The Refinery

I knew when I started this project -- some days, some weeks would be like this... every day for a year... days I don't want the news -- when all I want is poetry, as this, it seems to me, is one of the ancient forms of salvation before us. In China, the Monks are caring for the people -- the victims of the storm... the people who have lost everything are swimming to find the Monks... if the news is our connection to the passing of events and of our lives, there must still be more ancient forms of communication and refining that tell a deeper truth... The Refinery
by Robert Pinsky
". . . our language, forged in the dark by centuries of violent pressure, underground, out of the stuff of dead life." Thirsty and languorous after their long black sleep The old gods crooned and shuffled and shook their heads. Dry, dry. By railroad they set out Across the desert of stars to drink the world Our mouths had soaked In the strange sentences we made While they were asleep: a pollen-tinted Slurry of passion and lapsed Intention, whose imagined Taste made the savage deities hiss and snort. In the lightless carriages, a smell of snake And coarse fur, glands of lymphless breath And ichor, the avid stenches of Immortal bodies. Their long train clicked and sighed Through the gulfs of night between the planets And came down through the evening fog Of redwood canyons. From the train At sunset, fiery warehouse windows Along a wharf. Then dusk, a gash of neon: Bar. Black pinewoods, a junction crossing, glimpses Of sluggish surf among the rocks, a moan Of dreamy forgotten divinity calling and fading Against the windows of a town. Inside The train, a flash Of dragonfly wings, an antlered brow. Black night again, and then After the bridge, a palace on the water: The great Refinery--impossible city of lights, A million bulbs tracing its turreted Boulevards and mazes. The castle of a person Pronounced alive, the Corporation: a fictional Lord real in law. Barbicans and torches Along the siding where the engine slows At the central tanks, a ward Of steel palisades, valved and chandeliered. The muttering gods Greedily penetrate those bright pavilions-- Libation of Benzene, Naphthalene, Asphalt, Gasoline, Tar: syllables Fractioned and cracked from unarticulated Crude, the smeared keep of life that fed On itself in pitchy darkness when the gods Were new--inedible, volatile And sublimated afresh to sting Our tongues who use it, refined from oil of stone. The gods batten on the vats, and drink up Lovecries and memorized Chaucer, lines from movies And songs hoarded in mortmain: exiles' charms, The basal or desperate distillates of breath Steeped, brewed and spent As though we were their aphids, or their bees, That monstered up sweetness for them while they dozed.
From The Want Bone, published by The Ecco Press. Copyright © 1990 by Robert Pinsky. And the Poets.org

My Father's Subway Stop

There was an amazing piece of art in the Greenpoint subway yesterday morning. My father's stop on the G line...


gothamist.com

I love this. I'm not quite convinced of the paper towel imagery -- but I really like the concept and the execution.

The thing about public conversation, though, is that... well... the public gets involved.

Here's a comment from AnnonEMouse

"Why are there such pointless idiots living in Brooklyn? Why? All that's gonna happen is those papertowels are gonna litter the entire platform --or worse be used to clean noses & butts-- and then disposed of on the tracks to create fires just in time for rush hour..."

Pointless idiots. One could say this of all artists, really -- couldn't one? Just littering the streets... filling the world with more pages and pages of waste.
Idiots.
The word idiot is a little contagious...

"What kind of idiot knowingly moves into an area on top of a oil spill?
This wasn't a big secret, tards. We've known about it for years. Thats what happens in a district that used to contain oil refineries." jaja007

I suppose I'm a little defensive. And a little annoyed. Defensive because not everyone chose to live there, of course. In this sentence seems such the clear disposal of the people who lived there before the gentrification -- and still live there. I was amazed at how much polish there was there still -- people still speaking it in the streets and in the stores -- young people, children. Furthermore, the only reason anyone cares at all now is because of the desirable land -- the view of Manhattan -- the proximity to the city.

I was at a poetry reading last night, and out to dinner after I was talking with my friend about one of the poems in the program -- wasn't it tongue in cheek, he said... the poem talked about the misfortunes of a family in poverty in Gloucester Massachusetts. The poem laughed at pregnancy and alcohol and drugs and poverty. I know, I sound like such a stick in the mud. "maybe he lived there," said my friend. Maybe -- but he didn't live there -- live there as in understand and reside.

The obvious exclusion in both of these conversations is the fact of lack of choice and alternative for so many people. And not just the lack of choice -- the way that the people without choice simply disappear in the sentence
as if they didn't exist.

Who moves there? Idiots. Who lives there...

