NO JOY IN MUDVILLE OR IN THE BUCKET

I  WILL NOT JOIN THE CHORUS OF DEFEATISTS.


I have always retreated from the  early announcements of the demise of the Patriots..
 But yesterday's defeat at the hands of the unworthy  Dolphins was a shocker.
It seems that the Patriots  are not able or willing to buy some big men  to act as receivers. And Tom is left with no one to throw the football to except for the  roughed up Edelman who always tries.  He is not enough.

HIRE SOMEONE to  do what Gronk used to do.
Tom looked so sad and not a little disgusted.  I hope that they can make some changes and additions  before they meet  the  Titans.

HOPE REIGNS IN THE BUCKET

 As we advance towards the NEW YEAR  2020,  I feel the usual wild awakening of HOPE!

 a quote from Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

“Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering ‘it will be happier’”

“Hope” is the thing with feathers - (314)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.



HOPE IS ONLY HOPE WHEN THERE IS NO CAUSE FOR HOPE.
OTHERWISE IT IS AN EXPECTATION.

As we turn to thoughts of the New Year and begin writing those resolutions, lets be thoughtful.

Hope is not for easy times

Joan Chittister reminds us

 "Hope is a thin and slippery thing, sorely tested and hard to come by in this culture. We have seen the social fabric of the country rent, not only by others  but even by our own hands. We have sold violence and defended violence for years. We have cut back on social programs and increased our military spending on Neanderthal weaponry that wounds the national infrastructure and gives little or no security. We have substituted power for hope and found ourselves powerless. We feel hopeless.

But hope is not for easy times, Advent reminds us. Hope comes only when hope is gone, when our “hands are feeble” and our “knees are weak” over what is coming upon our worlds. Then hope and only hope reigns supreme.

Hope is not insane optimism in the face of palpable evil or dire circumstances. It is not the shallow attempt of well-meaning but facile friends to “cheer us up” in bad times. It’s not the irritating effort of ill-at-ease counselors who work to make us “reframe” our difficulties so that everyone around us will not have to deal with them, too. No, hope is not made of denial. Hope is made of memories.

Hope reminds us that there is nothing in life we have not faced that we did not, through God’s gifts and graces—however unrecognized at the time—survive. Hope is the recall of good in the past, on which we base our expectation of good in the future, however bad the present.

 HOPE  digs in the rubble of the heart for memory of God’s promise to bring good out of evil and joy out of sadness and, on the basis of those memories of the past, takes new hope for the future. Even in the face of death. Even in the fear of loss. Even when our own private little worlds go to dust, as sooner or later, they always do. 

As former Czech president Vaclav Havel put it: “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

Advent  and the Birth of Our Savior on Earth call us to hope in the promise that God is calling us to greater things and will be with us as we live them.

                         

WINTER SOLSTICE IN THE BUCKET

FROM THE CELTIC JOURNEY BLOG

The Winter Solstice, or Midwinter, is celebrated around the world by a variety of cultures.  It marks the shortest day of the year (the longest night), and when the sun is at its lowest on the horizon.  This usually occurs around December 21-22 in the Northern Hemisphere.  From that point onwards, the days continue to grow longer until Midsummer in June.  In Celtic countries, the Winter Solstice was seen as a time of rebirth and renewal, as signified by the return of the light.

The Celtic Midwinter is also known as Meán Geimhridh or Grianstad an Gheimhridh in Irish.  Solstices and equinoxes were thought to be very important to the pre- and early-Celtic people, as seen through the construction of several tombs whose passages align with the solstice sun, such as Newgrange.  These solstices were seen as occurring at the midpoint of each season, hence the name ‘Midwinter’ for the Winter Solstice.

