The Angel Gabriel in Miami

It is the time of year where many college English teachers will be able to relate to this aspect of my life:  so much grading to do, so little time.

It's also the time of year when various writers are announcing which works of theirs have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  I do not have this kind of good news to share.

In fact, I've only had a poem nominated once.  It was for a poem that fits well with this time of the year, in that it's about the Virgin Mary and the angel Gabriel, updated for our time.

So, let me revisit this process.  It gives me happiness to think about how I came to write this poem.

On a Monday in January of 2015, on Facebook, I saw this image of the Annunciation--what a neat woodcut (linoleum cut, I would find out later):

I went to Beth's site for a fascinating post--with more pictures of the process!--of how she came to create this image.  It was a good reminder that even though a creative project may not come together right away, it doesn't mean we're done with it or it with us.

Later in the morning, a different Facebook friend posted this image, to which she credits L Wallnau:

I thought of the angel Gabriel yet again.  I thought of invitations because my friend wrote this:

Some called to dress the bride
Others to prepare her
while a small company sent out with invitations

I thought of Gabriel as an engraved invitation.  I thought of what it would take to get our attention these days.  Angel choirs might get our attention, if we could hear them.  I think of students on Monday who walked right past me while I asked, "Do you have your schedule?  Check in here please"--their ear buds prevented awareness of all sorts.

Would we follow a star?  Would we study the skies long enough to realize that a new star had appeared?

Yes, I've tilled this ground before--and last night, when I tried to write a poem inspired by these images, I wrote a passable poem, but nothing special.  Still, it's a poem.

I wrote it as I waited in the Registrar's office for students to come pick up schedules or hold sheets.  One of my colleagues saw me in yet a different place and asked, "How many hats are you wearing these days?"  Lots of hats.  Would I rather be wearing a beautiful gown?

Ah, but I am a sturdy sort, running up and down the stairs, trying to help solve a wide variety of problems:  sort of like this image, but not really:

I would need a sturdy gown.  Can one have sturdiness along with swirls?

Suddenly this morning, I had an idea for a poem that might be different:  the angel Gabriel roams a college campus.  But it's not a bucolic campus--no it's a commuter school, people cramming in classes after work, or before working the graveyard shift.  The annunciation, but the Mary figure isn't the traditional beauty--no, she's tired beyond belief, and she can't believe that God would choose her.  Why not go to Harvard to choose a better mother candidate?  Go haunt the halls of privilege!

Of course, my favorite Bible stories show us time and time again that God appears in the midst of the poor and powerless, far from the halls of power and privilege.  But will we have ears and eyes to hear?

I would wrestle with that poem again and again.  And finally, it became this poem, which appeared in the book Annunciation, which led to the nomination for the Pushcart Prize.


A Girl More Worthy

The angel Gabriel rolls his eyes
at his latest assignment:
a virgin in Miami?
Can such a creature exist?

He goes to the beaches, the design
districts, the glittering buildings
at every boundary.
Just to cover all bases, he checks
the churches but finds no
vessels for the holy inside.

He thinks he’s found her in the developer’s
office, when she offers him coffee, a kind
smile, and a square of cake. But then she instructs
him in how to trick the regulatory
authorities, how to make his income and assets
seem bigger so that he can qualify
for a huge mortgage that he can never repay.


On his way out of town, he thinks he spies
John the Baptist under the Interstate
flyway that takes tourists
to the shore. But so many mutter
about broods of vipers and lost
generations that it’s hard to tell
the prophet from the grump,
the lunatic from the T.V. commentator.

Finally, at the commuter college,
that cradle of the community,
he finds her. He no longer hails
moderns with the standard angel
greetings. Unlike the ancients,
they are not afraid, or perhaps, their fears
are just so different now.


The angel Gabriel says a silent benediction
and then outlines God’s plan.
Mary wonders why Gabriel didn’t go
to Harvard where he might find
a girl more worthy. What has she done
to find God’s favor?

She has submitted
to many a will greater than her own.
Despite a lifetime’s experience
of closed doors and the word no,
she says yes.

