Life Begin Again

It's a day shy of the 7th anniversary of the attacks on September 11. I wasn't going to write anything about this dark day in our nation's history. We have moved on and adjusted to a new way of life. We do not mourn in the same way or to the same degree anymore. When politicians sprinkle speeches with reference to 9/11, their tired words are met with yawns, rolling eyes and irritation by the public. We have once again returned to our cocoons and care more about the mudslinging going on in the race for the Oval Office than we do about each other. We are not unified as we were at that moment in time.

I was not in the New York that day; however, I was at work, 11 miles away, on the Jersey side, and watched plumes of dark smoke waft over the city, cutting into the crystal blue sky, in horror. I was a ball of nerves when I could not get in touch with friends who did work or live in the city. The music lover that I am turned her radio off for weeks. I had friends lose close relatives, neighbors lose spouses. We all have our stories. We have a shared yet individual experience. We have our memories of that day.

The Volume 3:Further in Time by Afro Celt Sound System was released just a few months earlier in June 2001 and was on heavy rotation on my CD player. It was eerie how the song "Life Begin Again", almost literally, captured the emotion and environment of those days immediately after the attacks. With simple yet poignant lyrics sung by Robert Plant, and interspersed with an excerpt from a traditional Welsh ballad "The Lark's Elegy" ("Marwnad yr Ehedydd"), balancing the thunder and soft sorrow over "Middle Eastern" strings, it still gives me chills. When I learned of the translation of the Welsh lyrics (scroll to the end of this post), my heart returned to my throat.

Listen: LIFE BEGIN AGAIN

This is the day, and the hour
The time where the changing begins
The land, and the sky, fall quiet
Silence moves over the plain

The heat of Cwymhr still burning
The heart still beating within
Her songs echoed the fallen
For life to begin again

This is the day and the hour
The time where the changing begins

Land and the sky fallen silent

Quiet moves o'er the plain

Quiet moves o'er the plain
The silence moves over the plain

The land and sky fall quiet
The heart is beating within
Her song echoes calling
For life to begin again
For light to begin again
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Translation of the Welsh verses from "The Lark's Elegy":

Mi a glywais fod yr hedydd
Wedi marw ar y mynydd;
Pe gwyddwn i mai gwir y geirie,
Awn â gyr o wŷr ac arfe
I gyrchu corff yr hedydd adre.

I have heard that the lark
Has died on the mountain;
If I knew the words to be true,
I would take a band of armed men
To bring the lark’s body home.

Jesus Moth

Is it belief or desperation?
Do you search for the Messiah
in each moldy crumb you're given,
in every hour you're starving,
on the wings of a small prophet,
on cloudy horizons drifting,
on the brink of your salvation,
in a Truth only man defines?

Like a Surgeon...

No, not as in scalpels and incisions. We can save that for another day.

I'm talking about the Poetry Society (UK) who meets to perform poetry surgery during scheduled, and fully pre-planned meetings. The idea of the surgery is to go over a person's poetry and focus on what's good and what could be better. I suppose there are groups in the U.S. that do that, too; I'm just not sure it's so formal. Do you know of any of these groups?

In a way, it reminds me of writing classes in school. I wish I had that kind of feedback now. There are many good writers, but the elusive question remains: what makes just a few "great"? It's on the tip of my tongue, but I seem to bite down on it all the time. I could write and write and write (like I used to back in those pre-career, pre-marriage, pre-adulthood responsibilities kind of days), and my own instincts can tell me whether something is passable, or whether it should never see the light of day again. Which is why I take the chance to post my own poetry here now and then. I like to share, but like most people - I need feedback. I need to know how I'm doing. If I'm ok and you are moved in a small way by my words, I would like to know. If I've been doing it wrong all along, I need to know that, too. I get discouraged now and then, and feel like I should just give up on this whole silly thing that no one really cares about anyway, but then I remember - I care! It means something to me. So I keep on trying, cutting into that skin.

Punk Rock Grrl

Alot of songwriters happen to write lyrics like good poetry; then there are those who are true poets who happen to turn their work into incredible songs. Patti Smith falls into the second category.

Patti Smith moves through our collective imagination as an enigma, the epitome of "cool" and that is part of her appeal. Visionary "Godmother of Punk" of the 1970s, to the American Top-40 listening world, she's probably best known for "Because the Night" co-written with Bruce Springsteen in 1978, and brought into new light after 10,000 Maniacs remade the song in 1993. She's not now, nor has ever really been, mainstay on radio, and seemingly disappeared altogether through most of the 80s and 90s from the public eye. She's back this year with a vengeance, still private yet artistic as ever, and for that, I recommend checking out her work, past and present. I won't make this a review of her work because it's something that just needs to be experienced. You'll understand.

