ARS POETICA ~ LIFE DISTILLED

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ars poetica, Desiderata, Gwendolyn Brooks, Harvard University, Latin, Max Ehrmann, National Poetry Month, Ogden Nash, poem, poetry, Portrait of the Artist, postaweek2011, Richard Burton, Terre Haute Indiana, YouTube

If poetry isn’t basic, then what is?  We turn to poetry again and again.  At memorial services, funerals, weddings, showers, christenings, graduations, at any event that marks an essential life passage.  We turn to a poem to express loss, hurt, change, joy.  And there is no more perfect instrument for a poem than the human voice.  We soak and float in the sounds that poetry makes.

An ancient Kenyan proverb says, Talking with one another is loving one another. When Aunt Toby died, we gathered to share stories and remember the wise and graceful woman who touched us all.  She lived an ordinary life, one set off-course by sickness and loss, but enriched by good fortune and abiding love. Her granddaughter read a poem at the service, one that Aunt Toby tacked on her kitchen wall in the little house on Apple Street.  A poem of unassuming wisdom and grace. It now hangs on ours.

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Max Ehrmann is the author of Desiderata (Latin: things desired as essential). He earned a degree in Philosophy from Harvard University, then returned to his hometown of Terre Haute, Indiana to practice law. Eventually this led him to work in his family’s meatpacking business and in the overalls manufacturing industry. Finally at the age of 41, Ehrmann decided to become a writer. At the age of 55 he wrote Desiderata, which achieved fame only after his death.

Poetry is “life distilled”, as Gwendolyn Brooks said.  It is also language and experience distilled.  Poems tells us something about a way to live in the world.  Even the ones that make us laugh out loud.

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Over the course of a few minutes, a poem gives us insights into our lives
that last throughout a lifetime.  I know.  I read Aunt Toby’s wall.

Toni 4/28/11

Moon, Mann and Otto and the White-Throated Sparrow

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and Otto, Biology, bird anatomy, Charles Darwin, clearly marked white-throated sparrow head, evolution in biology texts, Mann, Moon, Parts of a Bird, the Learning Pages, White-throated Sparrow

http://www.textbookhistory.com/?p=77

Remember Moon, Mann, and Otto? No!? I Cannot. Believe. It. Modern Biology? 1956 edition? Advanced Bio with Mr. Bertram? Unfortunately, its star is a bit dimmed for me thanks to the TEXTBOOKHISTORY site where I was reminded that All Mention of Evolution was scrubbed from this text. I’d learned this from my teacher, Mr. Bertram, who used the 1956 edition because he had to, but he had a 1921 edition of Mr. Moon’s earlier biology text on his desk to make a rev0lutionary point: Darwin was on the frontispiece and Mr. Moon started the book with the statement that the whole of biology is ”based on the fundamental idea of evolution” and that “both man and ape are descended from a common ancestor.”  Holding both books up, Mr. B. asked us, So what’s changed?  He asked the question with that sly grin and lit-eye look he used to grab Everyone’s Attention Immediately. We thumbed through our textbook. Clueless as to what he was talking about. After a while, he asks, What’s changed is this: By 1956 Mr. Moon had to erase most mention of evolution from his book.  More profits for the publisher.

Even at 16 I had wondered at all the mention of God in my biology text. But despite the grave omission and probably because of Mr. B’s riveting teaching, I survived to be a nature lover.

(All sorts of memories here; please let me know if you had this book too and tell me your memories; I can see it now right there on the NYT Best Seller List: Moon, Mann, and Otto Reunion.)  

Today I want to connect MM&O to the White Throated Sparrow.

The White-Throated Sparrow is a hopping, flying anatomy lesson says the allaboutbirds folks. It’s because his face markings are so clearly delineated that you can match each color with the name of that part of the face.

In birding books we have these Learning Pages? Parts of a Bird learning pages usually take up a nice space with a pencil drawing of a bird with straight lines going from the name of the part to the actual part. Knowing the name of a body part helps you focus your attention on a specific part of a bird and notice what might be the distinguishing characteristic. (So, does it have an incomplete eye ring or what’s the color of the undertail covert?) But, it’s hard to learn from those charts; they pack a lot in.

Enter Mr. White-Throated Sparrow. He’s a textbook example of  body parts.

For instance, his head. It has such a striking pattern it’s as clear as those Moon, Mann, and Otto charts. (Remember them? Those overlays? Very High Tech for 1963 we thought. Cutaway views of first the frog and then–yes!!-the human torso, albeit minus the reproductive organs, as we high school kids observed. Really, was that necessary, Mr. Otto? First you take Charles Darwin off your cover and then you remove body parts?)

