Rapa Nui, April, 1722
Sailor, on sight of land
You name it resurrection.
Illuminated, the bird descends.
She breathes you in
On the tide’s flow.
The earth burns. Fever
shakes it down to the bone.
A river of glass to meet you,
Your Passion
A plague, an exodus.
The horizon breaks.
A dream, interrupted.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
Poetry Monday: Ana o keke
Ana o Keke
Inside my mouth
An egg
The tern calls
Circling
Careless one
Plaintive
Come to me
Tangatu mana
Man bird
Bring your red
Into my blindness
Your crown of hair
With its stink of the sea
The tern calls
Circling
Ana o keke
I am your milk
Man bird
Come to me
Inside my mouth
An egg
Inside the egg
A tern calling
Inside my mouth
An egg
The tern calls
Circling
Careless one
Plaintive
Come to me
Tangatu mana
Man bird
Bring your red
Into my blindness
Your crown of hair
With its stink of the sea
The tern calls
Circling
Ana o keke
I am your milk
Man bird
Come to me
Inside my mouth
An egg
Inside the egg
A tern calling
Saturday, October 22, 2011
A Poem is a Frog
For those in classrooms
The first thing you need to know about poetry is that it's a living thing, and that your aim, in reading or teaching it, is exposure. Exposure and infection, so that your blood flows with it and you exhale lines like this:
I have my heart on my fist
like a blind falcon*
and breathe in others:
For a time I rest
in the grace of the world**
A poem is a frog, a thing built of breath and movement and sound, its form a skin around the heart's rhythm.
Something our children observe, like the fall of leaves, the texture of feather, barrenness flowering into colourful confusion, the refuge of the subterranean.
Encourage observation. Take a stanza like this and see where it takes you. Hear what you can hear.
When I wrote of the women in their dances and wildness, it was a mask,
on their mountain, gold-hunting, singing, in orgy,
it was a mask; when I wrote of the god,
fragmented, in exile from himself, his life, the love gone down with song,
it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from myself. ***
The poet is speaking to you.
Take time to listen, to puzzle out your own response. To dissect this poem now is to snatch the frog from its pond and pin it, limb by limb, and in the tearing apart, whose purpose is sense and explication, to destroy the living thing.
Watch. Listen. Learn its rhythms instead. Let the poem live with you. Read it at first light, in a moment stolen from the hustle of the day, in the hollow insomniac hour.
When the poem has you by heart, when, as in a dream, the frog turns into a room you can conjure and live in at will, when the mood of the poem is the mood of the room - ecstatic, grieving, ironic or detached - then - then, you begin.
* from The Tomb of the Kings by Anne Herbert
** from The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
*** from The Poem as Mask: Orpheus by Muriel Rukeyser
The first thing you need to know about poetry is that it's a living thing, and that your aim, in reading or teaching it, is exposure. Exposure and infection, so that your blood flows with it and you exhale lines like this:
I have my heart on my fist
like a blind falcon*
and breathe in others:
For a time I rest
in the grace of the world**
A poem is a frog, a thing built of breath and movement and sound, its form a skin around the heart's rhythm.
Something our children observe, like the fall of leaves, the texture of feather, barrenness flowering into colourful confusion, the refuge of the subterranean.
Encourage observation. Take a stanza like this and see where it takes you. Hear what you can hear.
When I wrote of the women in their dances and wildness, it was a mask,
on their mountain, gold-hunting, singing, in orgy,
it was a mask; when I wrote of the god,
fragmented, in exile from himself, his life, the love gone down with song,
it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from myself. ***
The poet is speaking to you.
Take time to listen, to puzzle out your own response. To dissect this poem now is to snatch the frog from its pond and pin it, limb by limb, and in the tearing apart, whose purpose is sense and explication, to destroy the living thing.
Watch. Listen. Learn its rhythms instead. Let the poem live with you. Read it at first light, in a moment stolen from the hustle of the day, in the hollow insomniac hour.
When the poem has you by heart, when, as in a dream, the frog turns into a room you can conjure and live in at will, when the mood of the poem is the mood of the room - ecstatic, grieving, ironic or detached - then - then, you begin.
* from The Tomb of the Kings by Anne Herbert
** from The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
*** from The Poem as Mask: Orpheus by Muriel Rukeyser
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Is Mincing Appropriate for Seven Year Olds ?
When I say I don't censor my children's reading, I'm not lying. What I do censor are the books I read aloud.