This is what Nassau Avenue (or near) looked like when my father was little.


brooklynpix.com

Oil, Oil Everywhere

Sometimes I just like to put things into Google to see what come out. Today I put in "oil, water, everywhere." The top three hits were old articles, spanning the last several years, from Forbes, The Wall Street Journal and Time magazine. "Oil, Oil Everywhere..."

I've quoted The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner here before, interestingly enough. Months ago I learned that the albatross has got caught up in oil itself, with many species on the verge of extinction...

It seemed like a good time to revisit the stanza in question:


And the Albatross begins to be avenged.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink ;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot : O Christ !
That ever this should be !
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night ;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue and white.

My Day

Last night I went to an amazing event put on by the Poetry Society of America -- one of those poetry readings you tell people about and remember forever:

Wednesday, April 2nd
panel 4:00pm, reading 6:30pm
Boston, MA
STATE OF THE ART: AFRICAN-AMERICAN POETRY TODAY

Two events showcasing the range of distinctive voices in contemporary African-American poetry. With Elizabeth Alexander, Toi Derricotte, Cornelius Eady, Nikki Giovanni, Major Jackson, Yusef Komunyakaa, Dawn Lundy Martin, Carl Phillips, Quincy Troupe, Sonia Sanchez, and Afaa Michael Weaver. Hosted by the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University and co-sponsored by Boston Review and Cave Canem.

I have been having a crisis of poetic faith of late -- and there is nothing to give you back faith in a process than to see one after the other incredible poet read their work. The beauty in the room last night was staggering, and it felt like an honor to be alive.

Yesterday I went to my favorite spin class. It's with this young extreme sports guy who is always having us close our eyes and imagine a mountain or a river or a certain kind of air. This class, he was on a geese kick. He told us about how geese follow their elders because the elders remember the way.

I thought of that last night because so often the voices in poetry and society these days that we listen to are the young ones -- but if we follow our elders... there are stories of hope and redemption and progress and love to be had.

Yesterday I read an article in the Phillyburbs.com, poet Jorie Graham talked about her new book, "Sea Change," which deals with issues of the earth and of climate:

DW: This collection feels as if it ties the connection between the past and the unknown future into a state of teetering present—yet you weave hope throughout. Would you consider yourself a hopeful person? Do you have faith in the future?

JG: In the short run I cannot but hope, I wouldn’t have written this if I were hopeless. I think artists have a large responsibility at present—that of awakening the imagination of a deep future. If humans have to be asked to make sacrifices for people they do not even know will be alive—sacrifices the results of which will not be evident, if at all, except four or five generations hence, then we are going to have to help awaken an imagination of that “deep” future, in order that people feel “connected” to it in their willingness to act. After all people are going to be asked to radically alter their lives--for their whole lives-- in order that their kind and their world might remain. I happen to feel one can reawaken that sensation of an “unimaginably” far off horizon. We are so collapsed-down now into a buzzing noisy here-and-now, an era of instant gratification, decimated attention-span, that it is going to take some work to help people “see” in their mind’s “eye” that far off horizon many generations beyond their own time, a time towards which they are going to have to try to take a leap of faith—and a leap which involves deep sacrifice at that. But I wouldn’t be making the effort to answer you in this way, at length, or to write such a book, if I did not believe we still had that chance. A real chance. And that art could be in service of that goal.

Spin guy also told us that in the pack, a goose can fly 71 percent farther than he can alone.

So today I will surround myself with poetry -- keep it like a warm coat --
and hope that the real future is the integration -- of poetry and journalism -- of loss and love -- or language and feeling. That if the poets and the poems can -- we too can move to a place of truth -- of balance.

Cornelius Eady read last night.


Crows in a Strong Wind
by Cornelius Eady

Off go the crows from the roof.
The crows can’t hold on.
They might as well
Be perched on an oil slick.

Such an awkward dance,
These gentlemen
In their spottled-black coats.
Such a tipsy dance,

As if they didn’t know where they were.
Such a humorous dance,
As they try to set things right,
As the wind reduces them.

Such a sorrowful dance.
How embarrassing is love
When it goes wrong

In front of everyone.


Cornelius Eady, “Crows in a Strong Wind” from Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1997). Copyright © 1985 by Cornelius Eady. Used with the permission of the author.

Source: Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1997).
And the Poetry Foundation website.

What Would We Give Up?

Today I was traveling. I spent the day in Connecticut -- and while there is a pretty big breaking story on the oil front, I'll have to write about it tomorrow. I spent more time in the car and less on the computer...