Back to W-T-Sparrow: black eyestripe, white crown and supercillium, yellow lores, white throat bordered by black malar stripe (we’d call it a black whisker). Perfectly defined. Just like MM&O.

The Fox Sparrows who touched down last week to take a few days off from their migratory trek have left to continue North, but the White-Throated Sparrows who’ve been here all winter are sticking around. Both are stay-near-the-ground-scratch-through-leaves-in-search-of-food types. During the winter they loved my deliberately-placed-and-happy-to-be-of-service-brush piles. I notice they’re eating some of the new buds off the bushes now too. They usually go further north to breed, but who knows, maybe they’ll like it so much here, they’ll stay. I love waking up to their  sweet whistled song. I bet you’ve heard it too. It’s one of the most recognizable bird songs: Oh Sam Peabody Peabody Peabody, or, if you’re Canadian, Oh-sweet-canada-canada-canada.

Patty 4/26/11

ARS POETICA ~ I DISCOVER VESPERTILIO, REREMOUSE AND A GIVEAWAY

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ars poetica, Bat, bat colony, Bat-Poet, coat of arms, giveaway, giveaway contest, heraldry, Margaret Roach, Maurice Sendak, National Poetry Month, poem, poems, poetry, postaweek2011, Randall Jarrell, reremouse, vepertilio

The colony of bats are back. I hear them in the eaves near my chimney. During the day, the nocturnal critters hang silently by their legs, heads bent, covered by voluminous wings. But at dusk, there’s a lot of commotion as they head out to nab mosquitoes. (I just learned that the Latin name for the bat is vespertilio, which refers to when it flies – after twilight.) And in the early morning hours, when the bats return, there’s skadoodles of quarreling and bickering outside my window as they jostle for the prime resting spots.

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The Royal Air Force No IX Squadron adopted the bat in its badge in 1917 along with the Latin language motto “Per Noctem Volamus” (We Fly Through the Night).  In heraldry, when a bat is used in a coat of arms ( to mark an historic event ), it’s called a reremouse. Legend has it that a bat collided with a drum, waking up the Christians and warning them of an attack by the Arabian army in Mallorca. Another version says that, in the heat of battle, an arrow fired at the monarch hit a bat instead, saving the king’s life.

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Randall Jarrell was a literary essayist and one of the most astute (and feared) poetry critics of his generation. But he also wrote books for children. Like this lovely and humorous tale ~ The Bat-Poet.

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It’s the story of a bat who likes to make poems that, well, the other bats just don’t get. The little brown bat couldn’t sleep days so he kept waking up and looking at the world. Before long he began to see things differently from the other bats, who ~from dawn to sunset ~ never opened their eyes. The Bat-Poet is the story of how he tried to make the other bats see things his way. In the book are the bat’s own poems about his world: the owl who almost eats him; the mockingbird whose irritable genius almost overpowers him; the chipmunk who loves his poems, and the bats who can’t make heads or tails of them; and the cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, and sparrows who fly in and out of this fable illustrated by Maurice Sendak.

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Bats
By Randall Jarrell

A bat is born
Naked and blind and pale
His mother makes a pocket of her tail
And catches him. He clings
to her long fur
By his thumbs and toes and teeth.
And then the mother dances through the night
Doubling and looping,
Soaring, somersaulting-
Her baby hangs on
underneath.
All night, in happiness,
She hunts and flies.
Her high sharp cries
Like shining needlepoints of sound
Go out into the night and
echoing back,
Tell her what they have touched.
She hears how far it is,
how big it is,
which way it’s going:
She lives by hearing.
The mother eats the moths and gnats
she catches
In full flight, In full flight.
The mother drinks the water of the pond,
She skims across,
Her baby hangs on tight.
Her baby drinks the milk she makes him.
In moonlight or starlight,
In midair
Their single shadow,
printed on the moon
Or fluttering across the stars,
Whirls on all night.
At daybreak,
the tired mother flaps home to her rafter
The others all are there.
They hang themselves up by their toes,
They wrap themselves in their brown wings.
Bunched upside down, they sleep in air.
Their sharp ears,
Their sharp teeth
Their quick sharp faces
Are dull and slow and mild.
All the bright day, as the mother sleeps,
She folds her wings about her sleeping child.

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What’s Poetry Month without a Giveaway?

Here’s one that’s sure to please.  Fly fangs-first into Margaret Roach‘s blog ~ it’s brazenly good !

WIN ONE OF TWO hardcover copies of Emily Dickinson’s complete poems; giveaway closes Monday night.  Happy National Poetry Month!

Toni 4/24/11