rest in peace, Galway Kinnell

 One of my favorite poets died this week. Galway Kinnell. I was lucky enough to study with him, and, for a period of time, to call him a friend. He encouraged me to write seriously, to believe in poetry. I did, until I didn't.

Saint Francis And The Sow 

The bud 
stands for all things, 
even for those things that don't flower, 
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing; 
though sometimes it is necessary 
to reteach a thing its loveliness, 
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath
them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.--Galway Kinnell 

a visit to Bow Street Flowers (and a poem)

Bow Street Flowers is in Somerville, MA. near the Cambridge border,

where there are always fun things to see.
On this visit a car covered with floppy discs. 

Remember those? Time warp. And it wasn't that long ago, in real time,

but in virtual time it is ancient history.

But we still have flowers. Right outside the shop, as I walked up,
I watched a woman come out and put her flowers in her bike basket.

I was so enchanted by that sight, I didn't even notice her fabulous pants 

until I looked at the picture she kindly allowed me to take before she cycled away.

If you've read my other Bow Street posts (here and here) you know that there is
much more than flowers in that small shop. Shelley has created a place 

of beauty, warmth and whimsey.
Every time I go there I say I want to live there, and that it's like
walking into a story book. Because it is.

I had one of those childhoods where I wanted to be part of
everyone else's family. I was always looking for a home. And now,
I have a lovely home (two, in fact) and a dear family,
but that lonely child hovers.

There are places that fill me with longing and love.

A little shop with rabbits underfoot

and flowers galore makes me feel complete.

I bring some of that home with me,

 flowers, enough for two arrangements.

Aji supervises.

I smile all day. It's the flowers, and more.

                          Dog-Days

A ladder sticking up at the open window,

The top of an old ladder,

And all of Summer is there.

Great waves and tufts of wisteria surge across

        the window

And a thin, bleated blossom

Jerks up and down in the sunlight;

Purple translucence against the blue sky.

"Tie back this branch," I say,

But my hands are sticky with leaves,

And my nostrils widen to the smell of crushed green.

The ladder moves uneasily at the open window,

And I call to the man beneath,

"Tie back that branch."

There is a ladder leaning against the window-sill,

And a mutter of thunder in the air.

                   --Amy Lowell (1874-1925)

messages over land and sea

I'm in the Catskills now--it's fully spring, heavy with greens and peeps and early wildflowers. The waters are rushing with snowmelt and I feel a wonderful vibrancy everywhere--the air filled with excitement and expectation, dreams of canoes and campfires, picnics and swimming holes.

These days when I go to the studio I usually paint, but I also make mixed media pieces now and then--I love pulling together disparate objects and creating something from them. Something strange is going on in my life--it's like I'm back where I was before I had children. In those days I wrote poetry  and painted. But slowly I gave that up--I didn't haven't what I think you need to be an artist and that is intent. I can't think of a better word for it.

So, I had kids, went to law school, worked for years in the trenches in the intersecting worlds of child abuse, homelessness, addiction, poverty and mental illness. I've quit that world, except for some pro bono work; my kids are more or less grown, and now I have what I didn't have when I was young, and that is creative intent. So I'm writing and painting again; it feels good, it feels right, and like something I can do for the rest of my life.

Recently Orion Magazine, which I love, hosted a poetry exchange, and my friend Kate and I participated. We did three exchanges and enjoyed it so much, we're continuing on our own. You can see two of each of our poems here on the Orion Tumblr Page. (Scroll down to Kate Reddy and Jennifer Jefferson.)

I'm telling you this because…this blog, and you who read and comment regularly, have become an important part of my life. We edit our lives as presented on our blogs, and I suppose I want to try doing a little less editing. Also, I'm trying to become more confident, less shy. In real life, I never tell people that I write or paint (or blog). In real life, I have all kinds of problems. I'm trying to integrate the disparate pieces of me, and oddly enough, this seems like a good place to do it. (I say oddly because it's so public. But it feels so private.)

Anyway, I hope this doesn't freak you out. I promise there will still be an endless stream of cat and flower pictures. Just maybe a little bit other now and then.

Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. 
Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.

-Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass

xo, Jen

all I want to do is sit on a verandah

I'm still painting all the greens. Sometimes flowers creep in. Sometimes I paint other things, but these are the ones that feel most fully realized, the most me. I'm working on some inspired by geography and topography that are different--no grids. Deltas, rivers, fields. Still plenty of greens.


Vocation
Sandra Beasley

For six months I dealt Baccarat in a casino. 
For six months I played Brahms in a mall. 
For six months I arranged museum dioramas;
my hands were too small for the Paleolithic
and when they reassigned me to lichens, I quit. 
I type ninety-one words per minute, all of them 
Help. Yes, I speak Dewey Decimal.
I speak Russian, Latin, a smattering of Tlingit. 
I can balance seven dinner plates on my arm.
All I want to do is sit on a veranda while 
a hard rain falls around me. I’ll file your 1099s. 
I’ll make love to strangers of your choice. 
I’ll do whatever you want, as long as I can do it 
on that veranda. If it calls you, it’s your calling, 
right? Once I asked a broker what he loved 
about his job, and he said Making a killing. 
Once I asked a serial killer what made him 
get up in the morning, and he said The people.