In Druidic traditions, this day is known as Alban Arthan, which means ‘Light of Winter’ in Welsh.  Some also call it Alban Arthuan, or ‘Light of Arthur’, which pays homage to the Welsh legends of King Arthur.  Alban Arthan signifies the time when the archetypal Holly King (who rules from Midsummer to Midwinter) is defeated by the Oak King (who rules from Midwinter to Midsummer) in a great battle.  The Holly King, also seen as a wren bird, signifies the old year and the shortened sun, while the Oak King, also seen as a robin, signifies the new year and growing sun.  Mistletoe is also a symbol of the Winter Solstice, as it was thought that Druids revered the plant as ‘ever green’, which signified continued life over the cold dark winter.  Since mistletoe is thought to be an aphrodisiac, this is where the holiday tradition of ‘kissing under the mistletoe’ could have originated.

In Ireland, Wales, and the Isle of Man, a festival called Lá an Dreoilín, or Wren Day, is celebrated on December 26.  It involves boys dressed in masks or straw suits, called Wrenboys, parading around town accompanied by musicians.  Originally they would hunt and kill a wren, in tribute to the light overcoming the dark, and carry the bird from house to house, stopping for food and good cheer.  Thankfully this tradition now involves using a fake bird.

In Scotland, winter festivities are held on the eve of the New Year, when there is a great celebration called Hogmanay.  It is thought that the Christian church was trying to suppress the pagan solstice celebrations in the 17th century, therefore the festivities moved to the coincide with the new year.  The name Hogmanay could have derived from the Scottish Gaelic word for ‘Yule gifts’.  Hogmanay customs include ‘first-footing’ (trying to get your foot first in a doorway of neighbours houses after midnight), ‘redding’ (spring cleaning), torchlight processions, fireball swinging, as well as giving gifts of coal, shortbread, whisky, or a black bun (fruit pudding).

Wiki – Winter Solstice, Alban Arthan

© The Celtic Journey (2013)

MARXISM AND MIT

ENLIGHTENMENT IN AN MIT DORM!

Some of you--not that many--I know I see the stats-- may be wondering after reading the  blog entry on MIT and Marxism-- what is the connection?

OK wait for it.  It all started at those weekly mixers at MIT. 
One boy kept asking  me to dance and then he showed up  one weekend at my dorm. And I had to meet him in the Visitors Parlour--no men  in the residence hall.  Then we went  to a few events together at MIT.

 One day I was  visiting him at his dorm room at MIT that he shared with an upperclassman.
 Both of them were Math majors and brilliant. Of course, being me, I carried  on about  all sorts of things that I probably knew  very little about.  I seemed to irritate  John's roommate--let's call him MAX
.
So on this particular day John and I were talking about Marxism and I declared that  Marx  was wrong because he did not understand  human nature. 
Max tuned  into our conversation and asked --
What do you know about human nature?

That we are too selfish to give up the profit motive, I said.

Do you think that is what Marx called for- that we give up the profit motive?
I don't know--did he"

That would be metaphysics. Norma, have you ever heard of evolution?
Of course, and I  think it is  a true theory.

So do you think that only animals  evolve? The human animals have never changed.

No, I know that pre-historic man and  modern man are different.
Do you think that evolution  has stopped? Do you think that human development has reached its apex with Norma and human society political organization has peaked with the USA??
Have you ever read the Communist Manifesto?

No--I think it is on the index--

When I said those words, Max jumped from his desk chair to the floor where  I was sitting with John and  he said:
 I am going to read the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO  to you right now and end your ignorance.

 He told John to hold me down as I struggled to  get up and he  sat on my legs and  began reading--

"A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.

II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself."


HE READ THE  ENTIRE  MANIFESTO TO ME
And  when I calmed down and started to listen, I heard interesting and well-reasoned  points that I could  only agree with.  

And I began to realize that my college education so far  was not education but indoctrination. 
AND  A GREAT SHIFT IN MY THINKING HAD TAKEN A SHAPE  THAT WOULD LEAD ME TO LEAVE EMMANUEL COLLEGE IN THE MIDDLE OF MY JUNIOR YEAR.
All thanks to John and his room-mate whose real name I cannot even remember but whose lessons I will never forget.

