Wednesday, October 28, 2015

The Wood Lily

[I'm taking some risks with this post: I've never shared any of my poetry, other than a few haiku, with the Marshall community before, but taking risks is part of learning, part of becoming more resilient, which, as you know, is one of the qualities from "The Portrait of a Hilltopper."]

In the last year, a lot of folks in the Marshall community have experienced the death of loved ones. Last winter, I wrote about how reading poetry can help one deal with death (and I hope to return to that subject). But writing poetry can also help. Grieving is a lengthy, chaotic process, and writing poetry about it helps give shape and form to confusing and conflicting feelings. 

On October 28, 2014, my teacher, mentor, and friend John Dings died of complications from a fall down a flight of stairs. He'd been dealing with Parkinson's Disease for a long time. I'd known him since I started teaching almost 30 years ago. Much of what I know about writing, about literature, and about teaching in general, I learned from him. 

Beyond our common interests in education and literature, we shared a love of hiking and wildflowers. He taught for many years at the University at Buffalo, NY, where I earned my MA and Ph.D. When he retired, he moved back to his home state of Colorado and lived in Boulder until he died. I visited him a few times there, and we hiked in the mountains, staying at the Dings family cabin. I remember the delight he took in the wildflowers, especially the miniature alpine versions that grow at high altitude. He and his wife came to Duluth once to visit me, and we spent a day hiking at various places up the North Shore.

Ever since his death, I've been working on a sonnet-series about a wildflower that was an important part of his life and that I saw for the first time in our region last year, only a short time before he died. I never had the chance to talk to him about it...
John Dings on Ouzel Creek Bridge, Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National
Park, taken in the late 1990's and digitized last year.
The Wood Lily 

in memory of John Dings (1939—2014)

        Drink and be whole again beyond confusion. 
     Robert Frost, "Directive"
1.  

Years ago, I was sore and tired from hiking.
You were proud of having worn me out.
Pulling off the road, you said I could stay in the car.
I wish now that I hadn’t.

You wanted to see if the Wood Lily was blooming
And walked off into the Colorado woods.
I saw a hint of scarlet through the trees.
Gone only for a moment, you came back smiling,
Said your summer was complete.

I’d forgotten the Wood Lily,
Until I found it here, last summer, on a cliff above the Lake.
I’d meant to ask, next time I called, if you remembered,
But by then, all your summers were complete,
And you were gone for good.  
Wood Lily, Shovel Point, Tettegouche State Park, July, 2015. 
My brother Bill showing John a deep crevice in the rocks on Palisade Head,
taken sometime in the 1990s, I think, and digitized last year.
2.  

Each year, you searched for it, except your last,
When it was perhaps beyond you, a climb too steep,
Or maybe already far behind you,
A lantern left burning in a distant cabin.

Would it have been there, had you gone looking?

I never thought I'd see it here along the Lake, 
Its flame leading me off the trail, out onto a ledge 
Where once you laid your length along the Earth,
As if fallen forward, to see more clearly the depths below.

But there it stood, burning and unblinking in the sun,
Where you would never find it,
And it told me nothing of your coming death,
Gave no hint of summer’s ending
Or impending fall.
Wood Lily on Shovel Point, Tettegouche State Park, taken on August 1, 2014. This
is one of the first photos I ever took of this flower; my iPhone camera had trouble
processing the color contrast. I had much better luck this last summer.
John on Shovel Point, Tettegouche State Park, taken in the 1990s and digitized last year.
If I remember correctly, John was diagnosed with Parkinson's not long after this visit to
Minnesota. I told him later that I thought I could see in this photo the effects of
Parkinson's in his face. 
3.  
           
You’d have been glad to know I’d seen it, and
In the very spot we’d spent a summer day, all those years ago.
You might’ve laughed, to think your Lily came to visit me
When you could not because of the disease that,
Even then, that day, had shown itself in you.

We’d have traded memories of its signs: 
The fearful strangeness in your face,
The halting hesitation in your step…

But then, you’d have told me stories of your Lily: 
When you found it first, how each summer’s search became a quest,
What it meant to you, and how its meaning changed,
Shifting slightly over time, how from its jeweled cup
You still drank deeply of the past,
All your rich history and its bright wine.             
Wood Lily on Shovel Point, Tettegouche State Park, July 15, 2015.
Wood Lilies, triple blossom, on Shovel Point, Tettegouche State Park, July 15, 2015.
4.  

