Flashback: A Scent Can Break Your Heart

September, 2009

I breathed in a most evocative scent today. For a moment I didn't know where I was.

I'd been walking back up the mall toward the library at lunchtime when I passed a young woman going the other way. While she was still in view I noticed that her nonchalant air was being undermined by one's sense of its being assumed. That set me reflecting about whether it is possible ever to be nonchalant, if trying doesn't work.

But then all that was forgotten as she passed me and I breathed, in her wake, the exact, long-forgotten scent of the powder hand soap that was used, in the 1960s, in the ladies' bathrooms at White Cloud State Park. I recognized it immediately, as if forty years were nothing. Oh, it wafted me back to that park and to my childhood, to the playground and the foot-trail and the log fences, and it made me want to laugh and cry, because I used to own that smell, I used to carry it away with me on freshly washed hands, and it was part of me. It was a nonchalant part of my world, uncherished and almost unnoticed, because we camped there so often, summer after long summer as I grew taller, and how can something that was a part of me be so gone? So gone.

And what was that smell? Is it really gone forever again, so soon after rushing back to me out of nowhere? Should I have run after the girl crying, "Wait, Wait!"?


Happy happy update, spring 2016:  We took a vacation South this year to look at Civil War battlefields and see some Presidential homes. Waiting for the tour of Benjamin Harrison's house to begin, we looked around in the gift shop for a while. I was interested in the different varieties of artisan soaps they had there, and to my amazement, one was the long-lost scent I wrote about here! Of course I bought it immediately, and now it lives as a sachet in my sock drawer! Every few days I lift it out and travel back to White Cloud State Park again.... 

Flashback: Summer of 2009

Verbal Snapshots from our Vacation

 

Overheard: On a trail at Hartwick Pines forest, a young boy and girl rushing down a hill together: 
     Girl: "I don't want to run, but I'm running! I don't want to run, but I'm running!"
     Boy: "I know!  Our feet are running automatically!"

Overheard: At a craft store, a woman examining t-shirts with Husky dogs on them:
    Woman: "Gawd, I'd love t'git Butch one o'them."
    (Me, unspoken: "Is Butch a boy, a teen, or your husband? Your brother? Does he own a husky dog? Would he really like a t-shirt with a husky on it or is it only part of your illusion of Butch that he would like a t-shirt with a husky on it? How well do you know Butch, really? Would you like a husky dog t-shirt yourself? Or are you actually saying that you wish Butch were the kind of person you could give a husky dog t-shirt to?"  My brain contains an extra nosiness nodule or two, apparently.)

[Although now, five years later, what I notice about this utterance is the wistfulness of it. The impossibility of giving even so modest a gift to someone dear, a world of regret over many such chances gone.]

Observed: From a picnic table by a parking lot at the UP's "Mystery Spot," as I elected to sit quietly and knit in the sunshine instead of going inside:
     A sea gull walking along the road. He glanced about with rapid eye, like Emily Dickinson's bird, but he did not hop sideways nor hop anywhere. Nor did he fly, which you'd think would be his best option for travel. He just walked. Straight on and on, along the shoulder of the road, with no visible emotion, the whole length of the parking lot, at least five car lengths, he walked. Then he stopped, looked both ways--and walked across the road!
     Well! I guess that's why it's called the Mystery Spot.

And now, a real snapshot from my vacation, of an activity which prompted this essential question: When digging in wet beach sand, do fingernails get dirty or clean?

Ben at Lake Huron

Answer: Clean!  I can't help with the eternal mysteries of jaywalking sea gulls, feet that run of their own accord, or the true nature of Butch, but I'm glad we could clear up one question, anyway.

Why Frank O'Hara Wasn't a Painter

Below is another of the essays I wrote for my online "Modpo" (Contemporary and Modern Poetry) class I took from the Unversity of Pennsylvania through Coursera.org.  I've been putting these essays on my blog as a way to preserve them after the course content disappears.

Assignment: In a close reading of the following poem, explain in approximately 500 words why O'Hara is not a painter.

