, have been colored by passion.”⁵ Neruda’s leftist politics would highly influence his perception of his own poetic calling, and the nature of that “coloring by passion.”

 His theory of “poetry like bread” is as far from the idea of art pour l’art as possible. Art for art’s sake alone, in Neruda’s worldview, is a bourgeois waste of time. Art should be functional, wholesome, nourishing, accessible to the masses, and, for Neruda mid-career, political, too.

The POET  GARCIA LORCA'S MURDER BY  FASCISTS  FORCED A TURNING POINT 

 He attributes it to the abuses he has seen around him, yet still seems to waver (“only the struggle and the daring heart are capable") and doubt poetry’s political utility in the context of such a situation. Even so, he feels his work must change, and he will never write anything like the surrealist lines of Residencia en la Tierra again.

He ends  his poem  "Let me explain a few things "  with an invitation that is more like a command:--

and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets! 

The streets are covered by blood and  Neruda’s poetry begins to shift around the axis of that passionate image.

Neruda  officially politicized his life, and he made it clear that he would politicize and “proletarianize” his art as well. During this era, the same Neruda who previously disdained politicizing art now stood for the very opposite viewpoint:

Magic and craft are the two permanent wings of art, but I believe that it is those who distance themselves from the bonfire on which culture is burning, instead of rescuing it (even if it means burning one’s own hands), who are traitors to poetry.

WHAT A POWERFUL ENDORSEMENT OF THE  CRUCIAL WITNESS -BEARING  ROLE OF POETRY.

LET ME BE PERFECTLY CLEAR

I DID NOT HEAR ABOUT ANY OF THESE POETS 

 WHOM I NOW SAY  DOMINATE THE WORLD OF POETRY IN ALL THE  YEARS THAT I WAS 

studying English Literature. from college to Master's program to Doctoral study. They were simply not part of the canon of poetry
in American education.
  
WHY?  I don't know,
MAYBE   because they did not write  originally in English? MAYBE  Because they were Progressive and endorsed  reform and revolution? 
MAYBE  Because they were not from England or America?
MAYBE  Because many of them are people of color?

You pick which one-- but  I have had to learn about them when I wanted to understand the development of poetry.

WHY did I want to understand the DEVELOPMENT  OF ---POETRY?
By then I was myself teaching poetry and since childhood I had been trying to write POETRY.
 The one Poet and only poet from my list that I did  know about  was Patrick Pearse.
  I knew him not as a poet but as a  person who lead the Easter Rising in Dublin and was executed  for his efforts. 

WHY THE PRIMACY OF LOVE?
It is beautifully expressed in the aria  in Puccinni's TOSCA
"Visi d'arte, visi d'amore --I lived for art, I lived for love."
What greater epitaph can anyone have?

The blessing that brought awareness of the wealth of international poetry into my life  was my  friendship and now  48 year long marriage to a brilliant man  from India--Yashdip Bains,
He brought not only the great gifts of his intellect and his political acumen  into our marriage, but also his several volume OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY and his beloved IBM EXECUTIVE  typewriter.
Beyond all these gifts, he brought his love and  expertise in international travel.
The first year that we met, both of us teaching at Rhode Island College, he learned that I was  Irish and with a great interest in Irish drama. He urged me to go to see Ireland and offered to help with the arrangements for the summer months. Sure enough--  friends of his found a flat to sublet in Rathmines and I went to Dublin with my son  Joey and Yash went to London  for his annual pilgrimage to the lodestar of the British Museum Library.

 So that was my first journey out of the country. But it would not be  my last. It was a great privilege to be in other places and to learn the ways other cultures survive and thrive. We married the next year and after I completed my Doctoral dissertation on  Bernard Shaw, our little family departed for Amritsar in Punjab, India.  There, we were stationed at GURU NANAK DEV UNIVERSITY  where Yashdip was Head of the English Department, and I was  the only American in town.  I met and saw so many new and  exotic people and places. And I soon saw that I was strange and exotic to them too,

Because I am a person who talks to others  I was a little abashed when I did not know even the names of poets that my new Indian friends knew and admired. I tell you all this not to boast of my travels but to say that without them I probably would have stayed pretty ignorant. 

SO when I put forward my list of POETS WHO CHANGED THE WORLD  and  you do not know their names or work--please do not be abashed. I am not trying to show off. No, I am showing you and asking you to come in under the BIG TENT of World Poetry.  

AND I hope that you will take my advice and  open yourselves to reading and maybe even practicing new forms from other countries.
Like most immigrants, they will enrich our literature not harm it.

They will add to the rich tapestry of American  poetry -- new colors, new threads, new patterns, new  voices. 

They will raise our sense of what we have in common and thus promote the BROTHERHOOD OF ALL MANKIND.



 

DISCOVERING AN OLD PASSION IN THE BUCKET

FINDING THOSE WINNING PARLAYS AT  THE  SARATOGA  MEET

Television has finally done an enormous service to racing fans.   On cable FOX  SPORTS is showing daily live from Saratoga the  running of the races  in the  Summer Meet that culminates with the Travers in late August.