I found this poem, and many others I love on this Tumblr. It reminds me of me. One day I will make a list for you of the many jobs I've had. It's raining in Lowell; out the studio windows I see smokestacks and freight trains. Inside I look for more greens.

flowers in the New England house

No flowers in the garden. 

I keep looking, where the first crocus, the first snowdrop, 

usually appear. But it will happen--I know, because look at Jane's flowers.

I keep supermarket daffodils close by, 

because they smell like spring, even when I'm not looking.

Also:

I enjoyed this book. And this one.

from airplane windows.

moth paintings

this poem

I meant to live a quiet life

Snow, slush, ice. Warmish days start the melting, then it freezes. Bits of brown grass are visible around the edges. The birds are singing more, as the wall of winter opens to distractions and daydreams.

In five days it will officially be spring. A poem by Mary Oliver:

Spring

This morning
two birds
fell down the side of the maple tree

like a tuft of fire
a wheel of fire
a love knot

out of control as they plunged through the air
pressed against each other
and I thought

how I meant to live a quiet life
how I meant to live a life of mildness and meditation
tapping the careful words against each other

and I thought--
as though I were suddenly spinning, like a bar of silver
as though I had shaken my arms and lo! they were
      wings--

of the Buddha
when he rose from his green garden
when he rose in his powerful ivory body

when he turned to the long dusty road without end
when he covered his hair with ribbons and the petals
         of flowers
when he opened his hands to the world.

flowering fleeing

And I was alive in the blizzard of the blossoming pear,
Myself I stood in the storm of the bird-cherry tree.
It was all leaflife and starshower, unerring, self-shattering power,
And it was all aimed at me.

What is this dire delight flowering fleeing always earth?
What is being? What is truth?

Blossoms rupture and rapture the air,
All hover and hammer,
Time intensified and time intolerable, sweetness raveling rot.
It is now. It is not.

           - Osip Mandlestam, 1937

The last known poem written by Mandlestam, shortly before being sent to a Gulag camp by Stalin, where he died in 1938.

                                

we are the night ocean

 So many birds stop by before it snows. I fill the feeders and scatter seed on top of the old snow, watch them swoop in, cluster, chatter. It's bitter cold again and I'm reading a wonderful book, Body & Soul by Frank Conroy. New York in the 1940's, a lonely, neglected young child prodigy taken under the wing of a neighborhood music store owner. A book filled with heart and soul.

I'm going to have tomato soup with grated cheddar cheese in it for dinner, while the rest of the family eats Cuban pork sandwiches from leftover pork Bob made last night. (I have never acquired a taste for pork.) I have some good clementines too.

Whenever I post something personal (like family pictures) I have to overcome the urge to remove them, and then I usually put up another post the next day, a more impersonal one---birds, books, mugs of tea...

We are the night ocean filled
with glints of light. We are the space
between the fish and the moon,
while we sit here together.
                            
                                   -Rumi

books...gift ideas

Books were always under the tree when I was a child, and I kept up the tradition with my family. The other day my son Matt and I went to the New England Mobile Book Fair (when I first saw the name I though it was a book mobile) to buy some gifts. They used to shelve their books by publisher, not subject or author, which made a lot of people crazy, but I loved the randomness--it became a real exploration. I was disappointed to see that the books are now conventionally shelved, but it's still a great store. Half of it is older bargain books, which is always fun.

I freeze up when people ask me what my favorite_______ (color, movie, book) is, but I do enjoy reading other people's lists. It's been a great year of reading for me, so here are my absolute favorites that I read in last year or so--substantial books that could make great gifts.

Literary Novels 
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
The Roundhouse, Louise Erdrich
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Anthony Marra
Swamplandia, Karen Russell 
Live by Night, Dennis Lehane
The Dog Stars, Peter Heller

Memoirs
Wild, Cheryl Strayed
Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, Alexandra Fuller

Older Gift-Worthy Novels  I Read This Year
The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon (thanks to Amelia for the recommendation). It would be fun to pair this with Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore.
All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy (The entire Border Trilogy would make a nice gift.)
A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin (The third time I've read it.)

Advice on Love and Life
Tiny Beautiful Things,  Cheryl Strayed

Poetry
The Ecopoetry Anthology
New and Selected Poems, Volumes 1 and 2, Mary Oliver (Dream Work is my favorite single volume of hers)
The Four Seasons Poems, Everyman Library Anthology
The Everyman Library Pocket Poet series is wonderful--attractive little books, reasonably priced. Great gifts!

And
The Best American Series is terrific. I buy several of them every year--always the essay, travel writing, and sports writing volumns. Don't feel you have to limit yourself to this year's books--the older ones make good reading too.

I hope to do another post of detective/espionage suggestion (and maybe on some other random book gift ideas). I read all kinds of books, so feel free to email me (or comment) if you want some suggestions. I'd love to know any favorites of yours too.