TIME TO TALK ABOUT THE CELTICS--ADVICE FROM THE BUCKET

WE CAN NOT PUT IT OFF ANY LONGER---ADVICE FROM THE BUCKET


I have been putting this off for a while hoping that the Celtics would  get back on track and stay there until the finals.
  But today after the sad loss to Philly last night  and with the help of my cousin Mike, who is a major Celtics fan, we will try to   give the team some advice. And Brad maybe you should pay us some mind too.
According to Mike "the Celtics play too much help defense" BY that he means -- they show this fault by the fact that when some one on the other team drives to the hoop, they double team him and leave others wide open to get a pass. Watch for that  -- MIKE sees it all the time.

 What I see is a long history of great first halves and  awful third quarters. 
I am not sure if the first half  success makes them ease up and not try as hard in the third quarter. But that is when the  other team smells  blood and comes in for the kill.
It  used to be that Isaiah Thomas would  rescue the team in the 4th quarter and   ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.
No more Mister 4th Quarter and no one is taking  his place.  Instead in panic mode they try for too many  threes and miss.  I  would rather have a  two point shot in the paint that  we make than a three point that we miss. That makes more sense.

Mikey thinks that  we are seeing the result of no veterans on the team to provide leadership. We all know that Kyrie was a  screaming failure at that and in fact hurt the team's chemistry.

Now we can't blame Kyrie (or can we?)
 We both think the team has a lot of talent.  But  there is an energy deficit when they get discouraged in the last quarter and also a kind of sense of fatigue. Maybe this longer break will help remedy that problem.

About Brad--he is a good coach but  we have been told that he does not offer much spirit or direction in the locker room at the half.  SO maybe he could turn up his volume or  appoint someone else to yell a bit. He lacks intensity and  team players need to see that it matters a lot to their coach and  then it may matter more to them.

PS. When in doubt -- blame Kyrie-- I am sure Brooklyn will take this advice.

The SONGS of A CELTIC POET RING OUT IN THE BUCKET

YES, I CAN HEAR THEM FROM HERE!


The connections between Ardboe in co. Tyrone and Pawtucket are still alive and well.
I am sitting as the snow falls  listening to the recording sent to  me by Jack and Paddy Adair of  the words written by my great-great Uncle John Coleman of Mullinahoe  and set to music and sung by Thomas Davis.

It is melodic and  haunting and quite vivid.  I have listened to it with delight  several times and I want to help spread the word of their website.:
www.theardboepoet.co.uk

You can also purchase the  book of his poems that were published in the Mid-Ulster Mail a local newspaper from Cookstown. 

 I am privileged to have in my possession several  copies of John's poems in his  own hand-writing.  I do treasure them and hope to pass them on to my son and grand daughter.

This is part of our heritage and it continues to flourish.  

Another part of our heritage is our  belief that  mankind deserves a better form of economic system than capitalism.

 Although my mother never embraced socialism in name, in action her fervor for the  benefits of unions showed how much she treasured and encouraged the idea of workers uniting to improve and  to organize their own  work lives.

SHE DREW SOME IMPORTANT LINES OF SOLIDARITY.

 One thing that she often said to me was that she  felt great pity for house slaves.  She always refused domestic work.

She preferred to be a field slave, she often said, because there you have the companionship and  cooperation of other workers.
You do  not have to pretend to like or even love your bosses or to  be grateful for their hand me downs or left overs. 

My First Dose of Marxism was not in the Bucket

I had  not heard of Marxism while in high school.
 In Pawtucket we didn't talk about Marxism--we lived it. I guess I was living the class-struggle in our tenement with my mother who was acting as shop steward  for her Union

BUT I did not know  what Marxism was. 