I was driving through Hartford -- the smell is really bad. So I thought I'd see if I could find out what it was -- I realized I don't take those smells for granted anymore -- what used to just seem like a nuisance now seems like evidence. I found a website that I don't understand that lists Hartford and its varying types of emissions. I don't understand or trust it, but I thought I'd share that it seems to say Hartford's Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen Oxide, PM 2.5, PM 10 and Volatile Organic Compound Emissions seem to be 90-100% of the worst in the country.

Also I read an amazing poem today. It's by one of my favorite poets, Marie Howe -- it made me think very much about some of this I have been wondering about here -- her new book just came out from Norton: The Kingdom of Ordinary Time. I highly recommend you go buy the book! I have to print it small so as not to mess up the formatting.


"What We Would Give Up"

One morning in Orlando Florida, I asked a group of college students -- What
would we be willing to give up to equalize the wealth in the world? Malls, a
red-haired young woman said right away. Supermarkets, the young man in
a black T-shirt said -- where you go to buy bread, and there's a hundred and
fifty loaves on the shelf. Imported fruit, the young woman sitting next to him
said -- berries in winter. A car, the guy with the nose ring said. I don't have a
car anyway.

Travel? Jet fuel? Well, we'd all be together, someone said. TV, said the guy
without a car, I don't watch TV anyway. What about coffee, I said, looking
down at my double tall half-caf soy latte. Ok, everyone said, but I wondered
about that one. Ten pairs of shoes? Yes. Movies? Maybe.

That week my phone was out of order. When the company tried to connect
my line to a split line that would allow me fast cable access to the Internet
everything went dead. When I called the phone company I was put on hold
and had to listen to a tinny version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons pitched at what
seemed a much faster than usual speed. This call may be monitored.

I was told to punch my number in five times during that first phone call, and
every time I was transferred to a person who asked for my number again.

Eight calls that first day. We'll send a technician out, the central office would
say. The technician, when he arrived would say, The problem is in the central
office. When I called the central office, someone would say, We have to send
a technician out. When I said, a technician has already been there, the central
office person would say, All I can do is put in an order Ma'am. Vivaldi.

After seven days, I began to suspect that at the center of the central office is
a room empty of all furniture but a table. On the table, a ringing telephone.
Somewhere way down a long corridor, one guy in a broken chair in front of
an empty desk. Every once in a while he cranes his neck towards the door and
yells to no one in particular -- is anyone gonna answer that?

If you don't want music, the phone company says, please hold through the
silence.

When I came home from Orlando, the phone started working again. The
Gap? Someone said. Everybody said, I don't go to the Gap.

Would I give up the telephone? Would I give up hot water? Would I give up
makeup? Would I give up dying my hair? That was a hard one. If I stopped
dying my hair everyone would know that my golden hair is actually gray, and
my long American youth would be over -- and then what?


Thank you, Marie. Yes.

Healing

Some days I can't stand to open the newspaper. Today I sat down in front of my bookshelf to begin.

I came to one of my favorite books -- An anthology of Native American Literature I got in college.

I kept finding myself wanting to use a search engine on my books -- but as this is impossible, I went back to the computer.

I googled Yusef Komunyakaa, oil and poems together -- I don't know why him... He's one of my favorites. Seemed likely oil might have crossed his lips -- he writes about the earth -- and about war -- and about people...

I found this:

You and I are Disappearing -- Bjorn Hakansson

The cry I bring down from the hills
belongs to a girl still burning
inside my head. At daybreak

she burns like a piece of paper.

She burns like foxfire
in a thigh-shaped valley.
A skirt of flames
dances around her
at dusk.

We stand with our hands

hanging at our sides,
while she burns

like a sack of dry ice.

She burns like oil on water.
She burns like a cattail torch
dipped in gasoline.
She glows like the fat tip
of a banker's cigar,

silent as quicksilver.

A tiger under a rainbow
at nightfall.
She burns like a shot glass of vodka.
She burns like a field of poppies
at the edge of a rain forest.
She rises like dragonsmoke
to my nostrils.
She burns like a burning bush
driven by a godawful wind.

You can hear him read it here. I love his readings. He is a veteran of the Vietnam war.

Yesterday I wrote about healing -- or lack there of. About the fact that we can disrupt our own healing down to the cellular level...

and then a friend, a spiritual healer, wrote me out of the blue. I don't think she'd read my post yesterday -- just knew to write.

So there is also healing in the world -- on the energy level. The through the air and the spirit level.

Another poem -- this one from my bookshelf.


The Remedies

Half on the earth, half in the heart,
the remedies for all the things
which grieve us wait for those who know
the words to use to find them.

Penobscot people used to make
a medicine for cancer from mayapples
and South American people knew
the quinine cure for malaria
a thousand years ago.