Jen

p.s. Comments from Alicia and Petra remind me that the majority of people who comment here don't live in the U.S.A. and therefore have no (or limited) access to the books I mention. I didn't think about that when I wrote the post. If you live in another country and have a favorite book or two from there I would love to know what they are. I found the Zafon book when asking Amelia for books by Spanish authors. thank you, merci danke gracias grazie spasbida cheers!

unharvested

It's been a beautiful autumn, brisk and crisp, leaves from green to gold, scarlet, orange, bronze, glowing yellow. The windows are open and I'm taking long walks and trying to savor, store it up for bleaker days.  I've discovered pink lady apples, (they've edged out honeycrisps as my favorite) and beautiful sunsets from my studio windows: fat pink clouds and streaks of gold over the old mill town of Lowell.

I've been culling my books, pruning, paring, streamlining, saving only the ones who touch my heart.

The rest go to More Than Words  a used books store that trains teens in foster care: "Empowering youth to take charge of their lives by taking charge of a business."

You know when you go into someone's house and look at their books, you get to know them? Here are most of my surviving A, B, and start of the C (by author) novels, those that aren't scattered elsewhere or in the country. It's scary how few there are, but it feels good too, that I've passed along the ones I'm pretty sure I won't read again, stripped down to the necessities.

"May something always go unharvested!
 May much stay out of our stated plan,
 Apples or something forgotten and left,
 So smelling their sweetness would be no theft."

from Unharvested, by Robert Frost

the gorgeous nothings

Solo retreat in Provincetown--long walks, good art, crazy sunset, interesting conversations.

"Provincetown is, always has been, an eccentrics sanctuary."

                                                  -Michael Cunningham

Green. I can't stay away.

Each little square is an exploration.

Also,

The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shaccochis. Great book. Read it if the description makes it sound like your kind of thing.

New Directions is publishing reproductions of Emily Dickinson's writings on envelopes. The Gorgeous Nothings.

Jellyfish are taking over. And, Inside the mind of an Octopus. 

moss, olive, khaki, etc.

I'm working on changing my online habits--thinking about how I use the internet, and how it uses me. What I dislike the most about the world wide web, and what scares me, is how rapidly it has consumed so many aspects of my life. Rebecca Solnit articulates my feelings in  this wonderful essay. 

"That bygone time had rhythm, and it had room for you to do one thing at a time; it had different parts; mornings included this, and evenings that, and a great many of us had these schedules in common." 

But I've missed this place, this web log--and it feels like an actual place, and not just words and pictures on a screen. I picture a spiderweb with tiny dots on it--I'm one of the dots, and you are one too.                        

And Seamus Heaney died. I felt such a connection to him, through his poetry, his love of language and nature, of mournful beauty. Last spring  I wrote about the frog pond and how it brought to mind his great poem Death of a Naturalist. 

Recently, when I realized the raspberries were blackberries I thought of Blackberry Picking. 

"...red ones inked up and that hunger
sent us out with milk-cans, pea-tins, jam-pots
where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots."

The last time I posted paintings, Steve commented, "I'm really motived artistically by seeing these. I suddenly want to see how much red I can add to the greens before they're no longer green. Moss, olive, khaki, etc." 

Despite my passion for the color green, I didn't see that I'd been painting mostly brighter tones, that I'd missed an entire family of shades. I thought about that the next time I painted. (Thanks, Steve.)

I keep looking, and there's always something more to see.

I always need a leaf or a flower,

For the past few weeks I've spent much less time at the computer.

My attention span was shredded, and it scared me. 

But it's coming back. 

I'm reading the hard copy of the newspaper again instead of skimming online.

I feel like I can breathe again.

There is so much that I don't need to know.

Last weekend I didn't go on the computer at all, 

and the only thing I missed was reading your blogs. 

Tomorrow I am heading off for a long weekend, with no computer,
somewhere with an ocean.

This poem:

           Of What Surrounds Me

Whatever it is I am saying, I always
     need a leaf or a flower, if not an
entire field. As for sky, I am so wildly
     in love with each day's inventions, cool blue
or cat gray or full
     of the ship of clouds, I simply can't
say whatever it is I am saying without
     at least one skyful. That leaves water, a
creek or a well, river or ocean, it has to be
     there. For the heart to be there. For the pen
to be poised. For the idea to come.

                                  ---Mary Oliver

See you in a few days...

xo,  Jen

a spring country weekend

The sun shone through the trees and it was just warm enough that I didn't need a sweater in the afternoon. Wading in shallow water, ferns unfurling, wildflowers popping up...

All the greens:
spring green, apple green, moss green, forest green...

Checking the frog pond for tadpoles or frogspawn. Frogspawn reminding me of a favorite poem, Death of a Naturalist, by the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney. (Read the entire poem here.) Remembering as a child in Virginia collecting frogspawn in jars and tadpoles in buckets...

...There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampots full of the jellied
Specks to range on the window-sills at home,..

-Seamus Heaney from Death of  a Naturalist