 Believe it or not  college did not immediately change                 that  great lack.  Yes, we had a course in philosophy where they presented a critique  of Marx and a critique of Freud and of Bertrand Russell,etc.  But we never read  a word that either Marx or Freud or Russell  wrote; only what Thomas Acquinas wrote in the SUMMA. 

That is one definition of a non-education. More like indoctrination.
I guess the nuns of Emmanuel were protecting us from the evils of Marxism and  Psychology.

Some of that incredible ignorance came to a sudden halt in my Freshman  year.

Why am I suddenly thinking of my college years?  Maybe the  fact that I had to drive up to Boston a few days ago to see a new doctor   at Brigham on Francis St.  That area is very well known to me.  I  wandered all over it on foot when I was a student at Emmanuel College which is on  the Fenway.  The best thing about that school was its location. It could not be  beat.

Also being an all-girl college at that time had some hidden perks.

We were invited to Mixers to meet and mix with the male students at MIT.  A bus was sent to our dorms to pick us up and as we got on the  bus each of us was offered a small corsage of fresh roses.  I remember my delight and surprise.

When we got to the MIT campus we had other surprises waiting us.
 The dance hall was filled with young men and a  woman  was talking to them about dancing.  She  welcomed us as we paraded in and removed our coats and sat in chairs along the wall.  I wondered if most of us would be sitting there all night.

She explained that  this was actually a dance class, and she, the wife of a faculty member, would teach us in the next few weeks several dances from the fox trot to the tango to the waltz and the meringue and  rumba. She had a lovely French accent  and was very charming and seemed to realize that we all needed help .

  I was so thrilled by her announcement --all the onus for us girls of  waiting to be asked to dance or for the boys of asking us to dance was suddenly and magically removed.  We were all lined up in two lines and the  person across from us was the boy that we would dance with  during the first part of  class. We would switch partners as directed, and we were instructed to talk to our partners. 
This lady  knew the crowd she was dealing with--we needed lessons in socializing.

WHAT A RELIEF! 

Perhaps you are wondering what all this has to do with Marxism--well that will take at least one more blog entry. STAY TUNED.

FALLOW TIME in the BUCKET

The fields are fallow and soon will be frozen.

  And that is how  Winter feels and that is how winter is. Especially if your ancient furnace that your  mother installed in 1972 falters and fails.
 The house inside temp drops rapidly to  40 degrees and we are  left to sit and shiver and drink lots of hot tea while wrapped in blankets and wearing jackets and knitted caps inside the house.

Can you get your mind around that??  It happened  during the PATRIOTS game last Sunday and was  finally over today on the Feast of Saint Andrew.
A miraculous event unfolds when we throw the lead of our personal story into the transformative flames of creativity.
Our hardship is transmuted into something golden. With that gold we heal ourselves and redeem the world. As with any spiritual practice, this creative alchemy requires a leap of faith. 

When we show up to make art--

we need to first get still enough to hear what wants to be expressed through us, and then we need to step out of the way and let it. We must be willing to abide in a space of not knowing before we can settle into knowing. 

Such a space is sacred. It is liminal, and it’s numinous. It is frightening and enlivening. It demands no less than everything, and it gives back tenfold.

The muse rarely behaves the way we would like her to, and yet every artist knows she cannot be controlled. Artistic self-expression necessitates periods of quietude in which it appears that nothing is happening.

Like a tree in winter whose roots are doing important work deep inside the dark earth, the creative process needs fallow time. 

We have to incubate inspiration. We need empty spaces for musing and preparing, experimenting and reflecting. Society does not value its artists, partly because of the apparent lack of productivity that comes with the creative life.

  Art begins with receptivity.
Every artist, in a way, is a mystic and a political creature. Making art can be a subversive act, an act of resistance against the deadening lure of consumption, an act of unbridled peacemaking disguised as a poem or a song or an abstract rendering of an aspen leaf swirling in a stream.

