Ted Kooser

Big Frank bought his first book of Ted Kooser poetry 33 years ago: Grass Country. It was partly the title (both Big Frank and Kooser are plains people); and the poetry inside sealed it. Ted Kooser went on to become US Poet Laureate (2004 – 2006). He writes a weekly column for online publications and newspapers in which he presents one poem in an attempt to bring poetry to the general reader. You can read that column here.

Kooser wrote a poem included below that seems to place the reader with the writer poised between beginnings and endings. The beauty of the position is startling (the exploding constellations below and the melting of stars in the ocean of space above:




FLYING AT NIGHT
Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.
—from Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985



The following poem will stab you as surely as the tatooed image at the heart of this poem:

TATTOO
What once was meant to be a statement—
a dripping dagger held in the fist
of a shuddering heart—is now just a bruise
on a bony old shoulder, the spot
where vanity once punched him hard
and the ache lingered on. He looks like
someone you had to reckon with,
strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,
but on this chilly morning, as he walks
between the tables at a yard sale
with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt
rolled up to show us who he was,
he is only another old man, picking up
broken tools and putting them back,
his heart gone soft and blue with stories.
-- from Delights & Shadows



Finally a poem from Kooser's most recent book: Valentines. Over a period of many years Kooser would on Valentine's day put a poem on postcards and mail them. These poems are a kind of sad wooing from afar. So Ted and I will put this one in the Spokane River and watch it flow down into the Columbia and then . . . :



THIS PAPER BOAT

Carefully placed upon the future,
it tips from the breeze and skims away,
frail thing of words, this valentine,
so far to sail. And if you find it
caught in the reeds, its message blurred,
the thought that you are holding it
a moment is enought for me.
-- from Valentines

The End is the Beginning

This is not a new concept. Big Frank finds it appealing because it's familiar; it's old; it's been said by many wise people, and it is eminently psychologically satisfying. In addition, it's one of those sayings that doesn't make any sense whatsoever; yet it makes complete sense and Big Frank likes that:

The disciples said to Jesus, ‘Tell us how our end will be.’ Jesus said, ‘Have you discovered, then, the beginning, that you look for the end? For where the beginning is, there will the end be. Blessed is he who will take his place in the beginning; he will know the end and will not experience death.’
- The Gospel of Thomas 18

Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom.
- Lao-tzu, Tao Te Ching

We shall not cease from exploration
And at the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
— T.S. Eliot, ‘Little Gidding’

The core of philosophy is no longer an autonomous transcendental subjectivity, to be found everywhere and nowhere: it lies in the perpetual beginning of reflection, at the point where an individual life begins to reflect on itself. Reflection is truly reflection only if it is not carried outside itself, only if it knows itself as reflection-on-an-unreflective-experience, and consequently as a change in the structure of our existence.
— Merleau-Ponty (1945, 72)

The Beatles had their own take on this: "In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make."

And if you still find this difficult to believe. If the concept that the end really is the beginning then experience it for yourself.

Remember Bill Withers! Timeless!

Big Frank has been listening to a lot of Bill Withers lately. The man can sing and what great songs he has written. It all stems from his open heart and his ability to look outside to the world. This is what Bill has to say of where he gets his inspiration from: "I write and sing about whatever I am able to understand and feel. I feel that it is healthier to look out at the world through a window than through a mirror. Otherwise, all you see is yourself and whatever is behind you." An indication of his great song writing ability is the list of performers who have done covers of his songs: Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, Sting, Paul McCartney, Liza Minnelli, Aretha Franklin, Tom Jones, Linda Ronstadt, Joe Cocker, Johnny Mathis, Mick Jagger, Crystal Gale, Nancy Wilson, Carmen McCrae, D'Angelo, Fiona Apple, Grace Jones, Diana Ross, and many many more. Listen to Bill Withers sing his great songs Lean On Me, Ain't No Sunshine, and Use Me. And listen to these great covers: Sting singing Ain't No Sunshine, Amy Lee playing Use Me, and Grover Washington Jr. and his band playing Just The Two Us.