Bob Dylan, Nobel Laureate

If Bob Dylan had won the Nobel Prize for Literature long ago when I was in my 20's, I'd have celebrated that choice.  I spent a lot of time with some of his albums, and I'd have been able to tell you all the ways that he was a superior writer to anyone else.  In fact, I had fierce arguments with friends who insisted that John Lennon was better; if there were other candidates, I don't remember.  I might also have argued for Bono from U2, although at the time, I'd have seen Dylan as superior.

My friends and I also had arguments about whether or not songwriters should be considered poets.  Was songwriting so different a form that we couldn't compare the two?  At different points in my life, I'd have answered differently.  In my younger years, when I was listening to the same music as my students, the arguments would have seemed more pressing, a way to prove to my students that literature was important, was worth studying, was worth preserving for future generations.

Now I am older.  While I have replaced the vinyl U2 with compact discs, I have not bought CDs of Dylan's music that inspired me in my youth.  I rarely have the yearning to hear an old Dylan song the way I do so many others.  Much of Dylan's music seems rooted in a distant time, but that may say more about me as a listener than something important about the music.

I think about all the other authors, all equally deserving of the Nobel.  I think about all the years that the Nobel committee has made their choice, and I've said, "Who?"  Some years, the announcement of the Nobel winner has led to delightful discoveries.  For example, in the rush to explain the choice of Wisława Szymborska, I heard her work for the first time and rushed to read more.  I must confess that the fact that she was a poet meant that I was more likely to pick up her work; I already have so many novelists on my list whom I may never get to.

So, do I see the choice of Dylan as a sure sign of the collapse of culture?  No, I don't.  It may be a sign that culture has shifted, but it's not like they gave the Nobel to Brittany Spears.

I've always said that if I wanted my poetry to have a wider audience, I should find a group of rappers and let them transform my work into something that would get airplay.  Or, once I said that.  Now I'm not sure that radio airwaves is the way to win hearts and minds.  I wish I knew a sure way.

In some ways, Dylan answers that question, but not with a surefire formula.  In fact, some might find fault with him for changing his art, for co-opting his art to fit with what audiences wanted.  Some decades, he's been successful in that effort.  In some decades, he's been a forgotten remnant.

But he's always continued creating.  If there's a lesson for the rest of us, that must be the one that gives us hope.

He didn't create art while saying, "One day I'll show the establishment.  I'll win the Nobel Prize, and then they'll be sorry!"

No, he created art that changed the establishment:  it's a time-honored goal.  It may not be what he set out to do, but I would argue that the art that is most important, most enduring, is the art that changes society.

I say this, of course, being fully aware of all the important art that did not do that, but is important for other reasons.  I say this paragraph above while at the same time being able to contradict myself with all the other art that is far more important if less transformative to the society around it.

I say all of this realizing that we could spend lifetimes debating the whole issue of importance.

So, let me get back on track.  Let me celebrate that an artist who was once vitally important to me has been honored.  Let me celebrate that this choice will spark interesting conversations with many people who wouldn't ordinarily talk about literature at all.

Let me celebrate that those of us who are feeling a bit obscure and forgotten may find inspiration to keep going, to keep making our art, because of this choice of Nobel laureate.

Pushcart Prize Nomination for My Poem!

I can now share my good news:  my poem, "A Girl More Worthy," has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  It appears in the gorgeous collection, Annunciation, from Phoenicia Publishing, which you can order here.

I've been corresponding by e-mail with Beth, my editor, but on Monday, when I saw the subject line Pushcart Nominations, my heart stopped.  I said, "Now wouldn't that be sweet."  I clicked on the e-mail and tried to be patient as my work computer opened it.

And there was the news:  Beth could nominate 6 works, and mine was one of them.  Hurrah!  I was so happy that I cried--literally.

I've spent the rest of the week thinking about why this nomination means so much to me.

I've been publishing in a wide variety of journals for almost 20 years, and this Pushcart nomination is my first.  I've watched other worthy writers discuss their nominations, and if I'm being honest, some years I've wondered if it will ever be my turn.  It sounds petulant, and it is, but I want to be honest about this creative life I'm living.

I continue to think about how I came to write this poem, which I described in this blog post.  In short, I saw this picture on Beth's Facebook update:

and on the same day, I saw this picture in a different Facebook post

and a poem began to emerge.

