In response to yesterday's post, Dana Brand expressed interest in my longish baseball poem "Cornville," so here it is. The poem will appear in How the Crimes Happened, due out from CavanKerry Press in March 2010, and I've gone back and forth about how happy it makes me. It's one of those poems that seems to read aloud better than it looks on the page, which disturbs me somewhat. I always spend a great deal of revision time on line and stanza breaks and line music, but for some reason the poem still doesn't visually match its sound. I've tried to come to terms with that, but I can't say that I've entirely succeeded.

Anyway, enough of this hand wringing. . . .

Cornville

 Dawn Potter

Let us discuss why poetry has lost the power of making men brave.

                                                            --E. M. Forster

In front of every third house is a for-sale lineup

not of corn but of flat-bellied pumpkins and warty

hubbards tinted that improbable robin’s-egg blue,

also butternuts, tediously beige, and turk’s-heads

that look like Turk’s heads, though the sales clincher

 

among these hopeful come-hithers is surely the “PUM

PKINS” sign, a squat two-line exhortation spray-painted

onto a square board and stabbed into a scruff of weeds.

But Jill’s son won’t let her stop the car, not even for pum

pkins; he claims this cheerful roadside merchandise

 

“might not be good enough,” though he refuses to elaborate

because he’s concentrating on Joe Castiglione, Voice

of the Boston Red Sox, who’s executing a thrilling on-air

play-by-play fit over the alacritous mouse careening

across his shoes in the Tropicana Field press box;

 

yet even in mid-fluster the intrepid Voice manages

to recount a few pertinent clubhouse-mouse anecdotes,

for who can forget (intones the Voice) the great Phil Rizzuto,

whose severe mouse hate occasionally tempted a bored

Yankee to park a dead rodent in his fielder’s glove?

 

Her son, alert and unamazed, sucks up this radio tumult

like oxygen; and if he’s more exercised by Rizzuto’s

shortstop stats than by the image of a long-suffering

Trop Field janitor stowing a poised and baited trap

between the Voice’s jittery feet, it’s merely a symptom

 

of his ascetic attention, the rich curiosities of discipline

he’s imposed on his brain, where details of mouse fear

are mere decorative flourishes in the noble history

of baseball—this unfurling seasonal pageant of power

and beauty and earnest fidelity among a pack of heroes

who can’t possibly blow their seven-game lead,

can they? Another pumpkin stage-set flashes past Jill

on this Cornville road where, come to think of it,

there was corn once, and not so many days ago either:

acres of it, bobbing green and ostrich-like over these mild foothills,

 

but now shaved close, row upon row of dun-colored stubble

fading to dirt, the harvest’s backward march to blankness,

an oracular patriarch reverting to beardless boy—

mouse heaven, no doubt, but not a modern paradise

the like of Tropicana Field, vast echoing hall of crumbs,

 

home of Cracker Jack galore and brisk secret scrambles

among an eternity of folding chairs. That poor radio

adventurer scampering over the Voice’s shiny feet:

he’s a goner, no question about it, bound to be trap-snapped,

maybe this at-bat or the next, for the Voice will not forebear,

 

no extra innings for rodents, and Jill herself cannot abide mice,

those Sisyphean wretches shoving rocks back and forth, back

and forth, all night above her bedroom ceiling; she lies awake,

rigid and furious, wishing them dead. The roadside unrolls

like a backdrop; Jill’s car swallows tarmac, smoothly, greedily;

 

yes, Cinderella’s godmother magicked pumpkins into coaches,

mice into footmen; but can a princess trust a mouse-man

not to steal her shiny slippers and stuff them under a garret

floorboard? Or does she lie in bed, night after night,

listening to the Voice chatter and complain on the prince’s

 

kitchen radio, to the mouse-man scuffle and creak

above her head? Is she wishing him dead?

Jill’s son, like any prince, is indifferent to the mouse,

though also magnanimous, though also ruthless.

The mouse doesn’t gnaw at him. A princess

 

is different—touchier, guiltier. Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater,

had a wife but couldn’t keep her, and no wonder—

they fret so, these wives and princesses, not like the Voice,

who takes a break from his mouse to sell a few Volvo safety tips

and discuss the fine backyard sheds available for purchase

at Home Depot. In the backseat Jill’s son chortles lustily

alongside a Kubota jingle . . . Put her in a pumpkin shell

and there he kept her very well, and what on earth

is that supposed to mean? These nursery rhymes:

they’re like the Good Book—nothing but hint, trickery, or truth.

 

Jill glances up at the Harley swelling into rear mirror view

and thinks about ire and anti-Peter feminists and pulpit-pounding

preachers and screaming Big Papi fans, and sighs,

not because she’s necessarily immune to energetic belief, or even

energetic hope: but it’s tiresome, this inability to gracefully

 

tolerate a riddle. We forget the Sphinx and gape at Oedipus;

nothing consoles our lost honor.  If the Red Sox

blow the series, her son will weep noisily into his banner,

betrayed, aghast—not exactly implying that Beowulf

died in battle so why shouldn’t Manny Ramirez

 

brain himself with a bat instead of shrugging “Better luck

next time,” but really: what does brave require?