But it is not just in the roots,
the stems, the leaves,
the thousand flowers
that healing lies.
Half of it lives within the words
the healer speaks.

And when the final time has come
for one to leave this Earth
there are no cures,
for Death is only
Part of live, not a disease.

Half on the Earth, half in the heart,
the remedies for all our pains
wait for the songs of healing.

by Joseph Bruchae
from:
The Remembered Earth
ed. Geary Hobson,
University of New Mexico Press, 1979

This post is for Kim.

The Border

I'm thinking about interconnectedness this morning. The way we lean on each other even as tensions rise... the way if tensions rise enough we have to remove our own supports.

Last week in Ecuador, flooding and landslides damaged a major oil pipeline. Two dozen people died in the flooding, and thousands of barrels of oil poured into a local swamp.

According to the AP story in the International Herald Tribune,

"Environmental fallout from the 4,000 barrel spill in a mountainous region 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Ecuador's capital, Quito, is "grave," as many Coca River tributaries, a water source for nearby communities, have been contaminated, Oil Minister Galo Chiriboga said."

Ecuador is the fifth largest exporter of oil in South America.
Ecuador relies on Colombia for a pipeline in one area to aid with its extraction of oil.

Today, tensions in the entire area are beginning to erupt. The story in the Times leads,

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela and Ecuador mobilized troops to their borders with Colombia on Sunday, intensifying a diplomatic crisis after Colombian forces killed a senior guerrilla leader at a jungle camp in Ecuador.

The article today suggests that even the threat of war is a welcome distraction from the economy in Venezuela. There were similar suggestions in this country some years back... I think I've said before -- I'm having a hard time deciphering the coverage from the times about Venezuela. Through the rhetoric it is too hard to discern what is actually happening. Chavez speaks in language better suited to a cartoon villain, yet he is real and there is something very condescending about focusing on his words and posturing rather that the actualities of the situation -- demeaning to the people effected by it all. Here and there.

On the border
on the border of war...

It's tiring, listening to people. Listen to poetry.

A Song on the End of the World

by Czeslaw Milosz

On the day the world ends

A bee circles a clover,

A fisherman mends a glimmering net.

Happy porpoises jump in the sea,

By the rainspout young sparrows are playing

And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends

Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,

A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,

Vegetable peddlers shout in the street

And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,

The voice of a violin lasts in the air

And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder

Are disappointed.

And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps

Do not believe it is happening now.

As long as the sun and the moon are above,

As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,

As long as rosy infants are born

No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet

Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,

Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:

There will be no other end of the world,

There will be no other end of the world.

Warsaw, 1944

Translated by Anthony Milosz

Czeslaw Milosz, "A Song on the End of the World" from The Collected Poems; 1931-1987. Copyright © 1988 by Czeslaw Milosz Royalities, Inc. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Source: The Collected Poems: 1931-1987 (The Ecco Press, 1988).

http://poetryfoundation.org

Essential Human Elements

Robert Bateman, Canada
Antarctic Evening – Humpback Whales

I'm still needing art. And I think it's interesting -- at a time when there is so much money being generated by and for oil in this country alone -- that there is no money for the arts. Some of this is a philosophical issue of what we choose as our values and what is important -- other is just logistics. Artists can't afford to do their work and live in this culture. In talking about funding for the arts -- and I include poetry and performance in this term -- we have to look at the role and purpose in art. Politics? Entertainment? Meaning? If we starve the arts what conversations do we end...

Yesterday, Andrew C. Revkin of the New York Times bemoaned the lack of initiative in this country. Hard to imagine I could possible be more cynical than a New York Times reporter, but really -- we don't even back the UN...

Following the environmental tenants of that organization is this statement:

Internationally co-ordinated work on the environment has been led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), since its inception in 1973. UNEP has provided leadership and encouraged partnerships to care for the environment, for example, through Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) which have addressed issues such as species loss and the need for conservation at a global and regional level. UNEP has created much of the international environmental law in use today.

The three environmental principles of the Global Compact are drawn from a Declaration of Principles and an International Action Plan (Agenda 21) that emerged from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit) held in Rio de Janerio in 1992. Chapter 30 of Agenda 21, identified that the policies and operations of business and industry can play a major role in reducing impacts on resource use and the environment. In particular, business can contribute through the promotion of cleaner production and responsible entrepreneurship.

The UN is a supporter of the arts in this endeavor.

"Science informs the mind, music and the heart but art connects with the human spirit," said Achim Steiner, Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of UNEP.

I love that. The human condition, right -- great art explores the human condition. Maybe that is part of what makes this particular topic so compelling, and so easy to integrate in terms of aesthetics and politics in a way that doesn't alienate one from the other -- demise is not foreign to the soul at all...

