The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Sun 3/16/2008)

[RetroLounge]

From 20,000 Feet

The cloud formation looks
like banks of rock from here,
though rock and cloud are thought

so opposite. Earth's underlying nature
might be likeness—likeness
everywhere disguised

by wave-length, amplitude and frequency.
(If we got far enough away, could we
decipher the design?) From here

so much goes by
too fast or slow for sight.
(Is death a stretch of time in which

a life is just a flash?) Whatever
we may think, we only
think that we will lose. The foetus,
expert at attachment,
didn't dream that
cramped canal would open

into sound and light and love—
it clung. It didn't care. The future
looked like death to it, from there.

Heather McHugh

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Heather McHugh was born to Canadian parents in San Diego, California, in 1948. She was raised in Virginia and educated at Harvard University. Her books of poetry include Eyeshot (Wesleyan University Press, 2004), which was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize; The Father of Predicaments (2001); Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 (1994), a finalist for the National Book Award and named a "Notable Book of the Year" by the New York Times Book Review; Shades (1988); To the Quick (1987); A World of Difference (1981); and Dangers (1977).

She is also the author of literary essays entitled Broken English: Poetry and Partiality (1993), and three books of translation: Glottal Stop: Poems of Paul Celan (with Nikolai Popov, 2001), winner of the Griffin International Poetry Prize; Because the Sea is Black: Poems of Blaga Dimitrova (with Niko Boris, 1989); and D'après tout: Poems by Jean Follain (1981).

Her honors include two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Award, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, and, in 2006, one of the first United States Artists awards. From 1999 to 2006 she served as a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets, and in 2000 was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. For over 20 years, she has served as a visiting faculty member in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and since 1984 as Milliman Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington in Seattle.


******************************

:hi:

RL

[xchrom]

1. ...

Earth's underlying nature
might be likeness—likeness
everywhere disguised

[RetroLounge]

16. ...

:hi:

RL

[RainDog]

2. ...

beautifully wrought

[lizziegrace]

3. Thank you Retro

:hug:

[RetroLounge]

4. No thank you for the suggestion of this poem

:hug:

RL

[lizziegrace]

11. Oh no, thank you...

;)



:P


:hug:

[BlueIris]

5. Nice! K & R & bookmarked.

[RetroLounge]

12. thanks

:hi:

RL

[hisownpetard]

6. This poem changed my life.

I sent it to lizziegrace because she's going through a hard time, and I wanted her to read, in particular, these lines:

...The foetus,
expert at attachment,
didn't dream that
cramped canal would open

into sound and light and love—
it clung. It didn't care. The future
looked like death to it, from there.

These are the words that inspired me to make that leap from the bleak certainty of my life, as it was,
to the frightening uncertainty of trying to make it what I wanted it to be.

So many of us are in a cramped, dark place and, instead of taking the risk of leaving what we know, we continue to cling
when actually, on the other side, is life itself.

When I first read this poem, it was 1:00 in the morning and I actually sat up in bed and said, "Wow."
I decided at that moment that I was going to go back to school, at the age of 50, no matter what happened.
Divorce happened (as I knew it would).
I never dreamt, at the moment of that decision, that I would wind up studying with Heather McHugh, the person who wrote the poem
that inspired me to change my life.

Mysterious ways...



:hi:

[RetroLounge]

7. Mysterious Indeed.

She PM'd me this last night. and I posted it tody.

There's something in there for me too... Letting go... taking the risk...

:hi:

RL

[lizziegrace]

8. ...

:hug:

[lizziegrace]

9. Life is out there

and it obviously isn't here.

Thank you for sending me this and more than that? For being my friend. I want to be you when I grow up.

:hug:



:loveya:

[otherlander]

10. Hey, I think I actually understand it.

Cool!
:hi:

[hisownpetard]

13. That's great, and it's another thing I love about the poem. It's accessible.

It goes from the broadest of concepts (the universe) to the most personal and specific (a fetus).
It starts out by talking about how things sometimes seem like the opposite of what they are (the clouds look like rocks)
and ends up by saying that, to the fetus who's trapped in that dark and cramped canal, leaving that world
seems like death to it - and yet it's exactly the opposite, because on the other side is life itself, and light, and love.

Oh, I will never fall out of love with this best of all possible poems!

[RetroLounge]

14. I love the way you explained this...

Where do I sign up for YOUR class?

:hi:

RL

[hisownpetard]

15. Heh heh.

I was very lucky to have great teachers!

Imagine, though - I actually got to say this to Heather McHugh in person, a couple years later.
And she asked me to co-teach her class (a Summer Session at SLC) which I gladly did. I was thrilled.
I told her that, if she never did anything in her life but write that one poem, her life
has been well spent. Who knows how many people she's inspired, the way she inspired me?


:pals: