Michael J Hoover

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting — a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.” Most writers use listing as a way to support or elaborate a point presented in their argument. Creating lists without using “etc.” still invites the reader to add to the list ad infinitum.

Here, in support of recognizing “beauty,” Emerson creates a metaphor combining the spiritual and the physical planes in “God’s handwriting.” He is emboldened by his success, extending the comparison using the oxymoron “wayside sacrament.” So, the first subtle invitation for readers to add their own item to a list is begun by this two-fold extended metaphor that the writer himself adds to again at the end of his argument in “a cup of blessing.”

Just as Emerson has unexpectedly combined spiritual and physical elements, he sets up a parallel combination, by associating beauty and fair. Beauty is sublime; fair, a bit earthly, mundane, though one could make a semantics case that fair in Emerson’s day was often exchanged for beauty. I suggest that the writer wants us to see a spark of heaven in every aspect of life on earth, even in the most common occurrences. Thus, the common is elevated is the equation of unlike objects to that which is wondrous. Ah, the mathematics of figurative language! Furthermore, doesn’t beauty reside in the eye of the beholder?

Now we come to the second listing in the excerpt, namely fair, or uncommonly common phenomena. For face and sky and flower begin the cadence of addition. I would like to add a brief encounter I had last week that not only extends the list but also centers around the truly essential word in Emerson’s offering: opportunity.

Nothing warms the heart like witnessing the excitement when a long time wish is granted, especially for a younger person who still has a strong faith in happenstance and, being on the verge of adulthood, is beginning to have that faith in humanity challenged by the array of disappointments that become just another part of life. Insert here the cliche about nine rejections for every one successful attainment, sale, or acceptance.

I was privileged to be in the same coffee establishment that a friend and her teenage son were in, when the young man was hired as a barista, beginning the next day. Of course, getting a job in service may seem fair at first, but it is elevated to the status of awesomeness if the seeker has included the job’s pursuit in his dreams of happiness. Such was the case. He had been drooling after this position at this particular establishment for over two years.

I had seen this young man get his hopes up and dashed too many times, his filling the void with jobs that didn’t quite measure up in his estimation. But, this young man seemed to be a manifestation of Henry David Thoreau’s words: “All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.”

The sparkle in this teen’s eyes and the body language that shouted sheer joy was too much to resist joining in with my own broad smile and laughter. The event, fair as it may have seemed to the unobservant, was priceless, as the commercial goes.

The irony of having an opportunity to witness someone getting an opportunity was not lost to me. It only made the moment that more enjoyable. It’s certainly affirming to both our desire and talent when someone, especially a future employer, recognizes that we can apply the best of ourselves with passion and have as a result the benefit all concerned. This young man’s positivism and persistence revealed his inner strength of faith in himself. How refreshing and rewarding to behold! What a blessing all around!

Please send comments and poems to michaeljhoover@gmail.com. Archived columns can be found at hooverpoet.com or at eveningsun.com. This first Friday, September 5th at the Ragged Edge in Gettysburg features every poet bringing 5 poems to share. The event has been dubbed “Five on the Fifth.”

Each year I go through the ritual of purging my wardrobe as I prepare to start back to teaching. And, at least once every year, I am sorely reminded of one the talents I lack and am occasionally jealous of those who possess. I’m talking about organization.

I want to be organized. I really do. And, I believe I share this sentiment with more than just my best friend, who has been tearing out and passing along chapters from a book entitled Secrets of a Professional Organizer as she finishes with them herself.

The exercise has helped some, I admit, but what has been accomplished most is that I am more vigilant for opportunities to apply some of the techniques suggested. One thing I learned is that each of us already has a sense of organization. We don’t have to radically change our system to be like some one else’s, but rather learn how to adjust our own.

By getting to know how we are organized from the inside out, and not changing who we are from the outside in, we get to know ourselves a bit better in the process. I know that the observing nature I have doesn’t allow me to linger sometimes, and I create a pile to return to as my attention wanders to the next encounter of my senses. When I return, no matter when that is, I can usually pick up where I left off with little trouble. This happens in my classroom and it happens with my writing. It also happens around my home.