It wasn't until I revised the poem and returned to the original post about the poem that I ended it in a satisfying way.  I originally had the angel Gabriel finding Mary in that real estate office.

Here is the complete poem:


A Girl More Worthy

The angel Gabriel rolls his eyes
at his latest assignment:
a virgin in Miami?
Can such a creature exist?

He goes to the beaches, the design
districts, the glittering buildings
at every boundary.
Just to cover all bases, he checks
the churches but finds no
vessels for the holy inside.

He thinks he’s found her in the developer’s
office, when she offers him coffee, a kind
smile, and a square of cake. But then she instructs
him in how to trick the regulatory
authorities, how to make his income and assets
seem bigger so that he can qualify
for a huge mortgage that he can never repay.


On his way out of town, he thinks he spies
John the Baptist under the Interstate
flyway that takes tourists
to the shore. But so many mutter
about broods of vipers and lost
generations that it’s hard to tell
the prophet from the grump,
the lunatic from the T.V. commentator.

Finally, at the commuter college,
that cradle of the community,
he finds her. He no longer hails
moderns with the standard angel
greetings. Unlike the ancients,
they are not afraid, or perhaps, their fears
are just so different now.


The angel Gabriel says a silent benediction
and then outlines God’s plan.
Mary wonders why Gabriel didn’t go
to Harvard where he might find
a girl more worthy. What has she done
to find God’s favor?

She has submitted
to many a will greater than her own.
Despite a lifetime’s experience
of closed doors and the word no,
she says yes.

 

What Would You Do with Your MacArthur Winnings?

We are in the middle of awards season--the Nobels last week, the MacArthur Fellowships a few weeks ago, and soon, the National Book Award finalists and the Pulitzers.  All of these prizes come with money, and I've often wondered if it makes a difference to the winners.

I remember reading an interview with Octavia Butler in Poets and Writers in 1996 or 1997.  She said that the MacArthur Fellowship bought her time to write.  She'd had all these stories in her head, but she had to work a variety of energy crushing jobs which left her too drained to write much.  After winning the prize, she could focus on her writing.

This New York Times article asks the same question and concludes that unlike lottery winners, who often end up in worse circumstances, MacArthur Fellows are able to manage their money. In part, it's because they've had lots of practice in managing money in service to their vision.

I was struck by this vignette:  "Steve Coleman, a saxophonist who won last year at age 57, said he had created a life over decades that required little money to maintain and could be supported with even less when times were tough. That way, he said, he wouldn’t have to worry when recording deals or performances dried up. He could still make music and pay his bills."

I have not arranged my life as expertly, a point which becomes clear when the discussion turns to what we would do if my main job vanished.  I have a variety of income streams, but without my main job, it would be much harder.  And I am nowhere close to having my artistic passions pay my bills.  Over the past ten years, my artistic passions would not even pay the electric bill.  There have been a few times when money comes in, and I think, "What if . . . "--and then the editor leaves or the magazine folds or the website changes its approach.

Clearly, I am not a model member of the freelance economy.

I am also struck by the scientist who funded others with her MacArthur winnings: 

"For Dr. Otto, the money was incidental to her work. Even though she grew up quite poor, she said, she never thought of spending the money on herself and said that her research would not benefit from extra funding. (She uses mathematical models to advance research on genetics and evolution.)

 

'The nature of what I do means that time is more precious than money for my research,' she said. 'When I received the MacArthur it wasn’t, ‘Now I can do that study I wanted to do.’ I felt I was very supported by my university and by grants. But what I did feel was that as a scientist and a person I could have more influence' by giving it away.

 

So that’s what she is doing. So far, she has made three gifts of the entire annual amount to the Nature Trust of British Columbia, an environmental conservation program in Indonesia, and a fund at the University of British Columbia, where she teaches, to pay student researchers working on conservation issues."

 

I love this idea of helping others, of giving back to one's community, however one defines that community.  I love the idea of taking one's winnings and making it multiply across the field.  The article shows that even when MacArthur fellows don't give away all of their winnings, the benefits still ripple out to others.  The saxophonist, for example, "put it [the money] toward an idea he had started to develop — a program that brought musicians together to live in a city for three to four weeks to perform and be part of the community."