It’s tall and shameless--flaming--with three 
Huge blossoms on one stalk, completely unabashed 
By its incongruous opulence on this glacier-scrubbed cliff.

Even the camera is bewildered by its blaring brightness,
Unable, at first, to process such scarlet heat against the
Deep-green cedar and the cooler, bluish spruce.

I’m tempted now to think you sent it, that its bold display,
So unlike you, was yet your way of saying goodbye. 

All it would take--to be true--is for a few 
Green atoms and grains of thought 
To hop and skip through space and time.

Isn’t this what the poets always say of death?
From fickle memory and a few wildflowers,
We manufacture hope, tease a hollow solace out of chance. 
A view from Shovel Point, Tettegouche State Park, July 15, 2015.
Wood Lilies on Shovel Point, Tettegouche State Park, July 15, 2015. I must've caught them at their
peak--they were everywhere.
5. 

A year later, I stand on the cliff,
Looking out across the endless Lake, the empty sky.

I inch along the ledge to where the lichen’s black.
Bright Lilies reach up from rock and shallow soil
To cup the soft light, the still air.  

I stare for hours into spotted, scarlet depths,
Focusing, framing each shot, not
Thinking of you.

I don't need to think.

My hand is red with pollen.

The water I pour through my cupped fingers
Lifts some of the crimson from my skin
Before falling on dry Earth.

I lick the last drops from my palm.
Wood Lily on Shovel Point, Tettegouche State Park, July 15, 2015.
Wood Lily pollen on my clothes, July 15, 2015. I didn't know then that I'd be writing
all these poems, so I didn't get a picture of the pollen on my hand, but I took this shot
because I was surprised to find I had pollen all over my clothes, too.
Wood Lily, triple blossom, on Shovel Point, Tettegouche State Park, July 15, 2015.
(Note the seed-pods from last year's flowers behind it--I didn't see them when I took the photo. I'm pretty sure
I took a photo last year of this now-dead plant when it was in bloom.)
6. 

I saw the spider clinging to a petal,
Even spotted the ant among the stamens,
But I didn’t see you, silver with age,
Bleached to invisibility by the sun.

Your current incarnation, scarlet in its prime,
Blazed before me, commanding my full attention.

The camera, my third and better eye, saw through the glare,
Beyond the blood-red beauty, catching what I missed:

You, less tall than I remembered, paper-thin and
Brittle-boned, your three heads burst wide open, shattered,
All your brains now long-since scattered on the wind.

Fixed in the frame, where I found them later, were your
Patient bones, still standing behind the living Lily
To which you gave your ghost.

Spider on Wood Lily, Shovel Point, Tettegouche State Park, July 15, 2015
"Ant among the stamens" (look closely!), Wood Lily, Shovel Point, Tettegouche State
Park, July 15, 2015.
7.  

On a Minnesota mountain that is not a mountain,
In soil that is not soil so much as lichen-masticated rock,
There grows a cup-like flower that is no more a scarlet cup
Than it is an empty hand reaching up to meet the sun,
But you could say it is and take real comfort from the lie:
Feel the broken fingers of the year cohere into a spotted goblet
And drink your fill, in season, for as long as you can climb
This little mountain that is not a mountain;
Then later, when you are no longer able, move in memory
Through time and space to a moment and a place
Upon a mountain that is a mountain true 
When he grasped your hand before you knew
You were about to fall, having slipped on soil

That was not soil but dusty Colorado gravel.

"A mountain that is a mountain true." Both photos, above & below, were taken in Colorado in the '90's
while I was hiking with John and digitized later.
View of mountains from the Dings family cabin.
Some notes: 

*John laughed once at my reference to the Sawtooth Mountains of Minnesota, which by Colorado standards are not, of course, real mountains. Both full of state pride, we argued once about whether the sky was bluer in Minnesota or Colorado...

*Unless you read Robert Frost's long and difficult "Directive," a poem John loved and was fond of quoting, and which I quote in the epigraph to these poems, you won't understand Sonnet #7. 

*I thought very carefully about how I organized each sonnet, where I ended each line, and how I grouped lines into stanzas (there's a reason #7 is one stanza). I also tried to repeat and develop certain motifs (climbing and falling, losing and finding, forgetting and remembering, brokenness and wholeness), images (hands, cups, the sun) and colors (red and green) throughout the series.