A lesson I learned about the latter is that every room can call for its own sense of order. For example, my bedroom moans to me each time the closet and the dresser become overstuffed with shirts, socks and shoes, and short and long pants, burgeoning during the transition seasons, especially when fall is impending, though it is only August. Call the complaint “The Back to School Blues.”

Parting with clothing that is still functional, even though it may go to a charitable organization for possible recycling, has never been easy for me. It’s hard to part with something I may still convince myself I have use for.

But, turning over a wardrobe does have its healthy effect. “The fresh start” and “the new look” hold such a sense of promise and optimism. We feel energized when we wear an outfit for the first time. A power of positivity overcomes us and we can hardly wait to share ourselves with others. Confidence and power seem to build with every step we take in our new duds.

Another room in my house that has its own personality and its specific demands for order is my writer’s room. Nearly everyone has a drawer or two in their homes where things are hastily stuffed. Sometimes it is during a mad panic to straighten up before company arrives and a surface simply must be cleared in short order. Other times, it’s that we don’t exactly know where to put that letter we’ve been rereading or the souvenir we’ve been keeping out to look at once more. I have one such drawer in my writer’s room.

At times during the course of a year, I will open the drawer as fast as a blink to toss in some tidbit or scrap or memento that I intend to get out later to ponder. On one such occasion, I became attracted to the array of stuff that appeared when the drawer was cracked only a few inches. My mind began to wander to all the occurrences that had produced such a jumble of what some folks might say is junk. But one man’s junk. . . .

As I began to catalogue the memories, the idea occurred to me to write some of them down. Then I thought, no, don’t write the memories. Just write down the objects and let the audience identify with some of the listing and conjure up their own correlations. Let the poem be the impetus to find your own drawer to contemplate.

Sometimes a journey through a drawer can lead us to rediscover pleasant times, kind faces, and untold wealth. Who needs order in a drawer whose sole purpose is surprise, discovery, and inspiration?!

Spring Cleaning

Life comparmentalized in drawers–
micro-biographies of discards, get-to’s and save-these:

a smattering of tattered snapshot, neglected notes,
a small vault of keys without locks, tack-pins for lost causes,
a keep of obsolete receipts, a cache of collectible coins;

defunct phone numbers, broken-pointed pencils.
one dead AA, a hoarded pen hardened in the artery,
an assembly of unused parts, assorted cards from the kids–

forgotten remembrances: a tomb for trash and heirlooms;
sepulcher of treasure awaiting disposal or resurrection.
- Michael J Hoover

In the grand scheme of all things that comprise America, Michael Phelps is practically a local boy. Less than an hour’s drive from Hanover, Towson, or the Republic of Towson as my son-in-law has recently come to call it, has brought the world’s eyes to focus on this suburb of Baltimore in fascination.

I know very little about this young man other than what I have gleaned from T.V. and the internet, but he seems to be an all-American twenty-three-year-old to me. As a competitor he is fierce, but as a winner he seems pretty humble, at least when immediately interviewed.

I also heard something curious from a close friend, who attended an in-service this week on differentiated learning whose tenets require teachers to plan lessons to include the full spectrum of learners. The presenter used Phelps as an example of a kinesthetic learner, that is, one who relies on his muscle sense to learn. Phelps is among the largest percentage of learners who process best by engaging physically with their environment. Ironically, these learners are notably the most distracted and challenging students found within a traditional classroom framework. However, when given recognition and direction, these students often attain physical, mechanical, and artistic merit that outpaces their more verbally or mathematically inclined peers.

Sometimes people who are striving for excellence find themselves isolated for many reasons. They must be single-minded which sets them apart from their peers. They choose a relatively narrow channel of accomplishment. For example, how many people like to swim? How many swim competitively? How many people are willing to practice for hours every day?

Once having achieved recognition, how many are willing to go forward in the face of criticisms and unkindness that abound as a result this excellence?What type of an ego exists that re-directs itself into the hands of an apt mentor, knowing that in only this way can success be assured? The ego has to know enough about itself to turn itself over to more capable guidance than itself. The only other element to supersede ego and vast experience is intuition, which defies rationality.