SOFT LANDING NEAR THE LEBANON MILLS IN THE BUCKET

POEM OF A CHILDHOOD MEMORY OF ROLLING DOWN THE BANKS OF THE BLACKSTONE 

Writing inspired by the Rain Meditation and the Paintings by Rachel at Poetry Workshop at FORGET ME NOT in Pawtucket in September 2018 as part of Galway Kinnell Poetry Festival. I led the workshop and here is  one of the products of  trying to make haiku from  lines of  a poem  we wrote that day.

Poems and lines by Norma Jenckes

Inspired by painting of green –poem about rolling as a child in the wet grass down a hill on the banks of the Blackstone in Pawtucket.

SOFT LANDING NEAR THE LEBANON MILLS

Soft hiss of rain fills every pore

of dry earth,

Spring peepers roar

to new life.

Haiku version: soft hiss of rain fall/Spring peepers roar to new life/filling every pore.

Spinning down the slope

dizzies me,

overhead the sagging rope

of high wires

Haiku version: spinning down the slope/ overhead the sagging rope / high wires dizzy me .

scares me with lightning's flash.

Rolling under

sparking lines to high grass,

I come full stop.

Haiku version: rolling under lines/ that scare me with lightning flash/ high grass brings full stop/

My ear pressed to earth,

I hear storm drains

pour dark broken births

into surging cisterns.

Haiku version: My ear pressed to earth/ hear storm drains pour broken births/into dark cisterns.

After the reading of lines inspired by the paintings and imagery, Patti McAlpine presented an evocative lesson on Haiku. And encouraged us to try some in 5-7-5 form from the lines we had just written.

I was reminded of Haiku of Basho which I wrote in a rough adaptation.

How clever he is

who does not think life is brief

when he sees lightning. 

Basho

Clouds burst over head

Etta James cries out “At Last”

I push re-play—Wait.

Jenckes

I want to end with a reminder from the Master Basho of the importance of the poetic process over the product when we write Haiku: “Haiku exists only when it is on the writing table. Once it is taken off, it is just a scrap of paper.” Basho

Thanks to Rachel, for her work, to Patti, for her dedication and talent, to Denise for her organizing skills and willingness to try something new, and to the select few who were with us.

HOW MITHRIDATES DIED--NOT IN THE BUCKET

HOW POET  RICHARD HOWARD IS AKIN TO  MITHRIDATES

When I first had the immense pleasure of meeting RIchard Howard, I was a newly tenured Associate Professor at the University of Cincinnati.

Amazing poet Richard Howard was visiting  the University to see if he could be lured to the mid-west from Manhattan as a visiting Elliston Professor.  The hiring committee members were taking him out to dinner and I was part of the entertainment--  I guess!
,
As I opened the back door of the car to sit next to Richard, I heard that the conversation was about the Italian restaurant we were headed towards. Being from Providence where you cannot buy a bad pizza and  which has only excellent Italian restaurants, I chimed in "The food will not be good here--too few Italians"

Richard reached over to take my hand as I sat and said  "Don't worry, my dear, I have been Mithridatized."  SILENCE  broken only by my laugh as I got the joke. "oh yes, I had  forgotten you are from Cleveland."  Everyone  chimed in and we went on to our jolly  dinner of  mediocre food and a friendship had begun-- because I got Richard's joke

Some details about the historical figure MITHRIDATES:.

After Pompey defeated him in Pontus, Mithridates VI fled to the lands north of the Black Sea in the winter of 66 BC in the hope that he could raise a new army and carry on the war through invading Italy by way of the Danube.^[10] His preparations proved to be too harsh on the local nobles and populace, and they rebelled against his rule. He reportedly attempted suicide by poison. This attempt failed because of his immunity to the poison.^[24] According to Appian's Roman History, he then requested his Gallic bodyguard and friend, Bituitus, to kill him by the sword:

Mithridates then took out some poison that he always carried next to his sword, and mixed it. There two of his daughters, who were still girls growing up together, named Mithridates and Nysa, who had been betrothed to the kings of [Ptolemaic] Egypt and of Cyprus, asked him to let them have some of the poison first, and insisted strenuously and prevented him from drinking it until they had taken some and swallowed it. The drug took effect on them at once; but upon Mithridates, although he walked around rapidly to hasten its action, it had no effect, because he had accustomed himself to other drugs by continually trying them as a means of protection against poisoners. These are still called the Mithridatic drugs.

