My friend Moses is harvesting some of his sunflower crop now. He sent me this photo. It’s his hand and a sunflower, through a glass table:
I always think of Theodore Roethke poems when I see Moses’ photos. Roethke’s father owned a nursery in Michigan and Roethke spent his childhood in the greenhouses, messing around with worms and roots and loam and many of his poems are about plants. I have two poems that I like for this photo. The first is the second of two poems called cuttings. The imagery is a little sexy, but I think you all can take it.
CUTTINGS (later)
Theodore Roethke
This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,
Cut stems struggling to put down feet,
What saint strained so much,
Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?
I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing,
In my veins, in my bones I feel it, -
The small waters seeping upward,
The tight grains parting at last.
When sprouts break out,
Slippery as fish,
I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath wet.
Well, I warned you. But the image in the photo has an underwater feel to it so I’m adding another poem. Tell me which you think goes better with the photo.
RIVER INCIDENT
Theodore Roethke
A shell arched under my toes,
Stirred up a whirl of silt
That riffled around my knees.
Whatever I owed to time
Slowed in human form;
Sea water stood in my veins,
The elements I kept warm
Crumbled and flowed away,
And I knew I had been there before,
In that cold granitic slime,
In the dark, in the rolling water.
Okay, that last poem didn’t really go with the image at all, but I’m anxious, and it suits my mood.
Ann Leary, author of The Good House
Author of The Good House
Cuttings
September 2, 2009 by 28 Comments
Comments
Speak Your Mind
Why are you anxious ?
I’m just sort of wired that way. Nervous
Too much empty space around you now? That photo is pretty cool. You should go down to the barn and lean against Mark. By the way, how are the horses. Fall should be amazing riding weather. All those colors.
The photo, and “Cuttings” make me very ….nervy. Amazing how words and images can stir us.
The first poem goes very nice with the picture, something kind of sexy about the blurred shapes in the picture. I really like the picture a lot. Watched the last episode of the season for RM last night, a whole lot going on there. More pasture pics please, kitty update requested.
Everyone,
I am prone to anxiety too. I am looking into various forms of meditation, as well as tai-chi, an ancient art form of maintaining serenity. Things bother me too much, often unnecessarily so. Work challenges do not need to become monumental in my head. I need to chill out.
Ann, you do have a romantic spirit. I have always been impressed by how well read you are. I love language and have envied the writers who can turn words into sheer loveliness.
Gloria
I love sunflowers. To me a sunflower is a symbol of happiness, an exuberance for life. If you are willing, I’d love for see more photos of your friends’s (Moby?)flower plantation as well as his art.
Gloria
Speaking of love for literature and poetry, I just finished “Veronica” by Mary Gaitskill. It’s about a fallen model reminiscing about her relationship with an older, brash female friend who died of AIDs in the 1980s. Some of her writing are a bit abstract. I believe one passage takes in Paris – with a sentence describing a queen who has been beheaded and her blood purifying the streets. I believe she was referring to Anne Boleyn but am not certain. The book reads like poetry at times, for the reader to derive his/her own meaning. This woman can craft a sentence that is beautiful, sordid, and cruel at once.
I’ve been reading too much lately and need to take a break.
Gloria
Moses is so brilliant in many ways. What a beautiful photo.
I’m sorry, but both of those poems are over my head. I don’t see the sexy imagery in the first one. I guess Roethke is beyond my poetically challenged brain. Still learning here.
Thanks for the link to Love Walked In Lupe. I’m sure that Denis would be thrilled to know that I purchased a ‘very good’ vhs copy of it from a Amazon reseller for $5.49 including shipping! lololol It sounds good, hope I like it.
Still decluttering here. I can’t use the word purging. I just can’t – it makes me think of bulemia. I’m on a roll, in the zone here.
Hi Ann,
I hope by the time you read this, you’ve had a good night’s sleep with no lingering anxiety!
Beautiful pic—I’m mulling over my poem vote…
Lynne
You answered your own question Ann. The second one doesn’t really “go with” the photo. Although I do see the “under water quality” and why it would make you think of it. And if the second poem is calming, well it’s perfect too. They are both lovely.
I have an anxiety issue, but I also have a metabolism that is just this side of a coma. I can get myself worked up in to such a state, over practically nothing (and annoy all family members in the process). But I can also sit for hours on end with my cross stitch, quilting, needlepoint, or a good book (or even a bad book, because ya know, that OCD thing, have to read it start to finish, even if it sucks).
When you find something that helps make you feel better it’s best to just go with it. (Making lists helps me.)
Top of the mornin’, indeed! Saying the first poem is “a little sexy” is like saying the videos of the Irish models Lupe shared were “cute.” I’m going to be flushed all day thinking about this poem. But I can’t think of a better way to spend my day
funny you say your anxious, I am anxious too, I was feeling very postive, then I read a monthly horoscope for leos and it was just horrible….. It made me nervous! I have to get a grip and tell myself these things are not true! It was on astrologyzone.. I think I am getting rid of the link on my Pc….. a boycott is in effect…
feel better soon Ann, Love the pic!
Kristin, perfect suggestion, I did go hang with the horses this morning. And Bev, I’m going to check out astrologyzone, against my better judgement. Also, Moses says it will be a full moon tomorrow – the corn moon. I am ALWAYS on edge with a full moon.
