I am not writing many new things these days, but I am collecting and compiling. As I told you a few months ago, I've finished a fourth poetry manuscript, Vocation, which is now under review. More recently, I've put together a new essay manuscript and have sent it, too, off into the unknown. And now I am discussing a "White Bear" collaboration with a wonderful young illustrator, Morgan Cameron, who specializes in painting animals. Who knows what will come of this? I am excited about the possibilities.

It is so cold here in Maine--18 below zero this morning. But I feel almost springlike.

Clark complains about the weather

November 22, 1805
[Clark] O! how horriable is the day          waves brakeing with great violence against the Shore throwing the Water into our Camp &c.      all wet and confind to our Shelters.

December 16, 1805
[Clark] The winds violent      Trees falling in every derection, whorl winds, with gusts of rain Hail & Thunder, this kind of weather lasted all day, Certainly one of the worst days that ever was!


Lewis and Clark disagree about food

January 3, 1806
[Lewis] our party from necessaty having been obliged to subsist some lenth of time on dogs have now become extreemly fond of their flesh; it is worthy of remark that while we lived principally on the flesh of this anamal we were much more healthy strong and more fleshey than we had been since we left the Buffaloe country.      for my own part I have become so perfectly reconciled to the dog that I think it an agreeable food and would prefer it vastly to lean Venison or Elk.      a small Crow. the blue crested Corvus and the smaller corvus with a white brest, the little brown ren, a large brown sparrow, the bald Eagle and the beautiful Buzzard of the columbia still continue with us.

[Clark] as for my own part I have not become reconciled to the taste of this animal as yet.

Here are two more Milly Jourdain poems for the archive, followed by some of my thoughts about them. I would love to hear your comments about the poems and my reactions to them, especially as they link to your own approach to writing and revision.

Sheep in a Fog 

Milly Jourdain 

The day was cold and wet with fog
    And all the earth was still,
We drove along through unseen lands
    And half-way up the hill.
We heard a rapid pattering sound
    Like sudden pouring rain,
And then we saw a flock of sheep
    That stretched across the lane.
They made themselves a narrow stream
    To pass us by with fear;
We felt them push and breathe and press
    Till all the way was clear.
And now the fog came closer round
    And all was white and chill;
We heard the sounds of men and sheep
    Grow fainter down the hill.

A Breath of the Past 

Milly Jourdain 

A sudden beam shines from the dying sun
Upon a flight of russet-coloured leaves,
Making them golden birds with rustling cry,
Whirled by the wind along the bone-dry road,
The wind that ever blows from summer's heart.

These two poems exhibit a stylistic contrast that is common throughout Jourdain's collection. The first poem, with its Hardy-like rhythms, stretches back toward the nineteenth-century elegiac pastoral. The second--unrhymed, with a shifting cadence and an intense present-tense focus on a handful of images--looks forward into twentieth-century modernism. At the same time, the poems exhibit another element that is common throughout Jourdain's collection. That is, in each poem she makes a "typical mistake"--which is to say that many of the poems in her collection exhibit one or the other of the following poetry-writing tics. Please note that I am surrounding the term "typical mistake" with quotation marks to indicate that I am not speaking pejoratively but simply noticing the way in which her language slips within the context she has created in each poem.

The first of her tics is rhythmic. For instance, in "Sheep in a Fog," she opens the second stanza with a line that crams an extra syllable into the rhythm pattern. Is this a "mistake" or not? In this case, I can easily propose a rationale. The sound of "rapid pattering" imitates the chaotic, compressed, hoof-tapping noise of a herd of sheep; moreover, the two short a sounds are sonically attractive. Yet I can also easily complain about the line. In a poem that otherwise moves so smoothly, it is notably awkward in the mouth. And if replicating awkwardness was a goal, why bend only a single line instead of using a succession of rhythmic adjustments to give those two central stanzas a kind of Doppler effect of ovine anxiety?

The second tic involves both tone and observational focus. In "A Breath of the Past," Jourdain does a brilliant job of forcing me to stop and experience the exact moment she describes, which is itself a moment of vivid action. I love the image of the "bone-dry road"--the way in which it evokes the dust whirling among the leaves, though she never says the word "dust." But then there's the "mistake": the final line--a sudden sentimental lurch that might not feel so surprising in an old-fashioned poem such as "Sheep in a Fog" but is a shock in this one.

