Easter Morning, from the Gardener's Eyes

I often find Holy Saturday an odd resting point.  Yesterday was no exception.

You may wonder why I find it odd.  I often go from the rush of the work week to the rush of the end of Holy Week (Maundy Thursday evening to Good Friday) and then there's the pause of Holy Saturday.  It's not always a pause, as we're often at church getting ready for Easter.  Some years, we're spending the afternoon decorating Easter eggs and making bunny cakes.  Some years we've hosted an extravagent-for-us Easter meal, but it's hard to believe we'll ever do that again.  I'm often so exhausted by the time Easter afternoon comes along, that it's hard to imagine being charming Easter party hosts.

Yesterday's Holy Saturday was unusual in that we went to a wedding:  a beautiful ceremony followed by a fabulous meal and wine for every course.  And then we came home and watched the Mel Gibson movie, The Passion of the Christ, which I had yet to see.  I didn't find it offensive.  Tough to watch, in terms of the torture--and yet, the Romans were brutal in that way.

So, here we are at Easter morning.  Here's a poem for Easter.  It tells the story of the first Easter morning from the view of a gardener.  It was inspired by the piece of the Easter story where Mary thinks that Jesus is the gardener, which made me think about the fact that there must have been a real gardener and made me wonder what he thought of all the commotion.

It first appeared in issue 3 of Eye to the Telescope.  The whole volume is devoted to persona poems and edited by Jeannine Hall Gailey.

The Gardener’s Tale


I liked to get to the garden
early, before the harsh
light of day revealed
all my mistakes, all the growth
I couldn’t contain.

I liked the pre-dawn
hours, when I knew
the flowers by their smells
as I rustled
their stems.

That morning I saw
him first. He asked
for bread, and I had a bit
to share. I offered
him olives and some cheese
from my son Simon’s goat.

We talked of ways to attract
butterflies to the garden:
the need for nectar
and leaves for the babies.
I showed him a tree
that had been ailing,
and he suggested a different nourishment.

I thanked him for his wisdom
and moved to the border
of the garden. I didn’t make
the connections until I heard
the shrieks of the women
and Peter nearly knocked me down.

Pilate: The Ultimate Administrator?

When I was teaching more, when I taught texts of all sorts, I often asked, "Who are you in this story?"  It was a way to talk about characters, a different route in.  It seemed to work especially well with students who weren't used to talking about literature.

Of course, some of you will recognize this exercise as having spiritual roots.  It's very similar to one type of Lectio Divina, a way to dive deeply into a sacred text.  I've experienced and led similar exercises in spiritual settings too.

So, last night, as I'm at Good Friday service listening to the Passion of Christ according to the Gospel of St. John, I thought, "Oh my heavens, I'm identifying with Pontius Pilate!"

I don't want to identify with Pontius Pilate.  I'm doubtful of the depiction of Pilate, for one thing.  Historical records paint a very different picture of Pilate than the Gospel of John does.  The historical Pilate probably didn't hesitate before having Christ crucified.  The Gospel of John shows Pilate going to great lengths to save Jesus, all for nothing.  Of course, Pilate doesn't have the spine to say, "I won't have this man crucified.  It's wrong, and I won't do it."

Again, let me say, the historical picture of Pilate paints a man who was hard to the point of cruelty.  It's not the man we see in the Gospel.  Scholars suspect that Pilate gets to be a more sympathetic character because at the time the Gospel of John was written, the Roman empire was getting ever more serious about eradicating Christians. 

As I was listening to the Gospel for Good Friday, I was struck by Pilate's attempts to determine the right thing to do with this conflict that fell into his lap.  I could almost sense his frustration at having to deal with an issue that should have been handled at much lower levels than his.  I could see his irritation at having to deal with this Jesus, who was making no effort to help his cause.  How well I know his annoyance at all of these people who were bothering him with what seemed like such a trivial matter, considering the storm clouds that were gathering in the distance.

Those of us who work in administration will recognize aspects of our work lives in the Good Friday service.  Not a week goes by when I don't find myself saying, "I did not get a Ph.D. in British Literature for this!"  I find myself having to attend to all sorts of details which seem trivial to me, while the whole higher education world seems to be one of the next bubbles to burst and threaten the whole economy.  I find myself having to have similar discussions with students every week:  "Of course you failed the class.  You haven't attended the last 8 classes.  You only turned in 1 assignment out of the 5 required.  I don't see that the teacher treated you unfairly at all." 