Combine: Art and Life

Robert Rauschenberg displays the beauty of the bicycle. This can be seen in his poster for his 1992 exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington D.C. (Bicycle, 1992). This is a typical montage image: note the bicycle, the woman, an industrial spool of some sort, columns, Miller High Life, a sign for a breakfast special, and a chicken. This is all displayed in various shades of orange, with a blue woman, silver background, and white bike in the forground (love that bike so much). The bike is a classic: reminiscent of what Big Frank used to ride as a kid. Perhaps the woman will ride it; she may even have on biking tights, but her shoes will have to be changed. Robert Rauschenberg famously said, "For me, there's no difference between art and life." His art concentrated on this real world that surrounds us in all its seemingly empty and kitschy facades. He called them combines for they combined art and life.

This fascination with the bicycle appears again with a neon construction in the Daimler City complex near Potsdamer Platz in Berlin (Riding Bikes, 1998). Two glowing bicyles with their doubles in the reflecting pools below. It strikes Big Frank as a very hopeful image. In some ways like the energized glowing future of this pair emerging from their dimmer fading past. But, Rauschenberg would never have agreed with Big Frank's idea of this combine; for him it was what it was. He said: "People ask me, 'Don't you ever run out of ideas?' In the first place I don't use ideas. Every time I have an idea it's too limiting, and usually turns out to be a disappointment. But I haven't run out of curiosity."

.

A Cycling Villanelle

(For Cd)
. . . Big Frank Dickinson

Spoke after spoke on the cycles we flowed.
Away and back our revolving track;
Constantly circling the center our mode.

Coasting in tight, with such a light load
Overtaking each other with ease.
Spoke after spoke on the cycles we flowed.

No matter the route, no matter the road,
You after me after me after you.
Constantly circling the center our mode.

At the summit joined, breathless we glowed.

A moment, then over, and downbound the slope.
Spoke after spoke on the cycles we flowed.

Spokes meet at the hub or the wheel becomes bowed:
The chord of a circle needs two lines that hold.
Constantly circling the center our mode.

A new kind of spin has now taken hold;
Reeling. Has the circle widened or closed?
Spoke after spoke on the cycles we flowed.
Constantly circling the center our mode.

Footprints

Footprints

By Big Frank Dickinson

Who trod this beach we’ll never know;
Though tracks remain yet hence.
They seem directed in a flow
To somewhere that makes sense.

We think now of some simple man
Moving -- straight ahead.
No hesitations, pause, or boot;
Onward -- surefoot tread.

And while the sand is frozen still
In a line directly shown,
Don't be mislead by tracks so clear;
Don't rule out future moan.

For moving up from foot to head
The line cannot be traced;
Where this man trod is quite unknown
The map has been erased.

Craters

Splat
By Big Frank Dickinson

It’s in the margins meaning lies
Not in the local text .
Familiar landscape sets the tone,
But look at what comes next.

The sheets that once were creased and flat
Now rise in life anew.
That flat horizon stamped with life;
This long long overdue.

Let the clock tock-tock, tock-tock,
And say good bye to tick.
The moon now sits inside your head
Compete with crater shtick.

Elusive Reasons

"The inner lives of human beings are obscure, not only to others but to themselves as well. People are elusive. We tend to be rather poorly informed about our own attitudes and desires, and about where our commitments truly are. It is useful to keep in mind, then, that a person may care about something a great deal without realizing that he cares about it. It is also possible that someone really does not care in the slightest about certain things, even though he sincerely believes that he considers those things to be extremely important to him.
(The Reasons of Love – Harry G. Frankfurt)

Blind Devotion

By Big Frank Dickinson

The clownfish commitment to Heteractis magnifica
As seemingly caring as the anemone’s
Protective tentacles. Their bond as much
from doubt as awareness free.

The sea anemone gave her partner presence;
And him her; no need for them an oath.
The caring question was never asked,
For blind devotion nourished them both.