Uniquely successful people also have to be knowledgeable of winners who have gone before and be able to place themselves within a winning paradigm. An appreciation and understanding of all the strategies, methodologies, and even secrets of previous record-setters must be scrutinized and used as models so that distinction might be achieved in a new way.

I read a letter posted by his sister just after Phelps won his seventh gold medal, and the comment I remember most was that she observed how utterly exhausted her brother seemed but that she knew he’d be back, as he said earlier in the week, “to be where [he] had to be.” In this seventh competition it was evidently Phelps’s acknowledged understanding of exactly where he was in relation to himself and his competitors that propelled him to the winning half-stroke. Phelps intuitively did what others would not have. He chose not to glide as the swimmer who was besting him, but rather to break the anticipated rhythm of his final approach to the wall.

Indeed, where are we all in relation to others, as we, too, strive for success in our daily journeys?

In the following poem from the collection edited by Terry Allen entitled The Whispering Wind: Poetry by Young American Indians, the speaker, much like an Olympian competitor, reflects upon his isolation, his goals, his sense of place in history and his heightened sense of presence. He knows exactly where he is and yet knows he has never been here before. He must let go of rationality and embrace what his senses tell him. He must believe in what seems to be the impossible, the miracle of being connected to something larger than himself while still maintaining his own identity.

Miracle Hill

I stand upon my miracle hill,
Wondering of the yonder distance,
Thinking; When will I reach there?

I stand upon my miracle hill,
The wind whispers in my ear.
I hear the songs of old ones.

I stand upon my miracle hill,
My loneliness I wrap around me.
It is my striped blanket.

I stand upon my miracle hill,
And send out touching wishes
To the world beyond hand’s reach.

I stand upon my miracle hill,
The bluebird that flies above
Leads me to my friend, the white man.

I come again to my miracle hill,
At last, I know the all of me–
Out there, beyond, and here upon my hill.

- Emerson Blackhorse “Barney” Mitchell

Our common denominator has to be love. The most common, love of self. The least, love of others. Here’s where less is really more. The indivisible, the smallest fraction. Reduce ourselves to love of others. So simple. So fulfilling. Yet, the most difficult of choices. It goes against our instinct to survive. But, it is our deepest moral imperative.

I wax philosophic for three reasons. First, J. Cameron Cummings sent me a poem, via his father (a former student of mine), just prior to my departing for a three-day photo foray in New York City. Cummings further peaked my interest with his candid responses to a couple of questions about his interest in poetry.

He writes, “I can remember writing poetry from as early as I could write. I love to read, so I believe my interest in poetry started from there. My first grade teacher introduced poetry to the class and I liked poems so much that I started writing them.” By further stating that he considers poetry “definitely a great way to express yourself,” Cummings shows his love for the word.

My second reason for digging into what is at our basest levels coincides with my vow to take as many people pictures as I could in the city. Usually, I am too distracted by store displays and architecture. This trip I wanted to capture more of humanity in its raw honesty rather than simply the art created by that humanity. Because of this young man’s poem, I had been further inspired to focus on human interaction and engagement.

The third reason for being in a philosophic whirl was a phrase resonating in my head from a couple of the more heated discussions my Dad and I had recently. He kept saying that the main problem with our country, and with the world, is greed. I have always maintained that the only sin is pride. That all the rest of sins center around putting oneself before any other. My father insists it is greed. If one does the math, they’re one and the same.

That Cameron Cummings could have the wisdom of an octogenarian at eleven years old may not surprise any parent of a son. At eleven resides the pinnacle of boyhood where idealism is strongest before the realism of manhood begins its distortion of truth, displacing innocence with desirousness. Poet William Blake composed his “Songs of Innocence and Experience” around this precept.

Just when I believe young people are not paying enough attention to the world at large, I get bushwhacked. Just when I think young people are too engaged in games and gadgets, I find myself on the floor with no rug to comfort me. Cummings wrote in his letter to me that he earned his Junior Black Belt two years ago. He said the exam to earn this belt was very hard, and he “found out how much perseverance one needs to achieve a goal.”