*I don't always experience the wholeness I felt back in July among the Wood Lilies, but it's a memory of peace and clarity that I try to hold onto.

*Every time I think this series is finished, I end up starting another poem, so maybe there'll be a Part Two...
The two triple-blossom Lilies, both now gone to seed. Taken 10/11/15.


Thursday, October 22, 2015

Reading the Bog with Ms Ball

Ms Ball's notes.
When I go bog-walking, I'm usually alone. I love the peace and solitude. But I've been trying to get Ms Ball to go orchid-hunting, or at least bog-walking, with me for some time now because I know she'd enjoy it. We were finally able to make it work last Saturday, the 17th. Ms Ball borrowed some waterproof boots, and we both packed our lunches. When we hit the road at 7 am to drive up Highway 2 towards Bemidji, it was a chilly 29 degrees, and there were patches of frost on the ground. 

While I drove, I gave Ms Ball the task of keeping track of the birds and the road-kill we spotted. She dutifully took notes in her perfect handwriting. Among the highlights of the day were 7 bald eagles, 2 eagles nests, a pair of swans, 1 dead deer, and several dead porcupines. (I was hoping we'd beat my record of seeing 9 eagles on this trip.) All along the way, we admired the colors of the autumn leaves, especially the deep mahogany of the red oaks.

We made our first stop at the Wawina Bog SNA (Scientific and Natural Area). I have often wanted to explore this bog, but usually I just drive right by it. Unfortunately, after attempting to cross the ditch on the side of the highway, Ms B and I decided our boots were not up to the task. We needed waders to go any farther. Sadly, we never even got close to the Wawina Bog... Another time, perhaps.
View of the Bog.
  Small hills and valleys
             of moss:  beneath, a tangled
         web of broken bones (SN)
We hopped back in the car and made for the [X] Bog SNA [name protected], which I have visited many times before. I've never yet needed waders there. One does need a permit, however, to enter the bog, and the permit clearly states that visitors are not to damage the vegetation. The goal is to move through the bog without leaving a trace. 

Before we began, I gave Ms Ball a few tips about walking through the bog:  

  1. Step lightly at first! Always test the solidity of the ground before putting your full weight upon it. (I use my trusty monopod for this purpose.)
  2. Keep to the low, wet ground rather than the high mounds of moss. This seems counter-intuitive, but the moss often covers treacherous tangles of fallen branches, beneath which water collects, whereas the lower spots are usually more solid. This may not be true in all bogs, but it seems to be true of this bog. 
  3. Never step on a log without testing it, as it may be soft and rotten; similarly, never rely on a tree trunk or branch to help keep your balance--it, too, may be weak with rot or brittle with age (just like us--right, Ms Ball?).
  4.  Stay far enough behind me to avoid backlash from the tree branches I push through. Nobody wants a slap in the face!

Beneath those lumps of luscious moss lie tangled roots and branches or maybe small pools of water.
                                                                          I read the pattern
                                                                          in the carpet of moss and
                                                                          leaves:  life, death entwined (SN)
Most of the time, I led the way, but a couple of times, Ms Ball did the bush-whacking. We spent a few hours walking around, following what looked like deer trails, stopping to admire the mushrooms and the last traces of the season's orchids. 
Ms Ball takes a turn at leading the way through the bog.
walk softly, carry
                         a bog stick to check for depth
              and hidden secrets (JB)

One of the more colorful fungi we saw.
Brown cup fungus.



















We came across a patch of Showy Lady Slippers, now dead and brown, but sporting nice big seedpods. I marked the orchid-cluster on my GPS app so that I might find it in bloom next summer.
One of the Showy Slipper seedpods.
 Dead orchid-mother,
                full of seed-babies:  let them
         go now--let them go (SN)

I was happy to see the remains of another orchid, one I have yet to see in full bloom. I'm not sure exactly what variety it is, but it's some kind of bog orchid. 
Orchid stem with seedpods
I think Ms Ball was really impressed with the beauty of the moss. She told me the other day that she could still see in her mind's eye the feathery fronds of one particular variety of moss (I don't know its name). 
Feathery fronds of moss.
old gnarly roots nurse
                 tiny mushrooms and fern moss
  bog water sponges (JB)
Reindeer Moss (which is actually lichen).