Steiner goes on to say: "We urgently need to empower all three of these essential human elements if we are to rise to the challenge and seize the opportunities for economic, environmental and social renewal glimpsed through the lens of climate change."

25% of the worlds oil reserves are believed to reside in the Arctic.
The icebergs are melting at a rate that far exceeds all expectations.

For UN World Environment Day 2007, the Natural World Museum in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme produced an exhibition that addresses the theme of Climate Change from a global perspective - the melting and thawing of ice, snow and permafrost are environment-altering changes taking place around the world- from the Andes to the Himalayas to the melting ice caps of the Poles. "Change" the transition that occurs from same to different, the moment of transformation, a change of position or action. Change used in reference to our environment can describe the transformation of material substance -- from ice to water, liquid to gas - the changing conditions of our rivers, our rapidly melting glaciers,, and the overall changes in the earth's climate. Change requires organisms and organizations alike to adapt to new environmental conditions. Metaphorically, change can also refer to the transformation of society's mindset to act in a positive way individually and collectively to work toward a more sustainable future.
Press release from the Natural World Museum.

The Exhibit will be at the Field Museum in Chicago from April to October of this year.
I want to go.

Freedom Growing Fruit

From A Speech by Martin Luther King Jr.:

I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about "Where do we go from here," that we honestly face the fact that the Movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, "Who owns the oil?" You begin to ask the question, "Who owns the iron ore?" You begin to ask the question, "Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two thirds water?" These are questions that must be asked.

http://www.indiana.edu/~ivieweb/mlkwhere.html



In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr.
by June Jordan

I

honey people murder mercy U.S.A.
the milkland turn to monsters teach
to kill to violate pull down destroy
the weakly freedom growing fruit
from being born

America

tomorrow yesterday rip rape
exacerbate despoil disfigure
crazy running threat the
deadly thrall
appall belief dispel
the wildlife burn the breast
the onward tongue
the outward hand
deform the normal rainy
riot sunshine shelter wreck
of darkness derogate
delimit blank
explode deprive
assassinate and batten up
like bullets fatten up
the raving greed
reactivate a springtime
terrorizing

death by men by more
than you or I can

STOP


II

They sleep who know a regulated place
or pulse or tide or changing sky
according to some universal
stage direction obvious
like shorewashed shells

we share an afternoon of mourning
in between no next predictable
except for wild reversal hearse rehearsal
bleach the blacklong lunging
ritual of fright insanity and more
deplorable abortion
more and
more


June Jordan, “In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr.” from Directed By Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2005). Copyright © 2005 by The June M. Jordan Literary Trust. Reprinted with the permission of The June M. Jordan Literary Trust, www.junejordan.com.

Source: The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (1997).

For The Birds

A new study is looking at long-term effects of oil spills, as monitored through birds.

"Seagull blood shows promise for monitoring pollutants from oil spills," according to a new study from the American Chemical Society. Following seagulls months and years after oil spills, a group of scientists is marking the rise in pollutants in the birds' blood. Among other things, these pollutants (Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) are known to cause cancer and damage DNA. I dont' think I knew DNA could be damaged...

While oil spills quickly kill large numbers of seabirds and other animals, scientists do not fully understand the non-lethal biological effects of these spills, the Spanish researchers say.

The article in the ACM journal opened with that canary in a coal mine metaphor, again. Since I first wrote about that phrase last fall, I've seen it come up over and over again. Language travels through society like birds -- flocking and gathering and crying through the air.

This new study is crucial, of course. We look at things in such a short term perspective, we forget to look out, into the future and the past for understanding.

At the same time, while I think this will certainly prove an important study, there seems something so off with the way we look at and talk about these things. The birds -- the birds are not dying to show us when we are killing ourselves... we are killing the birds!


Photo from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council.

When the Cosco Busa cargo ship spilled 58,000 gallons of oil off San Francisco bay two months ago, within a week over 1,500 birds were dead or dying from the effects. While I have been familiar with photos of oil covered birds for decades, I didn't really know what the actual effects were -- I guess I thought the birds would then suffocate. I still imagine that's part of it -- but more. They lose their waterproofing. (Another irony...) They become incapable of faring cold and water. Listen to rescue workers discuss the scene on NPR here.

It is an overwhelming disconnect -- this one between us and the life -- the earth life -- we are part of. The overwhelming disconnect. As ever, when I feel that drowning in the person-ness we live in, I turn to poems.


Eagle Poem

by Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you.