Here in his own poem, another kind of examination is entertained by this young South Carolinian poet. He earns much by his perseverance. Cummings plays with rhetorical questions, perfect metrics, and even risks repeated rhyme to challenge his audience to pursue answers, though they may elude us for a lifetime. He knits his sounds subtly to juxtapose the soft and the harsh, so that his message with its implied admonishment is easy to take in, but leaves the audience with a taste of self-awareness and a sense of gathering strength. Consider for yourself:

Great Greed

Why does everybody have a want for
things they do not need?

Why are people so obsessed for money
and great greed?

For is it something so unsaid, it tears us
all apart?

Or is it something going wrong with
people in their heart?

Why can’t we all just want the things we
need?

And, not obsess in certain things that
give most people greed?
- J. Cameron Cummings

Having returned from my excursion to the Big Apple, I downloaded about eight hundred pictures and began the arduous task of editing and discarding. Nearly two thirds of the people photographed held cell phones in their hands, even if they were not actively engaged in phone conversations. I didn’t notice this peculiarity while I was taking their pictures.

In a city symbolizing everything that’s right and everything that’s wrong with our country, its life blood, its citizens, pumped along, self absorbed, greedy for attention, connection. Surrounded by materialism and the electromagnet of consumerism, people roamed the streets aimlessly purposeful, ever prepared to be wanted, instead of prepared to serve the moment’s subtlest need. What has gone wrong in our hearts? Why has want replaced need?

During my father’s recent stay, many of our conversations centered around family, genealogy, U.S. history, personal history, and of course, politics. We had avoided our talks about religion, per se, even though we have come to some unexpressed accord after years of not recognizing we’re really on the same team.

So, when he said to me at breakfast the morning after hearing me read poetry at a feature, that he had a revelation the night before, it was with great anticipation that I awaited what would pour forth from his mouth next. I thought we may be having another breakthrough in our relationship, that something I read or alluded to had inspired a fissure in one of the dams between us, to crack it open and release understanding and newfound wisdom. Silly me.

Dad said, “I think I might be able to take a stab at this poetry thing. I really liked those limericks that one poet recited last night.” Though my heart took a minor dip, I recovered quickly to realize, hey, did I just hear my father say he was going to write poetry? Another booster engine ignited to propel my father forward in expending his Sagittarian energy!

He quickly related how he had recently been following a Reader’s Digest’s contest where potential poets respond to a piece of art with a limerick. For those of you whose memory needs jogging, a limerick is a kind of humorous verse of five lines, in which the first, second, and fifth lines rhyme with each other, and the third and fourth lines, which are shorter, form a rhymed couplet.

Mostly, limericks have acquired a rather untoward reputation because of the overt or implied sexuality usually tied to them. When my father heard the retired pastor deliver four innocuous but meaningful limericks in a row, he was hooked.

Over breakfast, I imparted all I knew about the form and spouted one I use with my students.

The once was a man from Nantucket,
who kept all his cash in a bucket.
His daughter named Nan,
ran away with a man,
And as for the bucket, Nan took it.

Since my father is mostly a hands-on kinda guy, I retrieved some printouts from websites for him, brimming with definitions and examples. But, knowing also he is not a big fan of reading much beyond non-fiction success stories, I also had to provide auditory cues to get across the idea of metrics to him. But, he’s a quick study when he can smell profit in the wind. Or, when he can find another outlet for his tremendous sense of humor.

Within two days of his return home to Roanoke, he had copied the art that was to inspire contestants and had written four limericks for my critique. Before I could respond by email, within two more days he sent six more. He’s since written to say that he’s entered the contest and eagerly anticipates publication! But, will this fledgling poet be satisfied? No, he has been bitten by the muse, Dame Humor.

After this week’s whiff of a sweep, when the Orioles defeated the Yankees in their first two games, my Dad sent me an email saying he was enclosing a limerick in a sympathy card and sending it to his pastor who is a dyed-in-the-wool Yankees fan, but with a sense of humor himself.