Bev, I don’t want to look at the Leo horoscope for the month now – you have me scared! I’m really stressed at work. Only working 3 days this week and 3 next week, I’m under the gun. Yes, I love having the time off, but I’m paying for it big time, and there are a number of unexpected crisis popping up! ack! Calgon, take me away!
Speaking of Leos, who has birthdays or anniversaries in Sept? Just call me Julie McCoy, Activities Director. If you don’t know who I’m referring to, that means you’re a youngin, and aren’t old enough to remember The Love Boat, which “Soon will be making another run… Come aboard, we’re expecting you…” Sing it with me everyone!
Bet you won’t be able to get that out of your head all day now! lolol
I find the more I try to fight feeling anxious and relax the more anxious I feel. I too was feeling anxious being cooped up inside for days because of the LA fires, They were 15 minutes away from me and outside the air was so smokey you couldn’t breath. I don’t know how fire fighters do it. I certainly support the Leary Fire Fighters assoc. Glad to finely be able to take a walk. Maybe you should take a long walk the country around you looks so pretty or find a friend to play tennis with. Moving around usually helps until it passes.
You mentioned doing a book tour in NYC or LA in Sept. Are you still planning to do that?
Dear Ann:
For some reason, I do not relate to either poem. I like the photo, though. And that anxiety, is it related to the admissions office by any chance?.
It has been hot and sticky in California and I am looking forward to some coolness.
A book tour in LA? Cool, I just might make it. Imagine if we can all meet in person.
Gloria
Aack!!! Tracy the backs of my eyes hurt picturing Gavin McCloud? Gopher and the rest of the smartly attired crew. Not to mention the thought provoking story lines.
Welcome Corn Moon:
September’s full moon is known as the Full Corn Moon. We take our full moon names from the Native American tradition, this one designating the time of year when corn is harvested. The other popular name for September’s marvelous full moon is the Harvest Moon. Whatever you call it, use this time to gather your wits and take stock of the bounty of your life.
lolol Kristin. Sorry. It’s what we call Wayne, a friend from high school who is part of the group of us that have reconnected on facebook since January. He’s the one who organizes a lot of our get togethers.
I know it was corny as heck, but I loved that show way back then. It was mindless goofy fun. And I still have that silly song in my head. lolol
Tracy- when I was in college I worked as the activities director for my uncle’s retirement center. Wanna guess what they called me??? And in answer to your question, my birthday is tomorrow (oops, technically today), the 4th. I was born on Labor Day. My mother thinks that’s hysterical. (And if you are really curious, I have now turned 48.)
lolol Julie. A name that will go down in infamy!
Happy Birthday! Well, it was a Labor Day for your Mom, right? hehehe Happy 48th.
No one has to share their age if they don’t want, just want to send everyone Happy Birthday and Anniversary wishes.
Ok, first entry in my little book for September is Julie. I’ll be the official date book keeper. Come on, there has to be more September dates here. Come out, come out, wherever you are!
Happy Birthday Julie!
Ann,
Why are you anxious? You seem to always have it together. Labor Day Weekend, Going to Woodstock CT. for the Fair. Then going to Spencer, MA for the Fair there…Thankfully it won’t be very hot this weekend, I love the animals’ but the son has issues with the odors that eminate from the animal’s, and when it is wall to wall people on top of it he’s a bit cranky. I get to work this weekend too…Vampire hours….hope everone has a happy and safe weekend
P.S. I like the first poem better
Gorgeous picture! At first I thought it was a painting. I’m always in awe of people who take a simple idea and turn it into something so creative.
I don’t believe in astrology yet I always read my horoscope in the newspaper. I definitely believe in the full moon. A very good friend of mine, who is a nurse, says the maternity ward and emergency room of a hospital is always most crowded with a full moon!!!
Christine
Okay, here I go with my list. (I’m an anal retentive accountant with a steno pad always at hand. Having my “lists” helps with *my* anxiety.)
1. Moses’s photograph looks like a beautiful water color painting to me. Almost like Monet’s lillies on the pond. The glass of the table is so liquid and sensual.
2. So having said that, I think the first poem fits better with the photo. When I read it it reminded me of those high speed photos taken of flower seedlings being planted in rich soil, sprouting roots down into the ground with force, while also sprouting above ground with force, and then arching upward, stretching toward the sun and then releasing into a bloom. (I think I need a cigarette now.)
3. I’ve been anxious lately, as I always am around Harvest Moon time. I think it’s because I love the Sep, Oct, Nov time of year so much, I get anxious that it will go by too fast. I try to savor Halloween and Thanksgiving, anxiously trying to hold time still. (And I was born in October, so I’m a winter baby. A baby who will turn 42 – I can hardly speak the number – on October 26th. I am a true Scorpio.)
4. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, which I know isn’t exactly on the hit parade for book signings, but it would be great if Ann had one here.
Happy Birthday to all of you September babies.
Catherine
Both poems are awesome and viscerally charged, but to me they didn’t “feel” like sunflowers. I love the photo…it gives the impression of being under water, but it seems calming and comforting, sort of dream-like. In the poems, the first brought me under the earth-in the loam
- and working to sprout loose from the dark. The second one brought me under the roiling and darkened water, where life begins and again, trying to morph out of its grasp. But hey, that’s just me. How about this one if you trade out the daffodils and put in sunflowers?
“Daffodils” (1804)
I WANDER’D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch’d in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed — and gazed — but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).
Rose I may see you at Woodstock , it is 10 mins from my home…..:)