The storm that tore them apart
Awakened within each concern:
Acknowledgement of their lack
And the clarity to confidently return.

“I’ll never wander far again”,
He thought it was his choice;
And she embraced him without sting
But did she then rejoice?

Don Paterson

The Poetry of Don Paterson

Here’s a guy who can write! Pick up one of his books of poetry and discover his talent for writing; and the joy of reading superb poetry. Paterson is Scottish and in addition to writing, works as an editor and musician (jazz guitar). He’s won a number of prizes for his poetry and has edited some collections of poetry – one with Charles Simic.

You can find one of Paterson’s poem’s in a previous post of mine on a review of Love Poems edited by another British poet, James Fenton. The poem included is called “The Gift”, a horrifically ironic take on gift (including a bear) that starts with these lines: “That night she called his name, not mine/And could not call it back”. You will never think of gift in the same way after reading this poem.

Big Frank just finished reading Paterson’s collection of poems in “Landing Light”, for which he won the 2003 Witbread Poetry Award and T.S. Eliot Prize. This is a marvelous collection of poems. It includes both the deadly serious (see above), the thought-provoking, and in all cases the felicity of phrasing is amazing, and the jumps in thought unanticipated. Throughout Paterson operates with regular lines, and with rhymes – although those are often slant.

Here are a few favorite selections from this collection:

“It’s not the lover that we love, but love
itself, love as in nothing, as in O;
love is the lover’s coin, a coin of no country,
hence: the ring; hence: the moon –
no wonder that empty circle so often figures
in our intimate dark, our skin trade,
that commerce so furious we often think
love’s something we share, but we’re always wrong.”
(from My Love -- Landing Light, Greywolf Press 2005)

“After your ninemonth in utero rehab
you’ll hit the ground running as usual, and make
the worst of all possible starts:
penetrating a woman, your mum – of all folk –
with completely unreasonable force.
You would have you arrested. This violence is due,
you will wryly observe (remembering your Dawkins,
before all the books of your last life flare up
in the blistering light of the new) to the size
of your brain; an attribute you and your mother,
for different reasons, agree is not everything.
Ochone, ochone.”
(from My Love -- Landing Light, Greywolf Press 2005)

By the way “ochone” is Scottish for woe or alas!


“When day comes, as the day surely must,
when it is asked of you and you refuse
to take that lover’s wound again, that cup
of emptiness, that is our one completion,

I’d say go here, maybe, to our unsung
Innermost isle: Kilda’s antithesis”
(from Lui -- Landing Light, Greywolf Press 2005)

You can actually hear Don Paterson read this poem here.

Dialogue With Oneself

Exterior Dialogue

By Big Frank Dickinson

He had a tendency when alone
To ask himself: “What do you think?”
And was always surprised to be asked.
The chuckling preface that followed:

“Well . . .”, was usually inconclusive
But drawn all out as though it had
Been chewed on by some yokel
Sitting on a cracker barrel at a crossroads.

It never went beyond that routine -
As soon as the interior dialogue
Came out, it went out, and that is strange
Because the opposite never happened.

Lost

Lost in the Shuffle

By Big Frank Dickinson

"Are you returning 'Gardens of the Northwest';
Would you like to renew it?"
Having no idea what happened
I stall by renewing: it could show up.

Where did that book go?
Probably lying in a drawer
In a motel in Dallas, or Berlin,
Right next to The Book of Mormon.

But what about those baseball cards?
Did my mother throw them away,
Or is the whole box of them

On e-bay adding to her 401-K?

And that picture is somewhere,
In a box, in an attic, or maybe the garage.
It’s probably faded now to the point
Where she's melted into the wallpaper.

And the actual face – where is she now?
As lost as the love that was professed.
The letter gone too, chastising

Years later, for my having lost devotion.

But that faith, it's around here somewhere.
Waiting in abeyance, as it were.
Not lost just yet, for only after
Acquisition can loss occur.

The End of Waiting

The End of Waiting

By Big Frank Dickinson

Let’s raise a cheer for the wizened man
Who rose from his chair and left.
Enough is enough he thought to himself:
“No more waiting for me.”