Like Pilate, I find myself tugged in all sorts of directions.  That's the life of an administrator after all.  I wonder if Pilate spent time asking, "Am I working on this issue while neglecting that really important issue?  What's lurking out there?  What am I forgetting?"

Unlike Pilate, I do not have to make life or death decisions.  No one is crucified because of me. 

Well, not literally.  We could probably have fun arguing about whether or not student loans are a symbolic crucifixion.  I spend time worrying about students who take on crushing debt and then leave school before finishing their degrees.  What kind of future can they expect?  And then I say, "Well, it's a national problem, and who am I to think I can solve it?"

And so, I hear Pilate's thinking echoing in my brain as I wash my hands of the whole issue.  Like another character in the Passion narrative, I hear the crowing of the rooster.  I think of all the ways I collaborate with the Powers and Principalities that work to keep us in the dark prison of oppression.  Like Pilate's wife, I'm haunted by bad dreams.  Like Judas, I have 30 silver coins and a bad feeling.

Do I have the beginning of a poem here or am I stretching too far?

Indian Princesses and the Other Women Who Saved America

Today is the birthday of Sacajawea.  You may remember her as the woman who went along on the Lewis and Clark expedition.  You may not know that she was travelling with her newborn baby.  She's one of 5 or 6 women represented in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol (go here for the complete list).

I would argue for the presence of more women, but so many women who were important to the development of the U.S. are largely unknown.  I remember reading a historian who commented on the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement back in 2007.  The historian commented that colonists who migrated without women by and large perished.  Men without women planted cash crops and forgot to plant food.

Interesting to have my thoughts return to Sacajawea when they've so recently been focused on Pocahontas.  Interesting to think about how the future of the country, the future of the U.S. as I have come to know it, relied on these women.  Without Sacajawea, it's almost certain that Lewis and Clark and their expedition would have been slaughtered at first sight, without any chance to explain themselves.  But when hostile Native Americans saw that they were travelling with a woman and a baby, they saw the expedition as non-threatening.

And they needed her for her language skills, her navigational skills, her knowledge of what foods were safe to eat.  There were so many ways that she saved the men again and again.  Likewise, Pocahontas helped save the colonists in many ways.  Did she really lay her head down on John Smith's head when he was going to be executed and thus prevent his beheading?  Probably not.  But she saved him in many ways, albeit less dramatic ways.

From the Native American perspective, in hindsight, the Lewis and Clark expedition couldn't have been more threatening, although not in ways that hostile tribes might have anticipated.  The Lewis and Clark expedition opened up the west, and within a generation or two, settlers were pushing west, which meant pushing Native Americans off their lands (or killing them), wiping out the Buffalo populations, fencing the west . . . on and on the list of horrors could go.

Of course, when I was a young girl devouring the stories of Sacajawea and Pocahontas, I didn't think about those kind of things.  Even as a child, I loved stories that showed that women could do more than being simply wives and mothers.  Or was my thinking bound by gender?   Maybe I loved any story that showed humans doing more than their societies usually allowed.

When I was in grade school in the 1970's, some of my friends were part of a group called Indian Princesses.  It was kind of like Girl Scouts, only with a Native American theme--and girls got an Indian name!  I was so jealous.  I don't remember why I wasn't a member, and soon enough, I was a Girl Scout and forgot about the Indian Princess group.

I remember wanting to be an Indian brave.  I made things that I called bows and arrows, and I pretended to hunt.  Happily, I never got the Physics of bowmaking down, so I never shot an arrow.  Small animals were safe when I was on the hunt.  I also practiced being very still and blending into the landscape.

My childhood imagination was captured by life on the Plains and Prairies, and less by life as earlier colonists lived it.  My adult brain continues to be inspired by people who envision new ways to live their lives.

Holy Week Musings on Homelessness and Safety

Last night, I left my office about 8:45 at night.  As I exited the stairwell, I heard shouting from the direction of the breezeway where students hang out.  I looked that way and noticed a man with a cart turning from the sidewalk into my school's parking garage.  He was agitated and shouting, but I couldn't see anyone else with him.  In other words, it wasn't a fight.

As he got closer, I could discern words.  Lots of profanity.  Sentences that seemed threatening:  "You can't tell me what to do, you damn, white bitch.  I'll do whatever the fuck I want.  I don't have to look like a fucking white person."  On and on he went.