Not falling on your sword after losing to the Devil Rays

but maybe not “if a bully bothers you on the playground,

just walk on by,” even if the second version comforts

 

those son-loving mothers who aren’t Grendel’s:

though it would be easy enough to be Grendel’s mother,

Jill thinks suddenly, grieving and vengeful, loping savagely

from her hole in the fens, wretched, livid, desperately hungry

for Danes; and she’s startled at the vision, for it can be strangely

 

tonic to picture oneself as a monster, especially at moments

of maternal docility, child strapped safely in the backseat

of a well-airbagged automobile, robust squash glinting in the autumn

sunlight, sky as clean and blue as a morning-glory, a sedate

Harley-with-sidecar tooling up behind her. Properly blinking,

 

the bike passes her; and as it rumbles by her window,

she catches sight of the oversized Rottweiler

wedged into the sidecar. He looks like Stonehenge

on the run, head thick as a brick, little ears aflutter,

yawp gaping with delight and solidly drooling

 

into the wind. He looks, come to think of it,

like Big Papi heading home for lobster after a cheerful

ball-chasing afternoon, a man who (according to her son)

named his kid after a sub shop, surely a Rottweiler

token of happiness, for there’s a certain plain bravery in joy;

 

and imagine those golden-haired Geats, shields glinting,

splashing up the stony beach—late-day sun, a sea of spears

and shadows; even a mouse owns the courage

of his enchantments; and how the Voice loves his voice,

the quick syllables, the straining verbs, the fervor of the tale—

 

“He crushed that pitch,” exclaims the Voice; and meanwhile,

a mouse considers a peanut-laced trap; meanwhile, Jill’s car

trails a disappearing fat dog down a twisting Cornville avenue;

meanwhile, her son suddenly falls asleep against his window,

his mind blossoming with heroes, except that all of them

 

are himself, everything, yes, everything, depends on his quick

and powerful blow, and how these bright standards

fly in the wind as the men gather in the broad meadow,

a host of warriors, raising their heavy goblets

to salute the king.

I am fond of baseball and of ratty old baseball parks, so when I was looking for something to read during my son's piano lesson (somehow, Henry James didn't seem to fit the ticket), I settled on Michael Kimmelman's "At the Bad New Ballparks," his review of Dana Brand's The Last Days of Shea: Delight and Despair, which appears in the New York Review of Books that's been kicking around on my coffee table for the past week. I frequently forget to read periodicals, so I was lucky to stumble over this piece.

And I should say, as a disclaimer, that I have never been to Shea Stadium. Merely I have driven past it on the expressway, but I've admired its squatty toadlike construction, pointed it out to my fractious sons as a sign that the car trip is almost over, and pondered what it would be like to get off at this mysterious exit and wander around Queens, that unknown land. In a way, just driving past old Shea Stadium has fulfilled a certain baseball satisfaction: the slow, mysterious mind-wandering that makes up 90 percent of every baseball game.

My favorite way to experience baseball is during a Sunday afternoon day game in late summer, when I'm canning or pickling. I turn on the kitchen radio and spend several hours in the company of bushels of vegetables and Red Sox radio announcers Joe and Dave, who in between play-by-plays discuss the fielding prowess of the fans at various parks, recall taxi rides they have taken, reveal that the Dominican players are usually victorious at dugout dominoes tournaments, and so on. I find all this to be vital information and frequently forget to pay attention to the score. 

According to the Kimmelman article, Dana Brand is the "Proust of Mets bloggers," which is an exciting title to be sure. I, too, would like to be the Proust of something. The title evokes a pleasant wordy sadness, which is probably exactly the right state of mind for a Mets blogger, seeing as the Mets are so often dreadful. But also Proust allows his attention to wander in and around his subject, and that is a fitting attitude for a watcher of baseball. Kimmelman says:

Baseball doesn't take up all of your mental space as you watch it. It takes up a degree of it, and you're free, the rest of the time, to experiment with thoughts you might not ordinarily have. Brand writes well about this. He mentions in an earlier book called Mets Fans the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, who described how he decided to become a novelist while sitting in the stands of a game between the Yakult Swallows and the Hiroshima Carp. Someone hit a double and Murakami thought, I should be a writer. The non sequitur of that decision conveys the state of associative openness--akin, as Brand notes, to what we may experience while traveling--that baseball inspires.

A major problem with these "Bad New Ballparks," however, is that they apply a facade of quaintness over what is really the goal of time-killing consumption: buy this, eat this, buy this, eat this, react to this loud preprogrammed crowd noise, buy this, eat this. . . . There is precious little chance to decide to become a writer.

But I wish I could watch a slow game between the Yakult Swallows and the Hiroshima Carp. Something good would be bound to happen.

Today is my mother's 70th birthday; tomorrow is my father's 69th. And to think I remember the day my mother turned 30 and my 29-year-old father teased her about being old.