What a different  experience than those usually provided  when the major networks condescend to show and  trivialize the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont and the Preakness,
The comments from the three touts who were sitting and discussing each horse and each  race and then picking their favorite were a revelation of knowledge and love of the sport.

The program included features I have never seen before. One I liked was  called JOCK TALK and it would feature one of the jockeys that were riding in the race.  They were brief but often revealing and allowed the  viewer to get a sense of what racing looks like from the Jockey's perspective. 

 One of my father's saying was that Jockey's win races.  And I like the respect that was shown to the jockeys.  Also the show looked at the Backside of the track and the lives of all the people who work in and around the stables and horses and make the sport possible.

 One of the great aspects of going to the Meeting at Keeneland is that  if  you go early, you can go to the Backside of the track and have the breakfast that is being served to the workers that day.  I loved doing that and do not know if it is available at Saratoga.  But again it makes the  race goer more aware of  what goes on to make the racing spectacle possible.

There was also some attention paid to the providing of child care at Saratoga for the track workers.  This is so important because  there is a  large transient group that goes from meeting to meeting just as the horses and jockeys do.  But their families go with them.  It seems to me that it is a great innovation  for Saratoga to pay attention to the child care needs of the  worker.

My favorite jockey--- years ago when I moved to Cincinnati  in 1984 where there are several nearby tracks in Kentucky -- was the great Pat Day.  I looked online to see what news  he has made recently  knowing that  he has retired. Sure enough-- he has continued to  bless the sport he loves by starting a  chaplaincy and a chapel at Churchill Downs in Louisville. So again a sense of the spiritual needs of the people that  work or go to the track.

SO--no it is not my father's track--it  is better, and I am glad to see the news of those brilliant super athletes--horses and jockeys that carry the colors to victory.

THANKS Again to SARATOGA and also to FOX SPORTS

Once when someone asked my father what he did, I recall his quick answer that made my mother laugh out loud--
I FOLLOW THE HORSES.

After he left us, late at night when I was missing him and trying to fall asleep, I would picture him walking down some country road behind a  line of horses.

IN THE STARTING GATE

My father had lots of engaging traits--

Maybe its the fact of watching the meet at Saratoga each day and hearing some expressions that I have not heard in years. And laughing to see that they are still current. My father could sit down with them today and expound as well as any on the horses-- their dams and sires, their form, their starts, their trips, their traits--wants to set the pace, wants to come from behind.

The touts and commentators reminded me of Norman's habit of using phrases in daily speech associated with racing or gambling or boxing. When I was older --long after he had left us-- I sometimes found myself in a heated discussion, I would use those phrases too because they came so readily to mind. Once a dorm mate in college commented that I sounded like a character in a Damon Runyon Story; that made me laugh.

  But over the years I have seen that these expressions held a kind of coded advice and wisdom in them that he was trying to share with me.

Here are just a few that I  remember:

TAKE THE LONG COUNT
ENJOY THE RIDE
CLASS WILL TELL
TRY A SHOW PARLAY
IN THE STARTING GATE
ACCORDING TO FORM
EARLY SPEED TIRES
COME FROM BEHIND
CAN TWO LOSERS MAKE A WINNING PARLAY?
MONEY IS SMART
WATCH THE LATE ODDS
PAT DAY MEANS PAY DAY.

Some of these I have contextualized in a poem. I already shared the poem that I wrote and published --his boxing advice
TAKE THE LONG COUNT see BLOG ENTRY for July 13, 2018

Here is another  poem that grew from my recalling a time when my father in his track lingo  warned me against  rushing to judgment with out considering the arc of a person's life experience.


IN THE STARTING GATE

Yes, we were often in a bar or tavern
or tap and I was with my Dad.
He would offer to get some bread or milk
or meat for supper and bring me along
to allay any fears  my mother had
that he would go astray.

What was astray to him?
Cards, poker, a bar with a bookie
and card game in the back room. 
I was part of the package.
I loved being taken for a ride,
then a quick run into a dim cool place.

Usually I sat up at the bar
drained a fizzy soda with a cherry on top
while he turned over three cards.
Win or lose we'd jump back into the car,
grab the needed groceries, run up the backstairs,
burst into our kitchen laughing and smelling like roses.

One time it must have gone on
past three cards--me sitting on someone's lap.
Maybe I complained about his breath,
his smell, how his beard scratched my neck.
My father took me up,stroked my hair,
"Darling," he said,"that man is near the finish line.

 He is stumbling a bit. He wasn't always like that--
You should have seen him in the starting gate--
He was magnificent."



Somehow, I can see now that this was about aging -- as my own  health and energy are diminished.  I am often astonished that people are judging me negatively because of those marks of age that are showing now so near the finish line.  They did not see how cleanly I broke from the Starting Gate.