If he hadn't been cursing at such high volume, I'd have probably let it all go.  I'd have seen him as a man with a cart taking a short cut through our parking garage.

But a short cut to where?  All that's behind us is the port.  Once upon a time, you could wander through the port, but not after September 11, 2001.

Was he talking to me?  I honestly have no idea.  But his agitation worried me.  I knew that classes were about to let out, and I worried about the safety of the students and the safety of the man with the cart.

So, I did what I've been trained to do; I went to the security guard.  Happily he was there.  He came out and we listened to the man with the cart, who by then had gotten to the back road behind our parking garage.  Hopefully, the man with the cart just kept going.

You might be saying, "Why is this so strange?  Your school is by a port in a fairly large metropolis."  Or maybe you're thinking that I reacted like a typical white, middle-class woman who felt threatened by someone who seemed homeless.  Maybe you're thinking, "Hey, it's Florida--lucky for the man with the cart you didn't have a gun."

Here's what made me feel strange all night:  just hours before, my suburban church helped serve dinner to homeless people at the downtown church.  The man with the cart (and yes, I assumed he was homeless) could have been one of those guests.  And here I was, reporting him to the security guard.

Of course, I wouldn't have called attention to him if he hadn't been agitated and cursing.  I'd have whispered a prayer for him and wished that I had more to offer.

I also felt strange because it's Holy Week, and while normal life goes on, I have all sorts of other narratives in my head, narratives of Last Suppers and crucifixions and betrayals of all sorts.  How would Jesus have handled the cursing, agitated, homeless man?  Invited him to dinner?  Cast out his demons?  Let him go about his business?  Called the security guard because that's why we pay these experts?

It's also been a tough week at school, as we face our first week without our colleagues that we lost in the lay offs.  I feel like all my nerves are exposed.

I also felt strange because of all the race dialogues (or monologues or screaming fits) we've been having about race in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shootings.  I'm aware of my white privilege, my class privilege, but the way I move cautiously in the world because of my gender.  I'm also aware that I'm a tall, white woman, a mid-life woman who isn't tiny, which also buys me privilege.

Did I feel threatened by the man with a cart because he was homeless, because he was male, because he may have been a different race?  No, I felt threatened because he was agitated and cursing.  And he was wandering around a parking garage, where people drive fast and carelessly and aren't looking out for pedestrians.  I saw so many ways it could all go wrong.

I drove home trying to convince myself I'd done the best I could.  I've written about these issues before, mostly at my theology blog (go here for a meditation on why homelessness is so difficult a social problem to solve and here for a meditation on the fact that we're a society that allows pregnant women to sleep on the streets).  I wish I had a problem-solving way to conclude.  I wish I had some pithy insights.

I wish that I lived in a society that took care of the underclass below the lower classes so that I didn't have to ruminate upon these things on a rainy Maundy Thursday morning.

Travels: Academic, Colonial, Air

I have been travelling; it's strange to return home to news of tornadoes in other parts of the country.  But our travel day yesterday was relatively calm.  Even the delays that we experienced on Thursday weren't as upsetting as they could be; I just settled in to read.

On my flight up I read Amy Waldman's The Submission, a great book about September 11, art, and race.  The central question:  can a mostly non-practicing Muslim create a suitable memorial to September 11?  The book answers that question early on:  yes.  Then the book asks a different question:  if a Muslim artist creates a memorial, can the fact that a Muslim created it detract from its purposes?  This book is a great meditation on class, religion, immigration, gender, and skin color.

On the way back I read Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones, another book that contemplates skin color, gender, and class.  It's a heartbreaking book, and I confess to skimming parts, especially the dog fighting parts.  Yikes.  But it's compelling, and it makes me realize how fortunate I've been, how damaging poverty is, how tough to escape.

What did I do in between?  I went to the College English Association conference in Richmond, where I presented a paper.  I wrote about poet children of scientists who contemplate God in their poetry.  The paper went fairly well.  It was held during the second to last session, so we had a very small audience.

Once again, I tried to see the presentation as a speaking engagement, and less as a paper reading.  I have mixed feelings about it.  I liked the conversational style.  I think what I disliked about my paper is that I had no sweeping insight.  My paper concluded that we see a wide diversity of responses to the question of God in the poetry of children of scientists.  But the audience seemed receptive.