Like this bit in Farmer Boy - "They have driven out two teachers," he said. "Last year they hurt Jonas Lane so bad he died of it later."
And I won't be reading this bit from our new read-aloud, The Box of Delights.
"Done ?" the porter said. "Er, he was a bad one. He had a row with his father-in-law, and he got a big sharp knife and cut the poor man up, put him through the mincer and sold him to the dog's meat man."
Goes against all principles of non-bowdlerisation. But tell me, could you put a seven year old to bed with visions of murder and mincing in his head ?
Like this bit in Farmer Boy - "They have driven out two teachers," he said. "Last year they hurt Jonas Lane so bad he died of it later."
And I won't be reading this bit from our new read-aloud, The Box of Delights.
"Done ?" the porter said. "Er, he was a bad one. He had a row with his father-in-law, and he got a big sharp knife and cut the poor man up, put him through the mincer and sold him to the dog's meat man."
Goes against all principles of non-bowdlerisation. But tell me, could you put a seven year old to bed with visions of murder and mincing in his head ?
Thursday, October 6, 2011
A Slap for The Slap
I'm on a local media fast, just so I don't have to hear commentary on The Slap, an eight parter starting tonight on the ABC based on Christos Tsiolkas' novel of the same name.
For those who have somehow missed The Slap, firstly, give thanks. Secondly, listen up. Breastfed four year old ( apparently the writer's master stroke ) unleashes his inner brat at a suburban barbeque. Friend of family gets fed up with permissive and ineffectual parents and gives him the titular slap. Mother takes him to court for assault (not so ineffectual then), friendships fracture...
Leaving aside the master stroke and any quibbles you may have about whether this scenario truly represents the concerns of 21st century Australia, if I hear one more person share the idea that a little bit of physical discipline is just what our modern darlings need or another parent laugh self-deprecatingly, knowingly - oh yes, I smack sometimes, aren't I naughty! - I will have to go and slap myself until senseless.
In a post-Dickens world, hitting children - yep, even the humble slap - is all kinds of wrong. Having a special category of humans we can physically assault at will ? Wrong. Sure, there are annoying kids. Sometimes they may even be your own. Deal with it. Use your words, as we are so fond of pointing out to our little ones.
When it comes to parenting, there's a lot of ideas in the mainstream I disagree with. Breastfed four year olds as rampaging monsters would be one of them. Very little actually shocks me. Even an adult who hits, in the depths of frustration, fear and helplessness, is explicable. An adult, however, who hits and goes on to justify their action, shocks me almost into silence.
Watch if you like - I've heard the production values are terrific - but the argument is done and dusted. Hitting a kid ? That slap ? That smack on the hand or the butt or back of the legs ? The hurt you administer for their own good or blame on the child - he drove me to it ? Just wrong.
For those who have somehow missed The Slap, firstly, give thanks. Secondly, listen up. Breastfed four year old ( apparently the writer's master stroke ) unleashes his inner brat at a suburban barbeque. Friend of family gets fed up with permissive and ineffectual parents and gives him the titular slap. Mother takes him to court for assault (not so ineffectual then), friendships fracture...
Leaving aside the master stroke and any quibbles you may have about whether this scenario truly represents the concerns of 21st century Australia, if I hear one more person share the idea that a little bit of physical discipline is just what our modern darlings need or another parent laugh self-deprecatingly, knowingly - oh yes, I smack sometimes, aren't I naughty! - I will have to go and slap myself until senseless.
In a post-Dickens world, hitting children - yep, even the humble slap - is all kinds of wrong. Having a special category of humans we can physically assault at will ? Wrong. Sure, there are annoying kids. Sometimes they may even be your own. Deal with it. Use your words, as we are so fond of pointing out to our little ones.
When it comes to parenting, there's a lot of ideas in the mainstream I disagree with. Breastfed four year olds as rampaging monsters would be one of them. Very little actually shocks me. Even an adult who hits, in the depths of frustration, fear and helplessness, is explicable. An adult, however, who hits and goes on to justify their action, shocks me almost into silence.
Watch if you like - I've heard the production values are terrific - but the argument is done and dusted. Hitting a kid ? That slap ? That smack on the hand or the butt or back of the legs ? The hurt you administer for their own good or blame on the child - he drove me to it ? Just wrong.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Daybook - October
Listening - it's been a Joni weekend, with a dash of Natalie Merchant and a pinch of Liz Phair.