I always keep an eye out for the Reindeer Moss, which is actually a kind of lichen. I often see big patches of it in the bog. It always makes me think of the last stanza of this poem. 

I made sure to show Ms Ball some of the deep, dark scary parts of the bog, places where she imagined a "Bog Creature" might live. 
Home of the Bog Creature...
bog creatures survive
       hidden under fallen trees
   waiting for rebirth (JB)
After we left the Bog, we stopped at a secret spot where some Ram's Head Lady Slippers grow. I wanted to see their seedpods. The Ram's Head is a very tiny and rather rare Lady Slipper. It's difficult to photograph because of its small size. We found the seedpods, and I asked Ms Ball to put her hands behind them, to shield them from the breeze and to provide a simpler background for my iPhone camera to focus on. It helped! 
Ms Ball's hands provide a good background for the tiny Ram's Head seedpods. 
After that, we drove over to Lake Bemidji State Park where there's a "Bog Walk" Trail, complete with a boardwalk and informative signs. 
Ms Ball on the "Bog Walk" at Lake Bemidji State Park.
We had to wear bright colors (Ms Ball wore her Football Chain Gang vest) because there was a special program in the Park that day for young hunters. (We encountered one young hunter, nervously gripping his gun, but we never heard any shots.) 
View of the edge of the Bog as it meets a small lake. All the tamarack trees were golden.
above tamarack,
                         crooked black spruce canopy,
                  and bogs, eagles soar (JB)
After completing the Bog Walk, we got back in the car and headed for home. Along the way, we talked about many things, among them how archaeologists have often discovered well-preserved ancient bodies in bogs. I mentioned one of my favorite books on the subject, P. V. Glob's The Bog People. Ms Ball was intrigued, so I told her I would lend the book to her. I'll be interested to hear what she thinks of it. 
The book I lent to Ms Ball.
What shall we offer 
           to the bog? It will remain
                there a thousand years (SN)

Part of the reason I love bogs, I think, is that they bring life and death so close together. They remind me that, as this article reminds us all, "we are all living among the dead." The bog is full of life--all that luscious moss, all those mushrooms--and yet it's built on death, the death of trees and the decomposition of all kinds of vegetable matter. The moss and the mushrooms feed on the death of other plants, creating a rich, wonderful atmosphere of beauty and (if not terror, then at least) uneasiness...
View of the Mississippi from the Pokegama Dam.

All day, Ms Ball was really impressed with the physical atmosphere, the noticeably fresh and clean air. All the lichen in the bog indicates the cleanliness of the air, as lichens are not present where the air is polluted. I asked Ms Ball to sum up the day in a few words, and this is what she said:  it was a day of "clean breathing, soft walking, [and] close reading." I like that. We were indeed reading the bog as closely as we might read a poem, navigating our way through confusing thickets, following false trails, turning back at times to re-read previously-travelled ground, all the while searching for meaningful patterns, vivid images, unexpected insights.

The red dragonfly. Photo heavily edited with Snapseed.
 A fallen leaf? No!
             A red dragonfly, resting
               before its last flight (SN)
On the way home, we stopped briefly at the Pokegama Dam Recreation Area outside Grand Rapids. It's a good spot to get close to the Mississippi River. You can walk across the Dam, and so we did. I spotted a small red dragonfly on the concrete steps and took a photo. I don't think I've ever seen a red dragonfly before. 

As it got darker, we talked some more of life and death. I told Ms Ball about how I imagine writing a murder mystery about an orchid-hunting English teacher who discovers a body in the bog and then sets out to solve the mystery... Maybe we'll write it together some day--who knows? 

After we got home, I asked Ms Ball if she would like to write a guest post about her day in the bog, but she declined... She did agree, however, to write some haiku with me to accompany this post. I'd like to thank her for that, and for her company on that lovely day.

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Senior Blogs Links

The links to the Senior Blogs are now up on my blog and on the US student page on Schoology (in the Resources section). See the screenshots below for help navigating to these places. Feel free to read the blogs and post comments. Good comments ask questions, offer helpful feedback, make references to specific passages in a post, offer encouragement, and create lively intellectual conversation. Good comments are always school-appropriate.



Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Try This App!