Like I said, that audience was small.  We had 3 panelists, the moderator, and 2 other people.  One of them was my mom.  When they moved to Williamsburg, I decided to submit a paper proposal to the CEA since Richmond is close by.  My school has no travel money, so being able to stay with my parents was an important factor in my decision to participate.

My mom decided to make the drive to Richmond with me.  I was pretty sure it would be OK if she slipped in to hear the presentations.  The CEA doesn't seem too rigid about checking everyone's badges.  In fact, since my presentation was so late in the conference, I thought we might be grateful for an extra audience member.  I was right.  It was great to spend time with my mom in this way.

Of course, it was great to see other family members too.  My sister and nephew came down, and we had a great time together.  Before they came, we went to Williamsburg and wandered the colonial streets.  We went to Jamestown, but lacked the energy to fully explore the ruins (good to save some investigations for later).  My dad told us all sorts of colonial details he's picked up from living in the area and reading some key books.  Great fun.  It was a very full 5 days.

I've come away with some great poem ideas.  I've found myself intrigued again by Pocahontas.  Once again, I am astonished that those settlers were able to survive.  I think about how bad life must have been in the Old World to embark on a voyage to the New World.

It is hard for me to believe that it is April already.  I need to shift gears before National Poetry Month gets away from me altogether.  I need to think about Easter, and the fact that Holy Week is upon me.  I need to make sure that all my other projects are on track too.  And then, of course, there's a department to make sure is running smoothly.  But first, to finish this blog post and to go to spin class!

Inspirations from Vera Pavlova

In the April 2012 issue of Poetry, there's a great prose piece by Vera Pavlova.  I'm not familiar with her work, but I found much to like in this notebook style prose piece. 

I should stress that I don't agree with everything that she wrote, but I did find much of it intriguing, saying things in ways I hadn't considered before.



Here are some interesting snippets:

"My writing:  hard-boiled.  My life:  scrambled soft."

"Poetry should be written the way adultery is committed:  on the run, on the sly, during the time not accounted for.  And then you come home, as if nothing ever happened."

"Went to bed with an unfinished poem in my mouth and could not kiss."

"Any one of my poems fits on a palm of the hand, and many on a palm of a child's hand."

"Madness is inspiration idling in neutral."

"I live my life moving forward on rails that I lay myself.  Where do I get the rails?  I dismantle the ones I have gone over."

"My diaries are letters from my former self to my future self.  My poems are replies to those letters."

"If poems are children, poetry readings are PTA meetings."

"An ideal poem:  every line of it can serve as a title for a book."

Happy Birthday, Camille Paglia

Today is the birthday of Camille Paglia, who has been called a feminist, an anti-feminist, and all sorts of names in between.  For those of us who were in grad school in the 90's, we were in awe of any scholarly work which became a bestseller, like Paglia's Sexual Personnae.

Of course, if I had transformed my dissertation on domestic violence in the Gothic into a larger book and given it a sexy title, maybe I'd have had similar success.  I will always wonder if I should have done more to turn my dissertation into a book.  I had a good idea:  I looked at the realistic way that domestic violence of all sorts was presented in a genre, the Gothic, famous for its unbelievability, and I explored what those writers might be saying, in a code of sorts.  But to turn my dissertation into a book, I'd have had to have written at least another 200 pages, and I didn't feel like I had that much more to say.

But I digress.

I have vague memories of Paglia in the 90's.  I have vague memories of being both infuriated and intrigued by things she would say, but I can't remember anything specifically.

Now, I have a fondness for those times and for my younger self.  Now our collective attention spans seem so short that it's impossible to imagine that we would have an ongoing public argument/discussion about how feminists are aging (Paglia attacked Germaine Greer) or about icons like Simone de Beauvoir.  I vaguely recall feminists of all ages weighing in on comments that Paglia would make--and they'd all get air time.

Hard to imagine that happening now.  Or maybe I'm just not as plugged in, so I don't see it.

I've always appreciated that Paglia comes back to poetry and literary criticism.  She's always been an ardent supporter.  She's been a cheerleader, of sorts, especially of poets from past centuries.  She likely could have made more money from more inflammatory subjects, but she gives poetry a platform.

Paglia was born in 1947, so she's still got time left for important work--ah, the joy of being a writer, as opposed to a ballerina, whose best years are done by one's 20's.  It will be interesting to see where she goes next.