{"id":17623,"date":"2016-01-01T14:43:31","date_gmt":"2016-01-01T19:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=17623"},"modified":"2016-01-01T14:46:50","modified_gmt":"2016-01-01T19:46:50","slug":"container-meet-the-things-contained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/container-meet-the-things-contained\/","title":{"rendered":"Container, Meet the Thing(s) Contained"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"'A<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: “A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words,” by sk.fotography. Found it on Flickr<\/a>; used here under a Creative Commons license.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/a><\/em> (italicized lines):<\/p>\n

Dancing<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was my father taught my mother
\nhow to dance.
\nI never knew that.
\nI thought it was the other way.
\nBallroom was their style,
\na graceful twirling,
\ncurved arms and fancy footwork,
\na green-eyed radio.<\/p>\n

There is always more than you know.<\/em>
\n There are always boxes<\/em>
\n put away in the cellar,<\/em>
\n worn shoes and cherished pictures,<\/em>
\n notes you find later,<\/em>
\n sheet music you can’t play.<\/em><\/p>\n

A woman came on Wednesdays
\nwith tapes of waltzes.
\nShe tried to make him shuffle
\naround the floor with her.
\nShe said it would be good for him.
\nHe didn’t want to.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Margaret Atwood [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a> (italicized passage):<\/p>\n

It is, of course, we who house poems as much as their words, and we ourselves must be the locus of poetry’s depth of newness. Still, the permeability seems to travel both ways: a changed self will find new meanings in a good poem, but a good poem also changes the shape of the self. Having read it, we are not who we were the moment before… Art lives in what it awakens in us<\/em>… It is a triteness to say that the only thing to be counted upon is that what you count on will not be what comes. Utilitarian truths evaporate: we die. Poems allow us not only to bear the tally and toll of our transience, but to perceive, within their continually surprising abundance, a path through the grief of that insult into joy<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Jane Hirshfield [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Joy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Don’t cry, its only music,<\/em>
\nsomeone’s voice is saying.
\nNo one you love is dying.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s only music. And it was only spring,
\nthe world’s unreasoning body
\nrun amok, like a saint’s, with glory,
\nthat overwhelmed a young girl
\ninto unreasoning sadness.
\nCrazy<\/em>, she told herself,
\nI should be dancing with happiness<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But it happened again. It happens
\nwhen we make bottomless love—
\nthere follows a bottomless sadness
\nwhich is not despair
\nbut its nameless opposite.
\nIt has nothing to do with the passing of time.
\nIt’s not about loss. It’s about
\ntwo seemingly parallel lines
\nsuddenly coming together
\ninside us, in some place
\nthat is still wilderness.<\/p>\n

Joy, joy<\/em>, the sopranos sing,
\nreaching for the shimmering notes
\nwhile our eyes fill with tears.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Lisel Mueller [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

I dream of my old English teacher [Miss Groby] occasionally. It seems that we are always in Sherwood Forest and that from far away I can hear Robin Hood winding his silver horn.<\/p>\n

“Drat that man for making such a racket on his cornet!” cries Miss Groby. “He scared away a perfectly darling Container for the Thing Contained, a great, big, beautiful one. It leaped right back into its context when that man blew that cornet. It was the most wonderful Container for the Thing Contained I ever saw here in the Forest of Arden.”<\/p>\n

“This is Sherwood Forest,” I say to her.<\/p>\n

“That doesn’t make any difference at all that I can see,” she says to me.<\/p>\n

Then I wake up, tossing and moaning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(James Thurber [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

[asking]<\/strong><\/p>\n

there is ghazal<\/span> swimming inside of her, wanting to be born. on the matter of foretelling, of small miracles, cactus flowers in bloom on this city fire escape, where inside your tongue touches every inch of her skin, where you lay your hand on her belly and sleep. here, she fingers the ornate remains of ancient mosques. here, some mythic angel will rise from the dust of ancestors\u2019 bones. this is where you shall worship, at the intersections of distilled deities and memory\u2019s sharp edges. the country is quite a poetic place; water and rock contain verse and metaphor, even wild grasses reply in rhyme. you are not broken. she knows this having captured a moment of lucidity; summer lightning bugs, sun\u2019s rays in a jelly jar.<\/p>\n

this is not a love poem, but a cove to escape the flux, however momentary. she is still a child, confabulating the fantastic; please do not erode her wonder for the liquid that is your language. there is thunderstorm in her chest, wanting to burst through her skin. this is neither love poem nor plea. this is not river, nor stone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Barbara Jane Reyes [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Night Drive<\/strong><\/p>\n

Roadlight licks the night ahead, licks
\nthe white line on night\u2019s new hide, licks
\nthe undulating blacktop flat, sticks its end-
\nless forking tongue out onward, flicks
\nitself at culvert, tree, passing truck, a sign
\ninsisting heartbeats equal conscious life
\n(it may be) of someone\u2019s (maybe my)
\nforever unborn child. I let the knife
\nof wind inside and sing A Whiter Shade of Pale,
\nno earthly reason why, and think of what
\nwon’t be and who, and whether it be
\nspeed, wind, song, or my mind\u2019s roar
\nthat drowns for once time’s slangy whine,
\nhere comes hope to climb clear of before;
\nstillborn hope with desperate, Moro-reflex,
\nundead grip climbs right back up my neck,
\nraising each pointless, residual nape hair
\nin ancestral salute to an absence, to the air
\nthat won’t question itself, won’t ever check
\nthe moral rearview. I accelerate gamely,
\nwondering what makes me want to leave
\neach person, place and thing I learn to love.
\nWhat shoves me off again, racing insanely,
\nas if to the place that will always save
\na place for me, a room that will contain
\nthe kind of people who’d embrace the things
\nI’m still afraid I’m still afraid to face.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(J. Allyn Rosser [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make use of. Our thought should be in relation to all p articular and already formulated thoughts, as a man on a mountain who, as he looks forward, sees also below him, without actually looking at them, a great many forests and plains. Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Simone Weil [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words,” by sk.fotography. Found it on Flickr; used here under a Creative Commons license.] From whiskey river (italicized lines): Dancing It was my father taught my mother how to dance. I never knew that. I thought it was the other way. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,250,5,36,251,372,713,4159],"tags":[270,1544,1645,2314,2587,2880,4239,4240,4241],"class_list":{"0":"post-17623","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-art","9":"category-06_writing","10":"category-reading","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"category-style-and-craft","13":"category-humor-writing_cat","14":"category-essays","15":"tag-jane-hirshfield","16":"tag-james-thurber","17":"tag-margaret-atwood","18":"tag-lisel-mueller","19":"tag-j-allyn-rosser","20":"tag-simone-weil","21":"tag-barbara-jane-reyes","22":"tag-containers","23":"tag-things-contained","24":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4Af","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17623"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17629,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17623\/revisions\/17629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}