Why did she feel the need to include that squashy last line? In a way, the poem reminds me of some of Anne Sexton's late poems. In many of those pieces, the first stanza is pitch-perfect; reading it is like being jabbed with a fork. But the second stanza wanders into a kind of push-button, loose-lipped self-hatred: the feelings are real and terrible, but the poetry is is an unformed clot on the page. Jourdain's poem is not so starkly divided, but the soft-focus last line fits uneasily into the imagistic clarity of the rest of the poem.

Still, the fact is that she did decide to include it. Why? Was she purposely pulling this twentieth-century exercise back in the nineteenth? If so, she set herself a very interesting task . . . the sort of task that, say, young Virginia Woolf was also beginning to set for herself. So if I look at Jourdain's "mistake" in that light, I begin to wonder if the poem is, in truth, unfinished. It can be easy to mistake a peculiar last line for an ending, when really that line is trying to push the poet into strange new territory. 

Ten below zero again here in beautiful Harmony, Maine. I still don't have a washing machine, but on the bright side I do have a new insulated coffee pot. Yesterday Paul came in third in the boys' 800-meter race, out of a competitive field of 16, so he is very happy; and Tom loved his lobster dinner, so he is very happy; and weirdly enough we spent the evening watching football together, a sport that none of us likes, and we actually enjoyed ourselves.

Here's something new for you. Just for the hell of it, my band (currently known as Doughty Hill) is submitting a video to NPR's Tiny Desk Concert contest. The video, which you can see here, may or may not be our actual submission (the audio's not bad, but the picture is kind of grainy), but I thought you might like to listen to how we're sounding as a trio. Personally, I feel as if I have improved exponentially as an ensemble player. It has been hard work to let myself take it easy.

Today is Tom's 50th birthday, which certainly deserves a party, except that we are on drive-the-kids-back-and-forth to-the-track-meet duty. So the big party will be saved for next weekend, when I take him on a whirlwind overnight date to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Tonight's celebration will be limited to an appetizer tray of Stilton, olives, and sliced dates; lobsters; some sort of pretty salad; fresh bread; lemon gelato, poached pears, and raspberry sauce . . . a meal that will be birthday-like in deliciousness but also quick to compile during the moments when I am not driving around sweaty high schoolers in subzero temperatures.

A Few Thoughts on Speech and Repression

Despite the roaring fire in the woodstove, my hands are so cold that I can hardly type. After dropping to 10 below again last night, the thermometer has risen to zero, which has made almost no difference to the essential refrigeration of the house. With such cold clamoring at all sides, a stove can only do so much, especially if no one is awake to stoke the fire every 45 minutes.

This morning, I've been thinking, as I shiver, about free speech--about its obligations and temptations as well as its rights. I've been thinking also about the people in this world who are terrified of free speech--those who call on violence to quell it, but also those whose everyday lives are dedicated to a repression of liberty: perhaps their own; perhaps their children's, their congregation's, their classroom's. People on both the right and the left may fear free speech, just as people on both the right and the left may virulently advocate for it. The Westboro Baptist Church's behavior at funerals, and the reactions of opponents to that behavior, is a clear example of the way in which liberals and conservatives can suddenly swap sides in the free-speech debate.

Lately we've had conversations on this blog about the tensions between individualism and the collective. As in so many situations in life, the issue isn't either/or but both/and. Yes, we are individuals. Yes, we are members of communities--not just a single community but many interconnected ones--and we must negotiate among these responsibilities. Too often people call on the right to free speech as justification for behaving like assholes. Too often people behave viciously when they hear or see something they don't want to see or hear.

As Thomas Paine wrote in The Rights of Man, "Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess."

Now balance that assertion with Audre Lorde's words from Sister Outsider: "What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language."

In other words, as Virginia Woolf wrote in The Voyage Out, "You cannot find peace by avoiding life."

"As a Thief in the Night," a brand-new, never-before-published western Pennsylvania poem, is featured in today's Vox Populi.

The temperature in Harmony is 21 below zero this morning. Ruckus refuses to get out of bed. The rest of us are jealous.

I am horrified, as you all are, by the murders in Paris. However, I have conflicting feelings about satire for the sake of satire. Free speech is a legal jewel. And I agree: we should not be required to automatically respect a religion. But should we automatically disrespect it? One culture is often tone-deaf when it comes to another culture's humor. Is it right or wrong to ignore that disconnect? These perplexities are all mixed up in my mind, and I'm not sure how to write about them. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this matter.