Making - Lucy and I are making skirts this week - floral, gathered at the waist, mid-length, decorative pockets. We washed the fabric and cut out the pattern days ago, but got derailed by illness. Sewing is like a horse for me; I have to keep getting on (with) it. Otherwise I get scared of the machine again and procrastinate.
Planning - to finish the our home schooling reregistration documentation. That's a mouthful! Our programs are planned and printed. I'm battling annoyance at recent changes which mean we no longer get a visit from an Authorised Person - I enjoyed those visits, talking over our programs, chatting about books and resources - but must now register by documentation. This means an unearthly amount of photocopying, wasteful in the extreme. It also means a certain amount of ill-feeling towards the Board of Studies, for saving themselves work and in the process, adding to mine. Not to mention their insistence that I provide a full application and program for Arwen, even though she has two months of home schooling left.
Hoping - for a cheering week. I'm shrinking back in dread of the month. After the holidays it contains too many appointments and re-re-scheduled surgery. Not nice.
A Thought -
"War is not women's history."
- Virginia Woolf
Perfect ?
It’s in the genes. It has to be. Why else would a six year old quit ballet exams because her excellent result this year was slightly lower than her fabulous result last year ?
Or later, upon coming second in the yearly school exams, feel so mortified that she would claim to have done it deliberately, so as to have the experience of not coming first?
Or as a young adult, fail her driving test once and never take it again ?
A couple of on-line conversations and blog posts have me thinking about the curse of perfectionism. Of how our own failure to live up to our internal standards causes us – the perfectionists among you - such trouble.
I didn’t grow up in a tiger mother home. No-one had anything riding on that ballet exam, besides the hope I’d do my best and be pleased with my result. It’s a temperament thing, passed down to my own children.
One of my children refused to draw for years; the drawings weren’t as good as a sibling’s, despite receiving no such judgement from me. Another doesn’t want to go to an outside class. The child explains it to me: I don’t want to go, because I don’t know how to do it properly yet. The child is deaf to my explanation that classes are for learning, not for performing. Another weighs the conversation with peers, thinking of the perfect response, fearful that an immediate answer or comment will be found wanting – and the conversation passes that child by, despite being surrounded in daily life by people who find that child delightful, mature.
My own perfectionism and the choices I’ve made because of it have both hardened and become less visible. They seem part of who I am rather than impediments to a full life. Not finishing a book of poems seems a philosophical decision. I know there are so many good books of poems; if mine are not better than good, is there any point to their production ? Behind the thought lurks fear of failure, confirmation of a lack. Better not to try at all.
I’ve been thinking about how to find the enemy of perfectionism, of how to retrain the brains of children whose desire to do perfectly isn’t yet hardened and part of who they are. And all I can think of is becoming the change you want to see, of learning to attempt things at which you might fail and of letting the world – your children - see how you fail and how you pick yourself up again, unbroken.
Or later, upon coming second in the yearly school exams, feel so mortified that she would claim to have done it deliberately, so as to have the experience of not coming first?
Or as a young adult, fail her driving test once and never take it again ?
A couple of on-line conversations and blog posts have me thinking about the curse of perfectionism. Of how our own failure to live up to our internal standards causes us – the perfectionists among you - such trouble.
I didn’t grow up in a tiger mother home. No-one had anything riding on that ballet exam, besides the hope I’d do my best and be pleased with my result. It’s a temperament thing, passed down to my own children.
One of my children refused to draw for years; the drawings weren’t as good as a sibling’s, despite receiving no such judgement from me. Another doesn’t want to go to an outside class. The child explains it to me: I don’t want to go, because I don’t know how to do it properly yet. The child is deaf to my explanation that classes are for learning, not for performing. Another weighs the conversation with peers, thinking of the perfect response, fearful that an immediate answer or comment will be found wanting – and the conversation passes that child by, despite being surrounded in daily life by people who find that child delightful, mature.
My own perfectionism and the choices I’ve made because of it have both hardened and become less visible. They seem part of who I am rather than impediments to a full life. Not finishing a book of poems seems a philosophical decision. I know there are so many good books of poems; if mine are not better than good, is there any point to their production ? Behind the thought lurks fear of failure, confirmation of a lack. Better not to try at all.
I’ve been thinking about how to find the enemy of perfectionism, of how to retrain the brains of children whose desire to do perfectly isn’t yet hardened and part of who they are. And all I can think of is becoming the change you want to see, of learning to attempt things at which you might fail and of letting the world – your children - see how you fail and how you pick yourself up again, unbroken.
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