Why I Am Not a Painter
by Frank O'Hara
I am not a painter, I am a poet. Why? I think I would rather be a painter, but I am not. Well, for instance, Mike Goldberg is starting a painting. I drop in. "Sit down and have a drink" he says. I drink; we drink. I look up. "You have SARDINES in it." "Yes, it needed something there." "Oh." I go and the days go by and I drop in again. The painting is going on, and I go, and the days go by. I drop in. The painting is finished. "Where's SARDINES?" All that's left is just letters, "It was too much," Mike says. But me? One day I am thinking of a color: orange. I write a line about orange. Pretty soon it is a whole page of words, not lines. Then another page. There should be so much more, not of orange, of words, of how terrible orange is and life. Days go by. It is even in prose, I am a real poet. My poem is finished and I haven't mentioned orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

Sardines? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Sardines!

Frank O'Hara is not a painter because he is incapable of abstraction, or at least very averse to it. He can't just tell us so because that itself would be abstract; instead, he gives us his I-do-this-I-do-that "Why I Am Not a Painter" poem, and we must abstract it for ourselves. The poem is not an explanation but a demonstration.

He begins with a three-line introduction re-stating and emphasizing the title. He tucks the interjection "Well," at the end perhaps to give the impression that he is writing extemporaneously, but also to pull the reader into the next, long verse, which begins, appealingly, with "For instance." This drops us in front of Michael Goldberg at his easel, where we watch how "The painting / is going on, and I go, and the days / go by."

O'Hara devotes a thirteen-lined stanza to Goldberg's painting process, then another one to his own writing process, during which the same days are going by. Giving the same number of lines to each suggests balance and fairness of consideration and also the equal weight of the finished works of art: O'Hara considers his poem to be equal, in terms of artistic importance, to the abstract painting.

Of the painting, O'Hara observes, "You have SARDINES in it." The capitalization of SARDINES indicates he is referring to the word only, not to pictures of sardines. Goldberg answers, "Yes, it needed something there." Later he will partly obliterate it because "It was too much." O'Hara understands that neither word nor object relates to the aboutness of the painting; it is merely using the shape of the word and perhaps a touch of its dadaist shock value.

Contrast what O'Hara says of his "Oranges" poem. At one point it is "a page of words" which he adds to just as Goldberg adds letters to his painting. But his poem is at all stages representational; it is thoroughly about orange, even though the word itself never appears in it. While Goldberg's expression must be curtailed, ("It was too much"), O'Hara goes on adding to his until he has twelve poems about orange, and still feels that "There should be so much more." He may even take a gleeful pride in that he has produced twelve poems in the time it took Goldberg to produce one painting.

At the end, we discover that both works of art have been titled with that one key word which they do not contain, "Oranges" and "Sardines." In this concuding irony O'Hara's demonstration is complete: Goldberg's painting bears a label which signals no aboutness; O'Hara's poem bears a label which signals absolute aboutness.

O'Hara writes this poem to tell us metapoetically that he prefers poetry, where words have meanings that create pictures and interesting for-instances, over abstract paintings that tell no story. His point is confined to the fashions of his day, however: O'Hara might, in a different lifetime, have become a realistic painter whose works did tell a story; instead, to be a "real" poet he must not use rhyme or meter, just as Goldberg, in his day, must never paint a "real" sardine.

Emily's Sailor Dresses

No wonder Emily loves to travel--look how we dressed her!

Horatius at the Bridge

The "Massive Online Open Course" (MOOC) class in Modern and Contemporary Poetry I've been studying with great enjoyment for ten weeks ended last Monday. Fortunately, the discussion forums and videos will remain open for another year, so my 36,000 fellow students and I can continue participating on our own.

Following is my fourth and final essay for the class. The topic is aleatory or "chance" poetry, and our assignment involved performing chance operations on any poem to create a new version of that poem and do a close reading of it.