Seeing a certain Bituitus there, an officer of the Gauls, he said to him, "I have profited much from your right arm against my enemies. I shall profit from it most of all if you will kill me, and save from the danger of being led in a Roman triumph one who has been an autocrat so many years, and the ruler of so great a kingdom, but who is now unable to die by poison because, like a fool, he has fortified himself against the poison of others. Although I have kept watch and ward against all the poisons that one takes with his food, I have not provided against that domestic poison, always the most dangerous to kings, the treachery of army, children, and friends." Bituitus, thus appealed to, rendered the king the service that he desired.^[25]

• The poet A. E. Housman alludes to Mithridates' antidote in the final stanza of "Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff" in A Shropshire Lad:

There was a king reigned in the East:

There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
–I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

AND RICHARD  SHARES THAT LONG LIFE --  HE  STILL PROSPERS -- STILL WRITING AND PUBLISHING HIS  INTRICATE AND DEMANDING POETRY.

WINTER IS ICUMEN IN.

I like the tone of this poem that I came across just  recently. 
The  idea that it  expresses reinforces one of the key mantras that kept my mother and my Aunt Anna going through some very rough patches. 
 Let's face the music and dance.

Reel

by Barbara Crooker

Maybe night is about to come

calling, but right now

the sun is still high in the sky.

It's half-past October, the woods

are on fire, blue skies stretch

all the way to heaven. Of course,

we know winter is coming, its thin

winding sheets and its hard narrow bed.

But right now, the season's fermented

to fullness, so slip into something

light, like your skeleton; while these old

bones are still working, my darling,

let's dance.

 “Reel” by Barbara Crooker from The Book of Kells. Cascade Books, © 2019.

I think that it does express an attitude that is IRISH to the  ground.

It recalls  my favorite advice  that is attributed to BERNARD SHAW:
"We all have skeletons in our closet- the trick is to make them dance."

We are heading into winter but today was bright and sunny and  yes, a bit chilly.

I am finding the  time and energy to return to my poetry .  The inspiration?
Two days ago the members of OCEAN STATE POETS came to my home for an afternoon poetry workshop.  I just applied  to that group and was accepted a few months ago. However the only person I met was a poet named Bill who, like  me, participated in the Galway Kinnell Poetry Festival in September in Pawtucket. 
So it was very exciting when six poets came through the  door and we  have a feast of  reading and talking about each others poems.  It was  an unusual and stimulating afternoon.  The poems were of a high quality and I was grateful to be included. 

I guess that writing poems and an occasional play is my form of dancing.  It is usually a solitary endeavor 
but this was a rare group experience.

Winter is  coming so there will be more wintry thoughts and moments in my days and more likely in my writing.  So get out your winter coats and boots and  prepare to enjoy what this season brings.

LIMERICKS IN THE BUCKET

Garrison Keillor just inspired  me with his attempts at  the LIMERICK  form.


     Farewell to life on the links!
     The game is over! It stinks!
     The great plaid butts
     Bending over the putts,
     The hike to the clubhouse for drinks.

     Instead I will write at my desk
     Limericks, cool, humoresque,
     And if I need dough
     I'll go do a show,
     Either radio or strip burlesque.

As you can see it is a five line form in the rhyming pattern  of A-A_-B-B-_A

Pawtucket and the  bucket seem to cry our for use in this form.