And know there is more

That you can’t see, can’t hear;

Can’t know except in moments

Steadly growing, and in languages

That aren’t always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We see you, see ourselves and know

That we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon within a

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding out the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty.

In beauty.

Joy Harjo, “Eagle Poem” from In Mad Love and War. Copyright �© 1990 by Joy Harjo. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press.
From the Poetry Foundation Website.

Not Just Alaska.

So, it's not just Alaska...

By AP

Published: January 8, 2008

Environmental groups sued the Shell Oil Company and several of its affiliates, claiming that the oil giant has for years released pollutants from its suburban Houston refinery that are well above state and federal limits. In the federal lawsuit, the Sierra Club and Environment Texas claim that the excess air pollutants, including the toxic chemicals benzene and 1,3-butadiene, are a violation of the federal Clean Air Act.

Two things occur to me:
the first is that the toxins released by our proximity to and reliance on fossil fuel no doubt exceed anything we can imagine or can currently measure.
the second is that we are very hung up on blame in this country, and that without some other means of understanding it is impossible to imagine human progress.

Two more things occur to me:
this is the same as in everything we do -- talk, travel, buy, desire, raise our children, kiss.
unless we can change somehow, without blaming other people, there is no hope for new growth, for progress, for breathing freely.

Another poet friend is very interested in the idea of what is new, and often writes about it and posts quotes about it on his blog -- as in, can we invent, can there be anything new --

Ring In The New

"... one might imagine the good New growing naturally out of the good Old, without the need for polemic or theory..." - T.S.Eliot

The conversation revolves aroung poetics, but why not oil -- maybe the question is the same of politics or science or industry...

Ted Hughes, writing from Boston in 1959, on American poets:

"... you have to take into account the way their whole life is condensed on the superficialities of the moment. Relation to a changing past ... they are without, and get no pleasure from contemplating it." And, "[autobiography] is the only subject matter really left to Americans. The only thing an American really has to himself, & really belongs to, is his family. Never a locality, or a community, or an organisation of ideas, or a private imagination"

Maybe it would be refreshing to imagine this all an American dilemma -- that the only reason I see it all as human nature is because I am an American. Maybe then the rest of the world could save us... humans elsewhere... who own their own breath...

My Crimes

This from the New York Times
October 28, 1852

"Accidents by burning fluid" have come to be household words, and yet the use of the fluid is not, probably, at all diminished. Indeed, it would be very un-American to cease using an article because it would be abused. It is only old women who advocate the abolition of guns, and very silly men who insist on banishing calomel, antimony, and the lancet because they have been shamefully abused. If guns are safety, if the lancet has hurt anybody, send the phelebotomist back to school until he can tell where it is needed and how to manage it. Such is the doctrine of our day, and we hold the same regard to burning fluid which has already slain its thousands ... Oil. Yes, oil..."

1852!

The article goes on to talk about household safety and the pros and cons of candles...

One thing I love about these old articles is that the author don't struggle at all under the confines of modern journalism. The author makes no mistake of authority, and sarcasm and directives abound. It feels both quaint and refreshing to read them now. There is not the pretension so labored over now that the reporter should be an objective viewer. Keeping the "I" out of the narration of journalism is the base of our system of "fair and accurate" reporting -- but it is now understood that this is an impossible feat for a person to perform.

Yesterday I bought a little reprinted book by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
"Poetry As Insurgent Art."

"I am signaling you through the flames," "The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it." "Write living newspapers,"" "Your poems must be more than want ads for broken hearts" - in other words, to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, to write mere "love poetry" in such times is "almost a crime."

I took this project off line starting today because I couldn't hear my own voice -- I was getting self-conscious, and concerned with readers -- lovers, mothers, strangers read these words with varying degrees of interest and discern. On the other hand, I am very much missing the conversation this morning... the log, like the letter, allows for a relief from the issue of author stance and readership, as both are naturally built in to the medium.

How does one person do anything of import? The poets and the reporters of before had no doubt of their importance -- they did not live inside of a globalized world -- they did not live inside of the slick that is our waters now -- or even a woman's body. This is nothing at all more than a log of learning and exploration.

Here we are. Here I am.
I am writing love poems. I am burning oil.
I'm not sure I know how to be anything else.

What Leaks

In my town, the gas stations are all full service -- a fact I confess I pretty much like. But I always wonder how the fumes effect the people who stand there all day. I asked the guy who helped me yesterday -- who often helps me -- if the fumes bother him. He said he wouldn't notice if they did. I asked if he ever gets dizzy standing there all day -- he said he wouldn't be surprised. He said when they take the tanks out the whole place smells like gas.