There was a team from the big city,
who showed their enemies no pity.
But one of their foes,
known as the O’s,
gave them a lesson in humility.
-B. Jerry Hoover

What do you think? Has the man got promise, or what?

If it weren’t for mothers, the world would not lose its harsh edge. Moms have a way to soften the blow of human gales and the globe’s disasters. They are the first defense we have, our protectors, our nurturers under the laws of nature. A blesséd day to all women who mother!

This day also marks the beginning of a week long celebration of women and men who stand as our first defense against those who choose to break the law. They, too, soften the blows of human maelstrom and at times volunteer to face off with nature; more often, they just do their daily job of nurturing the rest of us in compliance with the law.

May 11-17 is National Police Week 2008. In 1962 President John F. Kennedy designated May 15 as National Peace Officers Memorial Day and the calendar week in which that day fell as National Police Week. As most appointed times when we are provided reasons to celebrate, this commemoration is one that deserves special merit especially in light of the Philadelphia tragedy involving PA Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski this past week.

Fallen officers for the past year and designated officers from previous years will be honored at a vigil annually attended by 20,000 people. The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund joins others to present this Annual Peace Officers Memorial Service in Washington, D.C. The organization will celebrate the 20th Annual Candlelight Vigil on Tuesday, May 13 at 8 pm at the national memorial.

All of this information was researched after a poem was sent to me last weekend by Cpl. Bob Heuisler, Maryland State Police (Retired). Heuisler included the brief note of introduction: “Time again to honor our fallen law enforcement officers. They are our first line of defense in the war on terror!!!!”

Heuisler writes also that he began writing poetry several years ago as a way of getting some of his feelings down on paper, usually writing about a friend or family member. In addition to law enforcement, he was a member of the Manchester (MD) Volunteer Fire Department. He was a member of the Maryland State Police from 1987 until his retirement in 2000.

Heuisler writes that he “had spent the previous 10 years working ‘undercover’ in various assignments from being a ‘narc’ in the Drug Enforcement Division to working as a ‘hit man’ for murder-for-hire investigations in the Criminal Enforcement Command. [He] saw a side of society that really made an impact on [his] life, both professionally and personally. [He] also realized that very few people outside of law enforcement understand the sacrifices made by someone who works in a covert capacity.”

“This poem was written shortly after one of my fellow Troopers, Ed Toatley, made the ultimate sacrifice. Ed was gunned down during an undercover assignment in Washington, D.C. while working on a federal task force. I would like to dedicate this poem to Ed and also to everyone that works ‘undercover’ in law enforcement. It is truly one of the important jobs that police do on a daily basis…they are our first line of defense!!!”

Undercover

No crisp uniform of honor did he wear

Nor golden badge of glory did his chest bear 

Only troubling thoughts of money, guns and drugs

Fighting back the tears as he collected his nightly hugs



In this secret life he chose, he clearly was the best

But his uneasy path was much different than the rest

He knelt in prayer with his family at night

Before he quietly went out to carry on his fight



They kept a scrapbook of his many feats

But his true worth is not captured on these sheets

He knew that he was a soldier in a losing war

And his return to those who love him was unsure



His futile fight to save a city block by block

Resulted one night in that tragic knock

His friends sadly called upon his loving wife

With a tearful message of how he lost his life



One last time his brothers gave him praise

But only half way up Old Glory did they raise

And in the end the bugler played his solemn tune 

With prayers that his soul will enter soon
- Bob Heuisler

If we all could be projective and accurate, the world might be perfect, for each of us. But, risk and irony abound, perhaps as a blessing, to make life unpredictable, frustrating our ability to be in control and to know it all.

Failure and disappointment force us to adjust our attitudes and strategies. The danger lies in becoming manipulative and egocentric, as we reset our aims and the means of accomplishing them. The reward can result in our becoming better people because of the experience, opening our lives to compromise, self-sacrifice, and unconditional love.