There once was a girl from Pawtucket
Who left and then came back to the Bucket
What was I thinking? 
It's worse and it's shrinking!
Time to set sail for Nantucket.

Well that is my first attempt..

UNIVERSAL CREATIVITY in THE BUCKET

WHY  DID GOD BOTHER TO MAKE EACH  HUMAN BEING UNIQUE, IF WE WERE NOT MEANT TO BRING THAT UNIQUE ASPECT TO THE TABLE OF LIFE?


I often talked about universal creativity when I was teaching. 

So few students self-identified as creative and it was as if I had to re-introduce themselves to their essential creative self. 
I could see in their sad refusal to cherish and  explore their creative selves  the results of years of being told that creativity was for the few artists and that many of them  had seen teachers link creativity with madness and who wants that.

My  understanding of creativity has been  deepened by the  growing discoveries of DNA and the genome and the uniqueness of each individual.

Mirabai Star sees the Divine connection in  Creativity.
"When you were a child, you knew yourself to be cocreator of the universe. But little by little you forgot who you were.
 When you were a child, everything was about color. Now you pick black as your automatic font color, because that is the coin of the realm. 

When you were a child, you traveled from place to place by dancing, 
and now you cultivate stillness, which is great, but you are forgetting how to move to the music of your soul. You can hardly even hear that inner music over the clamor of all your obligations. . . .

Yes, you are worthy of art making.
Dispense with the hierarchy in your head that silences your own creative voice. . . . 
It is not only your birthright to create, it is your true nature. 
The world will be healed when you take up your brush and shake your body and sing your heart out. . . .

The part of our brains with which we navigate the challenges of the everyday world is uneasy in the unpredictable sphere of art making.

 We cannot squeeze ourselves through the eye of the needle to reach the land of wild creativity whilst saddled to the frontal cortex, whose job it is to evaluate external circumstances and regulate appropriate behavior.

 Creativity has a habit of defying good sense.
 I am not arguing, however, that the intellect has no place in the creative enterprise. The most intelligent people I know are artists and musicians. Their finely tuned minds are always grappling with some creative conundrum, trying to find ways to translate the music they hear in the concert hall of their heads into some intelligible form that others can grasp and appreciate."

What a creative life demands is that we take risks. 

They may be calculated risks; they may yield entrepreneurial fruits, or they may simply enrich our own lives.

 Creative risk taking might not turn our life upside down but, rather, might right the drifting ship of our soul. 
When we make ourselves available for the inflow of [Spirit], we accept not only her generative power but also her ability to [overcome] whatever stands in the way of our full aliveness.

You do not always have to suffer for art. 
You are not required to sacrifice everything for beauty. The creative life can be quietly gratifying. The thing is to allow ourselves to become a vessel for a work of art to come through and allow that work to guide our hands.

Once we do, we are assenting to a sacred adventure. We are saying yes to the transcendent and embodied presence of the holy. 

Often I  seem to think I am  too “old” to create something “new,” which is really too bad.

Self consciousness, ego and the fear that I will make myself ridiculous all get in the way of my free and joyous exploration of my own creativity.

THESE ARE ALL EVIL MANIFESTATIONS OF FALSE PRIDE.  I WILL PRAY THAT  YOU, DEAR READER, DO NOT LET THESE PETTY FEARS INTERFERE WITH YOUR CREATIVITY, IF YOU PROMISE TO PRAY  FOR ME AND A FREER  AND YES--WILDER -- EXPRESSION OF MINE.

THINKING OF RICHARD HOWARD IN THE BUCKET

Like Most Revelations

Richard Howard - 1929-

• 
• 
  

(after Morris Louis)

It is the movement that incites the form,
discovered as a downward rapture—yes,
it is the movement that delights the form,
sustained by its own velocity.  And yet

it is the movement that delays the form
while darkness slows and encumbers; in fact
it is the movement that betrays the form,
baffled in such toils of ease, until

it is the movement that deceives the form, 
beguiling our attention—we supposed
it is the movement that achieves the form.
Were we mistaken?  What does it matter if

it is the movement that negates the form?
Even though we give (give up) ourselves
to this mortal process of continuing,
it is the movement that creates the form.