A few years ago, there was a gas leak up the hill from my house. I used to walk the dog around the corner every day, and every day I thought I was going a little crazy. Finally I saw a woman working in the yard, and asked her if she smelled gas. She asked me to call the gas company -- she said she had called 5 times but because it was on public property they weren't taking it very seriously.

Yesterday in Nigeria about 30 people died in a fire -- there was a pipeline spill and people were trying to scoop out their own fuel. The article from the AP says these types of accidents are common.

A few weeks ago my downstairs tenants came home from work and smelled gas. They tried to call me -- I was too deep in work to answer the phone. They called the gas company. It was around 8:00 at night -- and 17 degrees outside. The guy from the gas company came -- he said he could tell what the problem was -- that it wasn't dangerous -- that he was going to leave the gas on because he wasn't worried and it was so bloody cold -- and that he wasn't supposed to. By law, if you know there is a gas leak, you have to turn off the gas. I went to bed wondering if we were going to wake up.

He also said people don't die from gas inhalation. I suppose people die from asphyxiation -- and blowing up. I wondered if Sylvia Plath would have been interested in the distinction. A friend of mine in highschool -- his house blew up from a gas explosion. Twenty years later I still remember what he said the next week -- "I had this really killer [Greatful] Dead collection."

What ensued in my house on the morning after the gas leak was like something out of a bad TV show -- the short end is that after both my plumber and I talked to a total of 5 people from the gas company, I had threaten a little to get them to come back and fix the problem. They changed my meters too, which had been brand new, to cover up for the fact that they were coming twice about the same problem -- apparently they did a lot of work that I didn't pay for -- though I did pay a plumber $500 for doing nothing. They said it happens a lot on cold nights. No one wants to leave people without heat. No one wants to get anyone in trouble. No one was concerned about the house -- my children -- my killer poetry collection.

There are leaks. Leaks we know about and leaks we don't. Our methods of transport and containment are imperfect. Gas leaks, oil leaks, information leaks -- emotion.

We try to contain truth and poverty too -- we try to contain our lives. There are always seams. There are always imposing forces. The idea that what we can't contain can't hurt us -- or that somehow we are stronger than the elements we try to conquer...

nature spills out all the time.

“Although the wind ...”

by Izumi Shikibu

Although the wind

blows terribly here,

the moonlight also leaks

between the roof planks

of this ruined house.

Translated by Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani

Not A Poem

Maybe it's the season -- but I'm still thinking about things that are missing. I'm still missing ...

Yesterday there was a "huge" explosion and fire at an oil jetty in Nigeria. I read about it on Peak Oil, which lead to an un-bilined article in Afriquenligne which reported:

Lagos, Nigeria - A huge explosion triggered by a dawn fire Wednesday rocked a jetty operated by the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) at Okrika in South-eastern Rivers state, partially destroying the facility and some vessels that were being loaded with crude oil , and leaving several people injured, the police said.

Rivers state Police Commissioner Felix Ogbaudu told journalists the cause of the fire had not been ascertained.

The story wasn't covered in the Times -- or the London Times, the BBC, The Guardian or NPR.

The Associated Press also didn't have the story -- but there was a really disturbing article (if taken in this context) on Monday, two days before the fire:

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) -- Nigeria's main militant group Monday urged all armed factions in the restive southern oil heartland to unite and cripple Africa's biggest petroleum industry.

Now, I have no idea if these stories are related. Again, from silence comes lack of grounding. Is Nigeria on the brink of civil war? Does this matter to me? Should it? Does it matter to the global landscape of oil? According to numbers on the Energy Information Administration site, Nigeria is the 5th largest oil importer to the US. In October we imported 1,184,000 barrels of oil a day from the country. The issue in Nigeria seems to be, again, that oil money is not making its way anywhere near the people of the land it is drilled from.

Almost exactly a year ago a pipeline explosion in Lagos killed 250 people and was widely reported.


Akintunde Akinleye/Reuters

That is one of the most beautiful/moving/all telling news photographs I have ever seen. Akintunde Akinleye, thank you.

Information and communication are proven, over and over, to be the only real source of change -- of responsibility, relationship, understanding. How news judgments are made effects the overall story -- effects history.

So, again, what are we missing? If we don't follow the daily, if we are in touch only with disasters and events, are we really connected at all? If no one died in Nigeria yesterday, and therefore it is not a story, yet a civil war is brewing and no one hears -- is information conveyance served? If every day, everyone in America heard about the daily lives of the people in the lands where the oil came from would it make any difference?