And the word got around, and soon
The magazines began to stack up,
Someone eventually cancelled Reader’s Digest,
And the plants took over the couch.

Hanging up became the new fad;
Phone trees were piled up in alleys.
Real people came out of hiding
Replacing associates who fled.

And nobody ever again said:
"Can I put you on hold?" Or,
"Could you take a seat? Or,
"Please take a number?"

It was all now immediate and everyone

Was satisfied instantly and temporarily,
Till someone started exclusive clubs
In abandoned warehouses with very very long lines to get in.

Avoiding Clichés

Avoiding Clichés
By Big Frank Dickinson

Not in the pink,
Not walking a tightrope,
Nor blazing a trail.
Still perched on solitude.

Not strolling down memory lane,
Not being proactive,
Nor chewing my cud.
This will not last.

Not a little piece of heaven,
Not out of the blue,
Nor the cloud’s silver lining.
Make me more of this.

Signs

"The obvious is difficult
To prove. Many prefer
The hidden. I did, too.
I listened to the trees."
--- Charles Simic

Signs

By Big Frank Dickinson

There is a dog complaining in the distance.
Closer crickets chill in sweet refrains;
While intermittently cars whine.
The triple whammy! So hard to choose.

The darkness trumps them all.
Still that's so common it’s hard to see;
So ears take over and their interpretation
Is as suspect as a clown’s spiel between acts.

The dog admits he scratched the door;

Yeah, he wanted out; but, come on!
The crickets croon their constant joy

Such luck to be right here right now.

The cars' incessant moan is taking them
Places that they had no say in whatsoever.
The cricket-dog's song goes on; it's the whine
That goes away . . .

IN A WORLD

In A World

By Big Frank Dickinson

The movie huckster’s line is always the same:
IN A WORLD WHERE. . .
What comes after doesn’t really matter.
What matters is that it is not this world.

The trailer for this world would
Draw few crowds: IN A WORLD WHERE
Numbing regularity rules the day and empty
Time begs to be filled, errands equal travel.

IN A WORLD where the screen is a computer
Cars don’t chase people they imprison them.
Numbers and dates flip through their heads
Like calendar pages in a grainy black and white.

IN A WORLD where anxiety is accompanied by music:
Your breath rasping to the the beat of your heart
With no audience other than memories and dreams.
IN A WORLD without a plot the rewrite never ends.

The Uncall

The Unmade Call

By Big Frank Dickinson

Not making a call sometimes
Takes more effort than calling;
Takes more time too and it
Definitely takes more thought.

But it is not something that is appreciated.
Nobody ever says: “thanks for not calling.”
You never hear: “It was so nice of you not to call;
And what a coincidence - right when I wasn’t thinking of you.”

Faces

Faces
By Big Frank Dickinson

I used to think the face in the mirror
was a duplicate of the one it mimed.
I know it better than my own;
we think we are each other.

Others display theirs to me directly;
frames sliding seamlessly together
like a film; yet we are confused
by the jarring difference of each still.

It is the stills that are taken to bed;
Are put on shelves, and tucked away
In wallets and cardboard boxes -
Trophies, and flat references

to the millions of flashing faces;
beaming at us like exploding stars
seen from only one small peep hole
Across unimaginable space.

The Faces of Faces

It turns out that Big Frank really didn't know what a big deal face recognition is. The variation in faces is a known issue and one that causes issues with face recognition, not only for us - the lay people, the citizens, and face gazers, as it were, but especially for those scientists who are madly scrambling to get the face recognition software in place so that cameras can be mounted, crowds can be scanned, and our faces can be read like fingerprints. This is done by use of an algorithm that can analyze the relative position, size, and/or shape of different parts of the face. Then these features are used to search for other images with matching features. There are also newly emerging technologies that focus on distinctive characteristics of the face using 3D technology, and skin texture analysis is also being looked into. Still, while the systems have seen some success with full frontal recognition, when the person turns more than 20 degrees there is a problem. Profiles present major issues.