 

My favorite fantasy has always been winning one of these prizes--or the lottery, for that matter.  I don't want the fame that the award might bring--although I might.  I dream of the time that might come with the money.  And I love the idea of the other worthy projects I could fund.

Why We Must Keep Creating

One of the delights of time off is having time to catch up on interviews I missed during the last hectic weeks of the quarter.  I loved this interview with Jacqueline Woodson on NPR's Fresh Air.  It's full of fascinating insights about living in both the North and the South, about her experiences as a Jehovah's Witness when she went to live with her grandmother, about her writing.

The interview doesn't shy away from the flashpoint of controversy that happened with Daniel Handler's racist joke at the National Book Awards.  Woodson handled that incident and talking about it with grace.  It took me back to November.

Shortly after the incident, I read Nikky Finney's excellent response to Daniel Handler's racist joke at the National Book Awards.  She wrote to the National Book  Foundation suggesting that they apologize too; they declined.  She concludes her piece:  "Even if our mouth was not the mouth that said it—we still must have and find the courage to speak out against such moments as these, lest all our windows be broken, lest all our great literary celebrations be reduced to a watermelon patch."

I felt that leaden sorrow--but then I ran across this story of how Handler is making atonement:  he's making a $10,000 donation to We Need Diverse Books--and for 24 hours, he matched donations.  Now that's a classy way of apologizing.

Sure, it would be nice to live in a world where apologies for these kinds of comments aren't necessary because everyone is enlightened and thinks before they speak.  But we don't live in that world yet.

In her speech at the National Book Awards, Ursula K. Le Guin reminds us of why art is important and how artists will be necessary:  "I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality."

She reminds us that the reality we have now may not be the reality that we always have:  "The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words."

What a wonderful reminder of why we need to do what we do as writers and artists!

On this day when many of us head back to work, back to our classrooms, back to all sorts of commitments and obligations, I love revisiting the words of LeGuin.  I love the reminder that our creativity is important--it's how we envision the world in which we want to live.  If we don't have a vision, we aren't likely to move towards it.

Let us begin.

Dream Job #1 and Late Life Job Fulfillment

One of the women that I know at the gym is an avid reader.  I enjoy talking about books with her, even though we only have a few minutes in the day to do it.  The other day, I said, "That would be my dream job, reading whatever I wanted and writing about it."

She said, "Working for a publisher?" 

At the same time, we shook our heads.  "You'd have to read so much bad stuff," I said at the same time as she said, "The slush pile!"

"No," I said, "I want to read what I want to read and write about it once or twice a week.  And to get paid $150,000 a year.  If I'm gonna dream, why not dream big?   And I want to go to a conference or two a year, with expenses paid."

And then I spent the week-end rereading Phyllis Tickle's Prayer is a Place.  I read it years ago when it first came out.  At that point, I had just recently discovered her 3 volume version of the Liturgy of the Hours, The Divine Hours.  I was fascinated by her discussion of the writing process.

This time, I noticed how much of the book revolves around Tickle's post mid-life career.  She has a full career as an academic, teaching and being a dean.  Around the age of 45, she quits those paths to found a press that has multiple focuses and is fairly successful, especially as small presses go.

Then, around age 58, she gets the call that will change her life.  She's asked to be the editor-in-chief for the soon-to-be-created religion section of Publishers Weekly.  She gets to read books, meet authors and publishers, and go to huge festivals and conferences.  In short, she has my dream job.

And here's what made me most hopeful:  she got that dream job late in life.

We're surrounded by stories of young stars.  We're inundated by stories of Ph.D.s that have an expiration date.  We're swamped by stories of mid-life and later job seekers who can't find anything.

I loved reading Tickle's memoir because it reminded me that those stories are not the only stories.  A world of stories exists where people find that doors open when they need to, that a human that you knew briefly decades ago will come back into your life when you need that person, that there's a shape and a pattern to life that isn't just chaos theory and apocalypse.