One problem with the news is that often history and flow become lost to the moment. A series of things may happen over time, and if we experience them as singular, it becomes impossible to put them into context or explore their meaning. Not unlike a photograph -- a singular image. But the difference between the singular image and the singular news story is that the image strives to capture a whole. A small news story makes no such attempt. Necessarily it must not -- singular facts have to be its only purpose.

This is why we need art. The real communication is not transmitted in the news -- and while we need to know the news in order to understand the contexts in which we live, real communication is felt deeper, understood in the moment of connection like a touch. Maybe it is touch I am missing...

Last summer, NPR ran a story on a poet from Lagos, Aj Dagga Tolar.

He writes, in an excerpt from the title poem of his book, "This Country is Not a Poem:"

Who cares
For the poetry of our existence
The way they care for poetry
Leaving us every moment with metaphors
To feel not at all the failing of poetry

This country
Dare you to ask
"Have you seen dead bodies before?"
Answer with another ask
"Are there not dead bodies everywhere?"

Stuff enough to make more poems
Who cares to hear
Lagos is a poem, not a place
Ajegunle is a poem, not a place
Cannot sit to hear this poem

SUNG in Yoruba:
Kile ni wa gbo
Kile ni wa wo
Ara mo ri ri
Kilo oju ori leko ri
Kile ni wa gbo
Kile ni wa wo

Gullibility Is In The Air

We can find people to tell us whatever we want to hear. That's always the case -- in love, in science, in war. Trying to decipher global warming is not really that far off, is it, from trying to determine whether or not love exists or poetry matters... we are all just trying to figure out what ground we are walking on, and where to take the next step.

Last week (December 5, to be exact) the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial entitled "The Science of Gore's Nobel."

Through the course of the article, Holman W. Jenkins Jr., a member of the WSJ editorial board, questions the validity of the concept of global warming and asserts that the entire thing is politics and money.

It may seem strange that scientists would participate in such a phenomenon. It shouldn't. Scientists are human; they do not wait for proof; many devote their professional lives to seeking evidence for hypotheses (especially well-funded hypotheses) they've chosen to believe.

A response was printing on Yahoo News and reprinted in one of the oil energy blogs I've been following:

The bar for Wall Street Journal editorials, in the journalistic equivalent of limbo dancing, keeps dropping. In a piece titled, "The Science of Gore's Nobel " (UPDATE: Open access link), Holman W. Jenkins Jr. of the WSJ ed board, manages to slander the media, Al Gore, the Nobel Committee, and all climate scientists -- without offering any facts to back up the attacks:

Yesterday I said I would be looking into peak oil this week, and I will -- but I think it's important at this point to think about rhetoric for a minute. For myself -- I'm having trouble at this point finding reliable sources when it comes down to some of the greater issues. In part because our country is so conservative, the debates are often taking place in the non-regulated arena of the Internet -- where there is little accountability and often even less respect. It is a relief to me that I know so many people, as it turns out, working in the fields of science and energy -- they allow me the benefit of their knowledge coupled with a personal trust of friendship it is hard to come by in the greater arena.

Really, all we do is trust the people around us to share what they know. We have ideas about who we will trust based on our experience -- and ways that we trust and don't. I trust Keegan to pick my kids up at school if I'm in a car accident -- I trust my father to send me $10 bucks if I need it -- I trust others to forgive or care about me from a distance...

I know that the Wall Street Journal's editorial board is known for its conservative and often inflammatory nature.

I trust the Wall Street Journal's reporting. I've read a lot of their stories, studied some of their mistakes in grad school, know they have tremendous firewalls between their editorial boards and their journalists and their advertisers.

The government doesn't allow us these same safeguards, and the attack on the media is one of the strongest allies in the war against the freedom of information in this country. There are problems with our media to be sure, but seek out good reporters and reporting institutions and you will find the points of entry of most of the major debates we are having.

There are people who say global warming doesn't exist.
There are people who say the debate about peak oil is silly too.

Did you ever hear the joke where someone says -- gullible isn't in the dictionary? In high school I looked it up. Really. (It's in there, by the way.) Maybe that's why I became a reporter -- to trust facts. Maybe that's why I became a poet -- there are no facts.

At any rate -- there are warmer and warmer falls.
At any rate love is not all...
At any rate, there are poems.

Fiduciary

by Randall Mann

the relationship between

� � � blackbird and fencepost, between

the cow and its egret, the field

� � � and wildflowers overrunning the field—

so little depends upon their trust.

� � � Here, in God we trust

to keep our cash and thoughts in line—

� � � in the sky, an unexplained white line

could be the first of many omens.

� � � But this is no country for omens,

the line as chalky as the moon,

� � � bleak and useless as the moon

now rising like a breath of cold air . . .

� � � There is gullibility in the air.