The Hemingway Editor (hemingwayapp.com) claims that it will "make your writing bold and clear." Well, nothing but effort and practice will improve your writing, but this app might help a bit. Some of the sentences it marks as "hard to read" are just fine, and simpler prose isn't always better; sometimes, complex thoughts need complex sentence structures. This app does do a decent job of detecting when the passive voice is used, and that's important. Stick to the active voice as often as possible. This app was featured here, and students should feel free to use the free web version. See the image below for how it marked up a draft of this post.
Screenshot of the app in action.

Thursday, October 1, 2015

(AP Lit & Comp) The Elgin Mushrooms

Elfin Saddle mushroom on Munger Trail. I like the
freckles on this one.
I love it when my interests in literary history and natural history coincide. During the last couple weeks, I've been taking pictures of mushrooms on the Munger Trail, now that wildflower-season has come to an end. One of the less common species of fungi is Helvella crispa, also known as Elfin Saddles. These tiny mushrooms, with their marble color and fleshy texture but wildly irregular and seemingly-truncated shapes, always make me think of the Elgin Marbles, which Mary Shelley saw in London at the time she was writing her most famous novel Frankenstein

Why do these mushrooms make me think of a bunch of ancient Greek sculpture fragments? Well, they look semi-human, like little ears sprouting up from the ground, or like little limbless torsos. --And if you change the "f" in Elfin to a "g," you're there!
One of the Marbles. Photo credit:
Chris Devers / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND


When I think of the Elgin Marbles, I think not so much of Keats' famous sonnet, not so much of the on-going debate about whether they should be returned to Greece, but rather about the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon's first response to seeing them. 
"The first thing I fixed my eyes on was the wrist of a figure in one of the female groups, in which were visible, though in a feminine form, the radius and ulna. I was astonished, for I had never seen them hinted at in any female wrist in the antique. I darted my eye to the elbow, and saw the outer condyle visibly affecting the shape as in nature. [...] My heart beat! [...] and here was I [...] perfectly comprehending the hint at the skin by knowing well what was underneath it!" (qtd in Jennings, 129) 
"Like little limbless torsos." 

This passage got lodged in my memory back in grad school, perhaps because I was impressed with the passion of Haydon's excitement. He believed the ancient Greeks had studied anatomy and their careful observation of the human body made them great sculptors. Seeing the Marbles confirmed his suspicions. He felt that the artists of his day needed a better knowledge of musculoskeletal reality, that they needed to observe more closely the actual human form; otherwise, their work would be idealized and unrealistic. I think the intensity of his response also comes from his pleasure at being able to connect what he knew with what he saw. Even a little knowledge can mitigate the strangeness of the unfamiliar...


"Like little ears, sprouting up from the ground."
When the British public first saw the Marbles, people argued about whether they were beautiful or not. Folks were either fascinated or repelled by the fragments, expecting or fearing that they might somehow spring to life, so well equipped were they with bones, muscles, veins, and sinews. Accustomed to much more idealized images of human bodies, people were pleased or shocked by the ancient yet novel realism of the Marbles. 

We readers react in a similar way to Frankenstein's Creature, himself a collection of human fragments. Is the Creature truly ugly, or is he merely a larger, and therefore shockingly real, human? Is he just one being, or is he an angry mob, moving and acting with one vengeful purpose? Does Victor find him repulsive because he knows too well what's under the Creature's skin? Victor claims that the Creature's parts, viewed separately, were beautiful, but once assembled and animated, became horrific. Perhaps some folks prefer their art broken into harmless bits, into ancient, ruined fragments, never to be reconstituted...
I can see the resemblance--can you? 
Photo credit: 5telios / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

Certainly, the Romantics were fascinated by ruins, but perhaps mainly by the idea of ruins, the idea of once-great works subject to the ravages of time. It may well be that the sight of real ruins, like the Elgin Marbles, exposed too well the shocking effects of time and of man's mishandling of the past. 

In any case, my Elgin Mushrooms are, for the most part, harmless (folks argue about whether they are edible or not) and charming, a pleasure to see and to photograph, not frightening at all, though admittedly a little strange. I hope to see a few more before winter comes.
I didn't notice the tiny snail on this one until I was editing the photo!






































Work Cited

Jennings, Humphrey, Mary-Lou Jennings and Charles Madge (eds). Pandaemonium: The Coming of 
       the Machine as Seen by Contemporary Observers, 1660-1886. New York: Free, 1985. Print.
       (This citation was created with EasyBib.)