Reading My Friends 9
Welcome to Reading My Friends.
This is Lyman Grant, coming to you from the 4 Door Lounge, my backyard study in Harrisonburg, Virginia, deep in the heart of the beautiful Shenandoah Valley.
Thank you for joining me for the ninth installment of our podcast. Remember you can subscribe for free on Substack or find us on the web at 4doorlounge.com. I also post reminders on Facebook, so befriend me, why don’t you?
For the previous three weeks I have been traveling. First to central and western Pennsylvania, then to Banner Elk in North Carolina, and finally locally to the three-day Redwing Roots Music Festival. When I lived in Texas, I loved going to the Kerrville Folk Festival. Redwing is a great festival, focused on Appalachian music, and I highly recommend it.
While traveling I have been reading one of my long-time favorite prose writers, the naturalist Edwin Way Teale (1899-1980). In the 1950’s and 1960’s, he wrote a series of four books about his travels through the U.S.—scores of thousands of miles—following the four seasons. I have been reading Journey into Summer, a beautiful book filled with close observation of nature’s delights and mysteries.
I have also been reading poet Scott Wiggerman’s lovely 2015 book Leaf and Beak: Sonnets. I selected it because I wanted to read more sonnets. Remember, I had just read Angela O’Donnell’s Holy Land, which included many sonnets. Leaf and Beak turned out to be a perfect companion to Teale’s book. Instead of traveling widely on four trips over a dozen years, Wiggerman writes about one year—winter to fall—in the world right under his feet (as he maintains a regular running practice), all within a couple of miles from his home, at the time.
Here's a poem early in the book, “Forecast.”
It's cold enough for snow: this time they might
be right, those wishful weather-dreamers. Guess
I'll have to bundle pipes like winter tykes
and cover aloe plants with blankets lest
they freeze to mush. No children at the park
again though I still ran in shorts (but froze
when northern gusts swept down across the lake).
But really, Austin, white stuff and snow days
ahead? So say the weathermen. I could
not see my breath this morning, but I felt
a freezer-burn eat into my lungs: cold
and clouding up. Perhaps. It's not their fault:
they love the change of pace from what's to come,
when any fool can forecast heat and sun.
Notice the rhyme scheme of this poem—a form of the Shakespearian sonnet. Most of the poems in this collection follow this strategy. Here’s another, “In Praise of Wildflowers.” Scott shifts here to a loose Petrarchan. Notice that turn with the “But” in line 9.
The field, a blue profusion, put to shame
the sky--and bonnets aren't alone. A shock
of flowers, red and yellow flecks aflame,
unfurls in random waves--no tree, no rock
competes with sunny bursts of fire wheels,
a splash of coreopsis here, of black-
eyed Susans there. A dash of Turk's cap steals
the show, the striking red of cardiac.
But flash and spectacle are not required--
the primrose sports an aura barely pink,
the tint of soft-white lights, no less desired
for lack of showmanship. In fact, I think
its pallid blush of petals is the thing
that boosts the other flowers' coloring.
I have known Scott for almost three decades. We were both on the board of the Austin International Poetry Festival. He, for many years; I, for a couple. He expertly edited the festival’s anthologies. His first book of poems, Vegetables and Other Relationships, was published by the powerhouse Susan Bright (Plain View Press), who also helped get me started in the publishing world. He and his husband David Meischen formed Dos Gatos Press, took over the Texas Poetry Calendar publications. They included my poems in their publications, for which I am very grateful. But I can’t say that during the decades that Scott and I were close in any meaningful way. Our paths just kept crossing in Austin’s small poetry world. I watched as he published widely and offered popular classes. I used his two Wingbeats publications in the classes that I taught at Austin Community College. Scott is also an artist. I am very happy that I worked up the courage to ask if we could use one of his amazing collages for the cover my most recent book, ostraca. I am happier that he agreed. By everything I can tell, Scott is a generous soul and a poet dedicated to the musical demands of formal poetry.
Enough chitchat: Here is another poem, this one written from the depths of Austin’s miserable summers: “Heatwave.”
The pallid butterflies--wing to wing
the size of fingernails--hover over
the bitterweed like mothers in mourning.
Their movement merely hints at how things were
a month ago. The birds don't swoop, the fish
don't jump. The playground is near comatose:
no squeaky swings, no children's peals, no wish
to play outdoors. The week's a heavy dose
of triple temperatures--and yet I run
as though it is still March.
A blazing flame
of flesh that can't cool down. I'm overdone,
beaten down, losing sight of my main aim:
appreciate up close this world. The fact,
I hate to say, is that the sun distracts.
Leaf and Beak: Sonnets is 84 pages, including 61 sonnets in two sections: “Winter/Spring” and “Summer/Autumn.” In addition, the book features, in separate sections, two excellent Crowns of Sonnets, focusing on Mueller Lake Park.
Before we end, I want to say I thoroughly admire this book. It is a book about observing. The word “observing” has a religious connotation, as in “observing the holidays” or “Angela O’Donnell shows she is an observant Catholic in the Holy Land poems.” I do not mean to apply this meaning toward Scott or Leaf and Beak, precisely. That meaning distracts us away from Scott’s gifts and his gifts to us. However, these poems showcase a human being observant. Scott immerses us in space and time: this year, this month, this day, this hour, in Austin, in Mueller Lake Park, this rock, this bird. This is the humanist meaning of being observant: a human observant of being alive in this world in relationship with other living things. Scott does not give these things meaning, he receives, respects, observes, their inherent meaning.
Let’s end with “Formations.” Notice that here in this final poem in the book, Scott shifts his rhyme scheme. Nice move.
A quiet field of punctuation marks
becomes a murmuration: first, the lift
despite a brutal wind, and then the shift
across the sky, from right to left in arcs
that sail in folds, a hundred wings as one,
apostrophes in sync, an aerial
display of feathers, beaks, and last, a pull
back down to earth, this sudden dance undone.
Our lungs inflate. Our breathing bellows cells
in movement: rising, falling. That's a fact.
My own heart murmurs, beats its wings the same
direction--over, over--cast its spells,
abandons them. And so... expand, contract:
it's how the world began, how we became.
In Journey into Summer, Edwin Way Teale recalls a moment in Thoreau’s Journals. A boy asks about a bird’s song: “What makes he sing so sweet, mother? Do he eat flowers?” Scott sings so musically you will think he certainly does.
Thanks for listening. See you in a week or two.