Too often we are hurt because our projections are idyllic and fail to include variables beyond our control, and sometimes our understanding. The most common oversight usually involves the volition of others, which seems as unpredictable as a political contest.

Just when we count on a person to be who they’ve always been, they appear to change. Usually the unexpected actions of others have little to do with us as causes. The alienation of two people at times is so subtle that neither is aware of the change, until it becomes too late to make any effective adjustment.

Daniel A. Armstrong’s prize winning poem in The Reader’s Café annual adult competition broaches the paradox of “contrast within apparent harmony.”

Olives, Bread and Wine

We ate olives, bread
With the bottles we mass-murdered
Olives and bread, your lips
The taste, the wine.

You, who fell from my sky
Into my lap
Ever the muse
And catty.

You toasted asagio bread
I pulled the cork
We learned each other’s
Topology with noisy Braille
Kisses between nips and sips
Of another dead magnum.

You then killed yourself
With a lost and dog-eared
Notion, or maybe it was I
Who died
So you could run back
To your Mediterranean
Moon, and pale mornings.

The matter not, just the
Taste and texture
Of olives and bread
Keeps me glancing
Towards the door that
Stays open, and the
Wistful corkscrew.
- Daniel Armstrong

The first hint that the speaker in the poem has been blindsided comes from the use of past tense throughout all but the last stanza. This use of past tense hints that the experience revealed lingers as a memory, something which cannot be changed by the poem’s conclusion.

The use of the present tense in the final stanza reveals that the speaker will remain sated by memory, until a time when all might be enacted again, a kind of desperate, hopefully romantic notion only a jilted lover can conjure. The “wistful corkscrew” is a strong image that is summative in what the speaker has been reduced to, an object whose sole function is to begin the treacherous affair of imbibing wine, and love, once again.

The very title with its central images of bread, wine, and olives suggests a relationship that is steeped in antiquity as the nomadic, mid-eastern diet seems to indicate. Here also, on a whole other level with its occasional, violent imagery, the poem invites the audience to wonder whether interaction centers around two countries, mid-east and west. Perhaps they formerly wooed one another but are now left in a state of separation with the west hoping beyond hope that the relationship can pick up where it left off.

Also suggestive is the curious commingling of Last Supper images of Mt. Olivet, or Gethsemani, and the sacrificial bread and wine. Recall also that during this famous meal, betrayal and abandonment were mentioned among images and words of eternal hope.

Whether the poet intends all this mixture of secular and religious imagery is irrelevant. The fact is that the symbols are well versed in tradition and most probably picked for their strong ties to sacrifice, as the speaker seems to feel his relationship has become. Will their love be resurrected?
Will their world be saved?

In part, most poets are chroniclers. They record truthfully, though maybe not realistically, the times in which they live. They couch their stories in metaphor and allusion. They compare and refer, rather than state directly.

Poets hold before us mirrors of our nature or behavior as human beings, but the reflection is distorted intentionally, like a carnival’s house of mirrors. The truth is easier to take in, sometimes, when it is not so bald-faced. As Emily Dickinson wrote, “Tell the truth but tell it slant.”

Distorting or slanting the truth does not mean that it is sugar coated, but rather indirect. Learning by discovery is one of the most effective ways to learn according to pedagogy. Poets create indirect paths to those places we may already know exist, but avoid, because such discovery may require an admission to an unpleasant aspect about ourselves or others which may necessitate change.

Conversely, poets can be quite direct, with imagery so intense as to provoke immediate reaction. The feedback can be emotionally charged, evoking disgust or desire, regret or alienation. And, sometimes poets can masterfully weave realism and imagination to produce an invitation to glean more than what is apparent at first encounter. Such is the poetry of Allen Taylor, next week’s guest columnist.

Taylor, who fell in love with the whole process of writing at ten, used writing to retreat within himself and to cope with a world which did not appreciate his need to be alone with his thoughts.
Eventually, Taylor took a poetry writing workshop in college and the first contemporary book of poetry he ever read, by Sharon Olds, had a profound influence on him. “It provided some fodder for my imagination and I just went wild with it. I opened up the floodgates and just let everything flow. No inhibitions, just raw passion on the page. . . . And honestly, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just knew that I liked it and that I could get a response from people when I wrote.”