When I  read this poem by Richard Howard it both pleased me and dismayed me. 

 I  began to read it again and first  I was stopped by the fact that the poet announces that it is "after Morris Louis."  I knew that Louis was a painter and an abstract expressionist but I did not know much more than  that.

The poem has always seemed to me to hold some profound truth-- LIKE MOST REVELATIONS.

The poem keeps declaring something about the relationship between movement and form and them questions or even negates  the declaration. 

The lines that I kept coming back to are in the  last stanza :

Even though we give (give up) ourselves
to this mortal process of continuing,
it is the movement that creates the form.
For the past month I have been thinking a  great deal about Richard Howard. I met  him  in the late 80s when I was teaching  at the University of Cincinnati and he was a visiting Elliston Poet.  We became  good friends and even team-taught a course together.
Richard is a sublime master of wordplay. 
Notice just in the lines I quoted .  He notes  that we both give and give up  in what he then characterizes as  "this mortal process of continuing."
 What a  deep way to characterize what life and time  do to us all --they  both  unfold and  mature us and  finally end us.

Mystery of Poetry in the Bucket

AM I A POET?

"Nobody can advise and help you, nobody. There is only one single means. Go inside yourself. Discover the motive that bids you write; examine whether it sends its roots down to the deepest places of your heart, confess to yourself whether you would have to die if writing were denied you. This before all: ask yourself in the quietest hour of your night: must I write?" – Rainer Maria Rilke

HOW AM I A POET?

My first memory of poetry besides the nursery rhymes that my mother read to me and I recited back to her is my love for the poem THE HIGHWAYMAN. 
She read it to me once and after that I asked for it every night. I started to memorize the melodic opening lines and I would sit with the book on our couch and recite it to the book and believed that I was reading it.
 I did this several times a day and was relentless in it . When my mother saw and heard, she sat with me and just pointed to each word as I recited it and after many tries I suddenly got the connection and I was reading it.
 And I believe that I taught myself to read because I so loved the poem and wanted to read it any time that I wanted and not need to wait for someone to read it to me.

Listen to the wonderful cadences

The Highwayman

BY ALFRED NOYES

PART ONE

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.   

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.   

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,   

And the highwayman came riding—

         Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

Re-read it and see how it  feels in your mouth and in your mind

I loved the word pictures and when I looked at a moon in a cloudy sky, I said the line from the poem.

Since I knew it by heart it became a kind of party piece—I could recite it to friends and amaze them.

Also I loved the sad romance of the lovely Bess who dies to warn her lover of the waiting Redcoats.

My second favorite romantic poem was the tale of Fair Ellen and the gallant Lochinvar.

 Here is the text  first two verses of that poem which I also memorized and would recite often at the request of my Uncle Joe.

Lochinvar

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT

O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,

Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;

And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,

He rode all unarm’d, and he rode all alone.

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,

There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

He staid not for brake, and he stopp’d not for stone,

He swam the Eske river where ford there was none;

But ere he alighted at Netherby gate,

The bride had consented, the gallant came late:

For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war,

Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.

There was another  brief poem by Wordsworth that my mother often chose to read in those Poetry Saturday  nights when all baths were over, my sisters were  sleeping soundly and Anna was out dancing

She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

She dwelt among the untrodden ways

Beside the springs of Dove,

A Maid whom there were none to praise

And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye!

—Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

THE WAY HE ENDS THAT  NEXT TO LAST LINE WITH THE-- oh--
 ANGUISHED OUTPOURING OF HIS OWN HEART.

AT LAST THE SPEAKER OWNS HIS HIDDEN BELOVED AND HIS  PERHAPS HIDDEN LOVE.