Anyway, even though they're unlikely to be reading this blog, I'm posting this poem from Boy Land for them, with much love.

Nostalgia

Dawn Potter

It was darker then, in the nights when the cars

came sliding around the traffic circle, when the headlights

speckled with rain traveled the bedroom walls

and vanished; when the typewriter, the squeaking chair,

the slow voice of the radio stirred the night air like a fan.

Of course, the ones we loved were beautiful--

slim, dark-haired, intent on their books.

The rain came swishing against the lamp-lit windows.

The cat purred in his chair. A clock sang,

and we lay nearly asleep, almost dreaming,

almost alone, nearly gone--the days fly so;

and the nights, like sleep, disappear without memory.

Teachers: here's a link to information about the National Endowment for the Humanities "Letters about Literature" competition, which encourages students to write thoughtful letters explaining why a particular work of literature matters to them.

Also, I offer a link to the Sewanee Review's interview with Sam Pickering. I've never met Sam; but as a peer reviewer, he offered very helpful advice on Tracing Paradise. He also convinced UMass Press to publish it, so naturally I love him. Sam was the model for Robin Williams's character in Dead Poets Society, a movie I've never seen but maybe you have. 

Finally, don't forget that Baron Wormser, director of the Frost Place Conference on Poetry & Teaching, will be manning the first-ever Frost Place table at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) annual meeting in Philadelphia, November 18-22. If you or your colleagues are attending, please stop by and visit. And if you have teaching acquaintances in the Philly area, encourage them to visit as well. (http://www.ncte.org/annual)

Reading a Henry James novel is akin to bushwacking in a state park. Somewhere, I feel, there are smooth gravel paths, interpretive signs, and pristine views. Occasionally, I even glimpse them.  So how is it that I keep getting entangled in this uncharted undergrowth? I mean, consider this sentence from The Ambassadors:

But it was in spite of this definite to him that Chad had had a way that was wonderful: a fact carrying with it an implication that, as one might imagine it, he knew, he had learned, how.

By this point, I have read that sentence at least 10 times, and I still have no idea what it actually means. The words make no sense together, and the harder I look, the more confusing the syntax gets. Nonetheless, when I stand back, I sort of have kind of an idea about what James is saying; and I'm starting to think that, really, that's the only way to read this novel. I need to allow it to smother me like a magnificent haze, which every once in a while opens into clarity. This makes the novel less than ideal as bedtime fodder, and I'm also glad I'm not reading it on a bus. But it does work reasonably well at about 10:30 in the morning, as I sit in a patch of sunlight drinking tea and eating the last slice of banana tart.

Not a good day to be a Mainer: gay marriage was repealed, thanks to my own neighbors. According to the Bangor Daily News, 75 percent of Harmony voters voted for repeal, and I'm so irked that I can't even think of a synonym that would help me avoid writing "voters voted." But though I may be distressed, I am not surprised. Conservative Christianity is a powerhouse in northern rural Maine, and I knew my town would vote for repeal. I did believe, however, that progressive southern Maine would override that faction. Apparently not.

Therefore, it seems only right to quote from the Book, and this is what I have accidentally put my finger on. Amazing. No wonder anyone can see anything he wants to see in the Bible. But hell, if he can do it, so can I.

from Psalm 73

If I had said, "I will speak thus,"

I would have been untrue to the generations of thy children.

But when I thought how to understand this,

it seemed to me a wearisome task,

until I went into the sanctuary of God;

then I perceived their end.

Truly thou dost set them in slippery places;

thou dost make them fall to ruin.

How they are destroyed in a moment,

swept away utterly by terrors!

They are like a dream when one awakes,

on awaking you despise their phantoms.

One thing that has always intrigued me about Hayden Carruth is the way in which he so skillfully uses form as a container for chaos. I know I've mentioned his poem "Adolf Eichmann" before (sorry: I can't find a link to it anywhere), but I can't stop thinking of it as an exemplar of this technique. For the poem is not only written in terza rima (rhyme scheme ABA, BCB, etc.) but also repeats exact words rather than simply using rhymes:

man

mind

man

mind

chief

mind

chief

Adolf

chief

etc.

One might guess that this method would come across as heavy-handed and oppressive, but the effect is in fact breathtaking; for the poem is about obsession and hate . . .  not simply Eichmann's but the speaker's growing awareness of his own evil. Without its suffocating form, the piece would be unremarkable. As it is, "Adolf Eichmann" is one of the scariest poems I've ever read. 

If you're interested in seeing the poem as a whole, email me and I'll send it to you.

Dinner tonight: Venetian meatballs, Brussels sprouts from the garden, arugula salad with feta and our own pullet eggs. To think I possess children who adore Brussels sprouts! But of course homegrown sprouts are divine. The meatballs are a recipe from one of Marcella Hazan's cookbooks. They're time-consuming to make, but everyone here loves them, so they're a good choice when we're missing a family member for dinner. It's a safe bet he's eating better food than we are anyway. . . .