Today, Taylor intimates, “To me, poetry is about making sense of the world. It’s my way of processing knowledge and experience. Two things stand out as the most important qualities for a poet: An understanding of the craft and imagination. To me, those two qualities are the bedrock of poetics. . . . I think poetry is important because it keeps us connected – to each other and to nature.”

“I engage in sneaky tactics that take people surprise and you’ll never know what I’ll do next. If there’s a rule to be broken, I’ll break it. If there’s someone to offend, I’ll offend them. But most of all, I write to release my inner demons because if I don’t, they’ll eat me up from the inside out and I respect my gourd too much for that.”

Taylor’s self-perception as a poet rings true in his following poem. But, is the poem a literal depiction of a spirited lady striking out independently until her caretaker comes to bring her back inside?

Does the speaker render, rather, an imaginative characterization of a literal person he observes, something like the biker alter ego of Rose in the comic strip “Rose is Rose,” insisting upon being strongly independent until God takes her “home”?

Does the poet instead use the crone to symbolize the ancient struggle of all women who had to don the appearance of crudeness in order to divide, conquer, and resettle each “RoMAN Empire” grown arrogant in its domination?

Does the lady represent our own Old Liberty, ever displaying her spirited side, at last worn down and nearly overwhelmed, awaiting some other country or generation to come take hold of her legacy?

Or, does the poet see the spirit of humanity in feminine form because of its enduring nurturing aspect, but here harshly presented because of the barbarian nature we all must assume in our worldly struggle with each “civilized” people whose violent and eventually hypocritical nature must be confronted endlessly until the “Second Coming”?

Old Goth

Thigh-high boots glow with kiwi.
At eighty five, she still wears black
from toe to pale neck. Sagging
bags pull beneath her eyes,
dragging them down
like the chains hooked
and dropping from her ears,
dipping, dangling, drooping, all
beagled out. Her lips puff, powdered
blue with punk, purse, flesh out
dull cheeks like biscuits in a fry pan.
Plunges forward her walker
with the gusto of a tired farmer
plowing his field at the end of the sun
and when she reaches the edge
of the churchyard, stops!
clutches her hat, her heart, freezes
stiff as the cancer stick bursting
from her calloused, cracked knuckles,
then stands like a garden gnome
till the caretaker comes to take her home.
- Allen Taylor

Little did I anticipate when I accepted an invitation by Janet Lohr to read and talk about my poetry to the Poet’s Corner at Cross Keys Village this past Monday that the evening would include several “firsts.”

This was the first time in my tenure to be formally invited to work with a poetry group exclusively, although others attended. The poets from the group who read later were erudite, spontaneous, clever, and entertaining. Also in attendance were Hanover’s first and second poets laureate who also graced the evening by reading.

I decided to do something I had not done before by copying four poems I intended to distribute, so people could read along while I read aloud. Instead of letting each poem fly on its own merit, I elected to fill in most of the blanks with the stories behind each one, so that the audience could appreciate the various processes behind idea and form.

Another first came as a slight surprise, when Susan Kirby, Village Life Coordinator, said in her introduction that she “googled our guest,” then proceeded to read what she found. It did put a bit more edge to presenting my work, which most performers relish as that energy vital to good starts, whether they be on stage, on a field or court, or making a sale.

The most meaningful “first” was my Dad’s attending his first poetry reading where I was featured. He is a man who likes his poems rhymed and not stirred in free verse. I planned to open with one of the only rhyming poems I have, but when I got in front of the audience, I could not locate the poem. I extended my introductory remarks as I thumbed back and forth for a poem I had seen just that afternoon.

Eventually, I decided to open with a humorous one I brought along at the last moment, followed by a shorter one, before I embarked on the read-along lesson I had prepared. Then, having passed out the packets, I finally found the poem I sought to open the whole reading with. It almost jumped from a place I swear it had not been.