Option A: The Mesostomatic (based on John Cage's Mesostics)

Visit the link to the Mesostomatic exercise: www.euph0r1a.net/mesostomatic/. Fill in the fields for the spine and textual data and select any number of mesostics before submitting. Please insert into the "textual data" field a URL (web address) for one of the poems we've read in ModPo or the URL of another poem that interests you. Insert a word or phrase or a name as the "spine." Using the Mesostomatic, you will be "writing through" the chosen poem. 

Horatius at the Bridge

                    Hand
                   cOmmons seized
                 baR,
                    And
               smoTe
below. MeanwhIle
                   tUscan
                 flaShing

                   bAck
                     The

                 lighT, rank
                  beHind
                   likE,

                     Bright of
         gold, fouR
                   wIth
          measureD
               ensiGns
                 sprEad.

With its antique diction, gasping rhythm, and flickering images of war, this could be a fragment of some ancient eyewitness account. 

Accidental though it may be, this version has grammatical integrity and a logical progression through the stanzas--a steady enlargement of the pictorial frame. First a hand, then a Tuscan soldier, then by synecdoche many Tuscans, then banners streaming above the assembled ranks of Tuscan soldiers.  

It begins "in medias res" with a main character, the Roman hero through whose eyes we see the battle, but whom we know only by the action of his hand, seizing a bar and smiting the enemy below him. "Meanwhile" our mental eye is drawn upward again, because the Tuscans' armor reflects the light back upward, revealing rank upon rank of soldiers "bright with gold." The impression of vast expanse is heightened by the assonance of "light," "like" and "bright." As the picture expands to its maximum breadth with overarching ensigns coming into view, it also gains energy for a conclusive ending with the assonance of "measured ensigns spread," the nasal resonance of /m/, /n/, and /r/ in the same phrase, and the repeated stops of /d/ and /p/ in "measured" and "spread." These evoke, though don't quite speak, the word "dead" --can there be any fate for this outnumbered hero, but death?

The poem offers several other points that its phantom poet might have arranged on purpose: The ragged, staggered rhythm of the stanza breaks (8,2,3,6), not corresponding to any natural phrasing, suggests the lurching motions and confused disorder of battle. "Rank behind like" does the work of "rank upon rank," but is fresher and emphasizes the disciplined unity of the Tuscans. After this numerless multiplicity of soldiers, specifying that exactly four ranks have banners spread is a welcome contrast and realistic touch. The definite article does not always appear where expected, (eg. "seized bar" instead of "seized the bar") giving the utterance, depending on how you read it, what might be a breathless, hurried effect, or a stoic brevity.

Following is the source text (verses 34 and 35 of 70 ) by Thomas Babington Macaulay:

XXXIV

Now while the Three were tightening
Their harnesses on their backs,
The Consul was the foremost man
To take in hand an axe:
And Fathers mixed with Commons
Seized hatchet, bar, and crow,
And smote upon the planks above,
And loosed the props below.

XXXV

Meanwhile the Tuscan army,
Right glorious to behold,
Come flashing back the noonday light,
Rank behind rank, like surges bright
Of a broad sea of gold.
Four hundred trumpets sounded
A peal of warlike glee,
As that great host, with measured tread,
And spears advanced, and ensigns spread,
Rolled slowly towards the bridge’s head,
Where stood the dauntless Three.

The distilled, mesotic version of these stanzas actually does echo, recognizably, the action and tone of the original, but is pleasingly open and compelling. Stripped of the high-toned mythic quality, a real person seems to emerge. 

I not only like this  mesotic poem, I like the process of making it and the fresh language which resulted from the process, so different from what I usually produce, and so invigorating! This exercise has also increased my tolerance for tackling difficult poems: if I can't get everything out of one, I will nevertheless see what can be got, for have I not, on my own like Horatius, just made something like sense out of four computer-generated clusters, with measured ensigns spread?

Close Reading of a Dickinson Poem

This essay was written as an assignment for the Coursera.com free online course, "Modern and Contemporary Poetry," taught by Al Filreis of the University of Pennsylvania. I did not ascribe a meta-poetic interpretation to the poem--I steadfastly and rather grumpily resisted one--on the grounds that it read best to me as a nature poem. But after many more weeks of studying, I warmed up to the meta-poetic view and now do believe, along with some thousands of my classmates, that Emily's euphoria arose not so much with the sun as with her powerful experience of writing about it.