Her ninth book of poetry Auguries of Innocence was first published in 2005 but was re-released this summer in an "expanded" edition, although including only two new poems from the original text. She also has a new album out, also released this summer, entitled "The Coral Sea" with Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine. And her talent is not limited to poetry or song. A book of her photography will be released this November, entitled Patti Smith, Land 250. Also, to get a better glimpse into the life of this transient artist, the book Patti Smith: Dream of Life will be released on Tuesday, August 26, based on the acclaimed film of the same name.

Web: pattismith.net

MySpace: myspace.com/pattismith

And for your listening pleasure, some of her songs:

E-Bow the Letter (with REM)

Gloria

Dancing Barefoot

Without Chains

Land

Reconnecting

"Some people just weren't as interesting as others,"
he said, apologizing for sounding like a jerk
he said, in a connotation of coolness
that fed into the otherwise heady stream
of thought, so intellingent, as if
this thought could be expressed with
it caught between the gripping teeth.

"And some just were not interesting at all,"
I said, to myself, I wish - a reply to give;
instead, I don't answer or acknowledge;
instead, I remain as boring as ever.

Feather

This molted feather floats
from the limbs to the base,
and, as quickly, dissipates

Perhaps to be collected,
pressed in a dust jacket or
left to collect itself.

What little sheen has worn
away, before the cynical eyes
have seen to feel the color

That could have painted the skies.
Instead, the spectrum falls flat,
floats in any direction

Toward light. Turning, turned away.
The feather is not the bird.
The feather is not the bird.

A-traveling we will go

Since as far back as I can remember, I have loved all-things travel related. I used to study maps and, in my little Encyclopedia set, would read about different cultures, flags, languages, topography. Today, the question of travel is never far from my mind. Usually, the conversation is related to work - I travel quite a bit for my job and seem to always be hopping around from place to place all in the name of education. Then, there is unquenchable thirst to live vicariously through friends and family who have traveled to exotic places - or just places I've never been, sometimes never heard of, but suddenly sound fascinating because it's not here. My in-laws are crazy like that. Trips to Egypt, Russia, China, Cape Horn and many more...their next trip is to South Africa including a safari. Not that I'm a slouch when it comes to international travel...just, well...not that extensive. Yet. We're currently in the process of planning a trip now, albeit to Canada.

This probably explains my almost-obsessive relationship with the Travel Channel. By the way, Anthony Bourdain, when you're back in Jersey, give me a "ring." But seriously, it was interesting to see on the Travel Channel's blog site "World Hum" on Wednesday this week, outlining the "Six Ways U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan Could Spend Her $5,000 Travel Allowance." Of course, they're all locations in the US, but I had to smile that the very first location was Amherst and visiting the birthplace/home of Emily Dickinson, to whom Ryan has often been compared. Been there, done that. Great place.

So, on this Friday, as the soft days of summer wind down into more mellow calmness, and official vacation season - mostly a bust this year with most taking "Staycations" - comes to a close, I again refer to The Bishop. Enjoy.

Questions Of Travel (Elizabeth Bishop)

There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams
hurry too rapidly down to the sea,
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes.
For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,
aren't waterfalls yet,
in a quick age or so, as ages go here,
they probably will be.
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,
the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships,
slime-hung and barnacled.
Think of the long trip home.
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?
Where should we be today?
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play
in this strangest of theatres?
What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life
in our bodies, we are determined to rush
to see the sun the other way around?
The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?
To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,
inexplicable and impenetrable,
at any view,
instantly seen and always, always delightful?
Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too?
And have we room
for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?
But surely it would have been a pity
not to have seen the trees along this road,
really exaggerated in their beauty,
not to have seen them gesturing
like noble pantomimists, robed in pink.
--Not to have had to stop for gas and heard
the sad, two-noted, wooden tune
of disparate wooden clogs
carelessly clacking over
a grease-stained filling-station floor.
(In another country the clogs would all be tested.
Each pair there would have identical pitch.)
--A pity not to have heard
the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird
who sings above the broken gasoline pump
in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque:
three towers, five silver crosses.
--Yes, a pity not to have pondered,
blurr'dly and inconclusively,
on what connection can exist for centuries
between the crudest wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden cages.
--Never to have studied history in
the weak calligraphy of songbirds' cages.
--And never to have had to listen to rain
so much like politicians' speeches:
two hours of unrelenting oratory
and then a sudden golden silence
in which the traveller takes a notebook, writes:
"Is it lack of imagination that makes us come
to imagined places, not just stay at home?
Or could Pascal have been not entirely right
about just sitting quietly in one's room?
Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there . . . No. Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?"