Rather than proceeding with my lesson, I decided to introduce the poem I found. In retrospect, it was probably better that my father be eased into a reading of a body of my poems by humor (really his favorite mode into anything) and a short love poem with one core image. The buffer of humor and love was a godsend, I realize now.

I explained how when our first child was born, our family’s first grandchild as well, during the final hours of her eighteen in labor, my young wife passed out between contractions. Every time she was coached to push, her whole head turned purple. I thought she was going to literally explode.

I told the audience I had a crazy thought. I said to myself, “My mother went through this for me. How could I have been such a pain in the butt to her when I was a teenager when she had gone through this for me?” I knew I would apologize to her later when I called to let my parents hear the good news!

When the actual birth began and the doctor said, “Here’s the head,” I looked into the mirror and saw my child’s face was a mass of wrinkles. He had no eyes, no nose. I desperately tried to think what I was going to tell my wife who was busy pushing and not watching the main event. I just knew something was wrong.

Then, the doctor blurted, “You’ve got a baby boy. I didn’t know at first because they usually come out face up. He came out face down.” A flood of relief washed me with joy. The following poem came from that inspiration.

Another Branch on the Family Tree

Recalling the birth of our first,
thinking my wife’s whole head would burst;
the OR’s antiseptic scent,
its stark walls and white fluorescent;

my mirrored view, perfectly round,
our imagined angel, earthbound;
emerging, matted, maroon crown:
his royal entrance, upside down;

his anticipated weight in my arm,
my silent promise to keep him from harm;
the panic as they lanced his heel for blood,
he was fast becoming my little “Bud.”

Foot-printed, in case of abduction,
turkey baster air passage suction;
if that weren’t enough to make him bail,
he’s weighed, naked, on a stainless scale.

They wrapped him in a blanket of blue
to complement his warm scarlet hue;
placed in mom’s arms, still shrilly screaming–
we all knew then we weren’t just dreaming.
- Michael J hoover

The last workday of school for teachers is usually one of mixed emotions and lots of activity. The kids have all departed for their summer break the day before, and so the halls are filled with staff of all levels as the great purge begins.

Projects, dittos, and bulletin board decorations must be sorted to see which can be used next year or be hurriedly put in the hall for collection and disposal. Books must be packed away on shelves and personal items stored or taken home.

Two weeks from then, one will feel like a civilian again settling into summer life of catching up on home projects, attending summer classes, visiting and writing people you’ve ignored during May, the most hectic of times for both teachers and students.

These thoughts of the year’s closure were going through my head last Wednesday while I was on my way to school, having left later than normal because homeroom would not meet that day. Fifteen minutes away, the road was blocked by two sheriffs directing traffic into local neighborhoods.

Since traffic had come to a standstill, I decided to relax to satellite radio and listen to NPR. A Fresh Air from WHYY interview of Ron Hansen concerned his new book Exiles that focuses on the inspiration for Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “The Wreck of the Deutschland.” Having read the online excerpt, I’m definitely going to include the book on my summer reading list.

Later that morning while sifting through piles of students’ projects to see which were salvageable, I mulled over the interview but then was struck by some serendipity. I held in my hand an illustrated famous quote assignment depicting a dandelion with Emerson’s, “A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered,” beneath the art.

Of course my mind ran towards my students who somehow are growing beings, most of whom have not even uncovered their own virtue. If we are lucky as teachers, then sometimes we can hold a mirror up to some of them before they get away and on with the next phase of their lives.

While this thought faded, Gerard Manley Hopkins came back to mind. A poem not much appreciated by me in my youth and studied more closely in graduate school came instantly to mind as I tried to remember all the images.

The poem is a celebration of how unappreciated elements in the world broadcast their true beauty and value in spite of their aberrations. The poem literally depicts the spotted or pied things in nature, then progresses to an acknowledgment of workers by their tools.

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things—

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins

One can see that Hopkins, whose heartfelt admiration borders on adoration of the apparent defects in the world, actually reveals the miracle of possibility to the discriminant viewer. May we all give weeds and kids and what we consider less beautiful a closer look this week!
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