I taste a liquor never brewed (214)
by Emily Dickinson
I taste a liquor never brewed –  From Tankards scooped in Pearl –  Not all the Vats upon the Rhine Yield such an Alcohol! Inebriate of air – am I –  And Debauchee of Dew –  Reeling – thro' endless summer days –  From inns of molten Blue –  When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee Out of the Foxglove's door –  When Butterflies – renounce their "drams" –  I shall but drink the more! Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –  And Saints – to windows run –  To see the little Tippler Leaning against the – Sun!       When we face a poem whose vocabulary announces it to be about Nature, it doesn't immediately quicken our pulses. Sky, sun, clouds and dew are familiar to us and generally tame; we think of them, if at all, as unobtrusive backgrounds to more interesting activities. If--fleetingly--they are sublime and we notice them as being sublime, they make us feel....what? We don't know, and can't say. Then the glorious sunrise or "l'heure bleu" is quickly over and we've moved on.  So when we approach Emily Dickinson's “I taste a liquor never brewed,” one of the things we want to see is how she overcomes our sluggishness: how she will reveal--in often drearily-ordinary things--extra-ordinary attractions and sensations to charm and dazzle us. Form One of her strategies is to keep the poem short. Here we have just sixteen lines, divided into four verses of four lines each--inviting rather than daunting. The rhyme scheme is ABCB, but in addition to the rhyming end-words she also makes artful, careful use of repeated sounds and partial rhymes. These are pleasing to the ear and help knit the poem's lines together. The form used is the Ballad, four verses of iambic tetrameter. It was very familiar to Dickinson from church services, but she uses this hymn-like structure to hold ideas that are not typical of traditional sacred music. One might think of Emily Dickinson as writing her own private hymnal, an alternative book of self-sacred songs for her own kind of praise and meditation. That may be why she numbered them as hymns in a hymn book are numbered, rather than titling them. She invites the reader to meditate with her. Conceit of “I taste a Liquor never brewed” The fresh approach Dickinson offers us in this poem is the conceit or extended metaphor that the “I” or Speaker is so exquisitely sensitive to nature that it has the effect of liquor on her; while others would merely feel mildly pleased by morning twilight, she is inebriated by it. And she asserts that this is extraordinary behavior which supernatural beings (seraphs and saints) will want to see —or else she will drink and drink until they do come to see and salute her. Punctuation As is typical with Dickinson’ poetry, “Liquor” is punctuated mostly with dashes. Is this also one of her strategies to pull readers into the poem? It may do so by creating ambiguities or double-meanings to intrigue readers; by provoking them to explore the dashes' effect by reading the poem aloud; and by heightening the effect of other punctuation marks when they appear. In other words, the two exclamation points in this poem are all the more exclamatory for being so stark among the dashes; likewise the quotation marks draw attention to themselves as doubly intentional and meaningful. As the little tippler begins to lurch and stagger, so do the dashes. First Verse The speaker piques our interest by telling of a mysterious mixture she drinks, comparable to none other in the world we know. I taste a liquor never brewed -- If brewing is of nature, natural, then this liquor could be supernatural,  unnatural, extra-natural or maybe hyper-natural. Like the Biblical “city not made with hands” it exists, but owes nothing to human effort for its existence. From Tankards scooped in Pearl -- Like a head of froth on beer,  pearly clouds are scooped up in a rounded shape on top of her tankard. Not all the Vats upon the Rhine -- On the famous German river, these could be wooden vats for wine or copper vats for beer. Probably beer is the drink she’s suggesting: beer is drunk from tankards, in long, thirsty drafts, as she does the air--not little sips from small glasses. Also, beer is the beverage that would have a “scoop of pearl” or head of froth on the top. Yield such an Alcohol! -- Alcohol is maybe not a very poetic word. It sounds rather scientific to the ear; under normal conditions