There are a number of databases available on the web - some for free. The pictures above were taken from a couple that can be found here. There is a lot of work being done in this as can be seen from the the number of universities, and private companies involved. However, aside from the privacy issues, once this software is down just imagine that great things that can be done with it. One thing would be the start of a database/website where people could go. In it, for example, could be a section where you can find people that look like you and could start a club where everyone looked exactly like you!

Multiple perspectives

Big Frank has been wondering lately about the difficulty in deciding on a particular view. Is there one view that more truly captures the object being perceived? Is there some kind of true essence in that object or person that one shot, view, idea, feeling can capture? Previously Big Frank posted on bifurcation - polarizing split in the way we categorize. Big Frank now turns to portraits - in this same vein. Have you ever noticed how depending on the angle, the lighting, the distance, the expression, etc. that a person can almost seem, at times, to have give off multiple different essences. We all have favorite views of ourselves: are these truer than the ones we dislike?

The photo pairs come from a flickr site devoted to "2sides".

An Island?

Security

By William Stafford

Tomorrow will have an island. Before night
I always find it. Then on to the next island.
These places hidden in the day separate
and come forward if you beckon.
But you have to know they are there before they exist.

Some time there will be a tomorrow without any island.
So far, I haven't let that happen, but after
I'm gone others may become faithless and careless.
Before them will tumble the wide unbroken sea,
and without any hope they will stare at the horizon.

So to you, Friend, I confide my secret:
to be a discoverer you hold close whatever
you find, and after a while you decide
what it is. Then, secure in where you have been,

you turn to the open sea and let go

Closing the Door

Jimmy Durante sang that wonderful song entitled: "Did You Ever Have The Feeling That You Wanted To Go?" He plays it in the move "The Man Who Came To Dinner", alternately getting up from the piano, but immediately sitting down and then again and then again pivotting on the piano bench as he goes nowhere.

Here are the lyrics


Did you ever have the feeling that you wanted to go,
And still have the feeling that you wanted to stay?
Start to go,
Change your mind,
Start to go again,
Change your mind again...
Did you ever have the feeling that you wanted to go,
And still have the feeling that you wanted to stay?
Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do -
I go!
I stay!

Closing the Door
By Big Frank Dickinson

"In or out; close the door."
Me in the doorway open to the night.
"In or out" – make up your mind."
I don’t even remember what it was that
kept me standing there midway between
in . . . and . . . out; but I remember the
rich possibilities and the sense of coming
and going at the same time – the tug between
familiar temporary inside - I didn’t want to
miss – earnest laughter with knowing looks –
anchors dripping meaning and
around it . . . outside swirled the other kids
in the night air. . . free of the sitters,

hiding on the inside from their obligatory
roaming responsibilities in the bushes,
and me . . . standing in the doorway between
the pool of light over the table and the
outside night freedom.
"In or out; close the door."

You Can Have It All!

Good news for all mankind. You can have it all! Is this not good news? You wince at the thought of such a promise - what airy-fairy nonsense would be one typical response. Yet, . . . is this not what drives people forward in life - well, maybe not "all" in the sense of truly everything , but all that they feel is necessary in order to make life worthwhile, which is almost certainly more than what it is that they have right now. The thought of a certain basic minimum augmentation accompanies people as they go to sleep at night; they ruminate on progress as they drive to work; they chew on attainment in their wandering avoidance of the actual sum of what it is that they indeed have RIGHT NOW. In the heart of the heart of desire - one (you and me) wants more. That cliche - "Is that all there is?" begs the answer (shouted out) "OF COURSE NOT". I have dreams; I have goals; I have needs; I have wants; the culminating point (which will be better than where I am now) will come ("the best is yet to come"), it is still ahead of me, and certainly not behind me or where I am right now. Without the belief in future improvement one is left with the fact that what you have right now is the height of your accomplishments - nothing better awaits you. Why is that so unacceptable? Is it unacceptable?