I also noted that Tickle often felt like she needed more and more writers.  She recounted one story of hiring a woman who sent her an unsolicited resume and that woman became one of her strongest employees.  Note to self:  don't discount sending off my resume/CV/information to places where I'd like to work, even if there are no published openings.

And then, even later, she wrote The Divine Hours, the project she considers to be the reason she was put on the planet.  It's been wildly successful.  It's not a project that anyone would have forecast to be wildly successful, but several people had a shared vision, and thus, success.

Literary historians might remind us of many similar trajectories, especially when we consider the path of women writers and artists of all sorts.  Just because you haven't produced your most successful work by the time you're 25 doesn't mean that you won't.  Lots of people have done their best work at midlife and beyond.

It's important to remember that point, as we move into the Autumn awards season.  The MacArthur Genius grants have just been announced, and it's a fascinating list of people and their interests.  Soon we'll have the Nobel prizes.

You might be like me; these awards might lead to painful introspection, to that infernal question, "And what have I done with my life?"  My answer changes from day to day.  On days when I've redone an assessment report for the 5th time or revisited the schedule yet again, on those days I feel most like I'm in a play authored by Beckett, a play which mocks the idea that life can have meaning.

But on days when I write a good blog post or carve out a poem from interesting ideas, those days are good days.  On days when I help facilitate some sort of reconciliation, those are good days.  On days when I assist in developing workable solutions to real problems--those are some of my favorite days.

I wonder if those problem solving days come after a morning of good writing?  I've never kept track, but it wouldn't surprise me if that was the case.

And it's important to remember that MacArthur grant recipients don't always/often start out with their genius recognized.  They often labor in obscurity or isolation.  They devote themselves to subjects that others have rejected as useless.

It's not about winning a grant.  It's about following the passion.

Ashes and Atonement: Yom Kippur Dawn

Here we are, a few hours before Yom Kippur sunrise.  I have atonement on the brain.  For a more theological meditation, see this post on my theology blog.  For an even more powerful meditation, see this post written by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, who in the hours before Yom Kippur, helped a family prepare the body of a family member for burial. 

She reminds us of what this high holy day should be about:  "On Yom Kippur we try as hard as we can to make teshuvah, to correct our course and shift our alignment so that our actions, our emotions, our thoughts, and our spirits are aligned with holiness. We try to repair our relationships with ourselves, with each other, with God. We try to relinquish the emotional and spiritual calluses which protect us in ordinary life, and to go deep into awareness of our mortality and deep into connection with something beyond ourselves."

I've been thinking of atonement in my own religious tradition, which traditionally comes at Lent, that time period that begins with Ash Wednesday and takes us to the week before Easter.  I've been thinking about ashes and other symbols of our mortality.

I'm thinking about my friend's Hindu priest who smears ashes on his forehead every day.  It reminds him that we're only here for a short time.  It reminds him to keep events in perspective.  So few things are worth getting upset over.

On Ash Wednesday, many Christians have a cross of ash smeared on their foreheads.  I've written a series of poems that have Ash Wednesday in the title.  Some are more hopeful than the one I will post below.

Still, I will post it, because it was recently nominated for a Best of the Net award.  It's the first time my work has been nominated.  I'm not sure what happens next.  Do all the nominees compete against each other?  Is there an awards night?  Is there some kind of collection that exists only on the net?  An eBook of winners that people could buy?

But in the end, it doesn't matter.  I'm incredibly happy that editor Jessie Carty not only liked my poem enough to publish it in Referential, but to nominate it too.



Ash Wednesday in the Intensive Care Unit


No one has to remind us of our dusty
destiny. Here in the ICU, every day
is Ash Wednesday. Some days we reflect
that an awful lot of fluid precedes
our descent into dust—fluids
come and go into the wrong crevices,
the body leaks and oozes
before it dwindles into dryness.

Still, the priest makes his rounds, smudges
comatose foreheads with ashes from the palms
of a distant celebration. How long ago
that we protested this archaic ritual.
Now Ash Wednesday claims its place as the most relevant
day of the church calendar.

Trapped in our failing flesh,
the liturgical year stopped
in the beginning of this season
of penitence. We long to believe
in resurrection, but in this hospital,
we realize that the viruses and bacteria
will inherit the Kingdom of God.