it would be clinker of a word. Yet somehow in this poem we glide right over it, perhaps because she has prepared us for it so well with "liquor," "vat," and "tankards." Repeated sounds and partial rhymes: liquor/never; scooped/brewed; |k| in tankard/scooped; |t| in taste/tankard/scooped; pearl/alcohol. Second Verse The effect of this heady mixture of early-morning air and dew is to make the poet feel elevated, exultant, exhilarated, glorified. Inebriate of Air -- am I – “Inebriate” is a Synonym for “drunk.” Now we find out what is inside the tankard with the scoop of pearl on top--it's air. The line invites one to imagine what kind of air could inebriate a person—sweet, pungent, aromatic, delicious, faintly spicy, pure, 100-proof! And Debauchee of Dew -- A debauchee is a person who habitually indulges in debauchery or dissipation--in this case, drunkeness. If she is debauching on “Dew,” she does it in the early morning. Ordinary drunks are up late, but this one is up early. Reeling -- thro endless summer days – “Reeling” denotes a lurching walk, as a drunk would do. “Endless summer days” evokes joy: eternal heaven, a permanent state of bliss. There’s no need to beware of inclement weather, and the drunkard’s hangover or DT’s or offensive behavior are not to be thought of. With this liquor, one can be drunk every day, with each day as beautiful as the last. From inns of Molten Blue -- An inn is a place a drunkard may drink. For the speaker, it’s the sky, but more than the sky. She offers us a super-charged new word describing the intense blue of the twilight sky. “Molten” is not an adjective we’d normally choose for blue—red or yellow like glowing lava is more “molten.” But by giving us “molten blue,” she is asking us to imagine a blue so charged and intense that pigment could never reproduce it. There must be a powerful erupting volcano nearby to produce it, and so there is—the sun. There are many such molten-blue inns--perhaps different vantage points from which she views the sky?--and she reels drunkenly from one to the next. Repeated sounds and partial rhymes: long |e| in inebriate/debauchee/reeling; |n| in endless/inns/molten; |u| in dew/thro/blue; |d| in debauchee/dew/endless/days; dew/blue. Third Verse Even if other creatures should cease feeding on nature's elixirs, the Speaker never will. When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee In quotes, “landlords” become imaginary miniature proprietors of the Foxglove Inn where bees drink nectar. Possibly Dickinson believes that without quote marks around “landlords,” we will float past her intended idea and light instead on the image of human landlords waving bees away, which she does not want. Out of the Foxglove's door -- The image of Bees getting ejected by miniature bar bouncers is rather comical. Foxgloves are tall, elegant flowers. Only bees may sup there indiscriminately: foxgloves produce digitalis which can be, like alcohol, medicinal up to a point but poisonous beyond it. When Butterflies -- renounce their "drams" – Drams are small drinks of whiskey or other spirits. Dickinson was an acute observer of nature: she knew that butterflies also live on liquids—not only nectar from flowers, but also tree sap, rotting fruit, etc. (http://www.kidsbutterfly.org/faq/behavior/3) If butterflies renounce their “drams”—if they swear off nectar and “wine”—they will die. Does the Speaker feel that neither could she live, if this kind of drinking were denied her? I shall but drink the more! Dickinson uses “when” clauses here, but they can be understood as “if” clauses—“if” in the sense of “not at all likely.” It calls to mind e e cummings’ usage in “when serpents bargain for the right to squirm.” Even if bees and butterflies should cease drinking their nectar, I shall drink more than I did before! Repeated sounds and partial rhymes: |n| in landlords/turn/drunken; |s| in foxglove’s/ butterflies/renounce/drams; door/more. Fourth Verse One effect of the Speaker's inebriation is elevation--she rises to inhabit the sky with angels, saints, and the sun. The heavens she has feasted on have taken her up. Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats -- This is a difficult line. Seraphs are angels; while they are sometimes depicted with halos, angels are not widely known to wear hats.* “Snowy” is often found in religious texts to mean pure, white, or clean—surely an appropriate kind of hat for angels to swing, given that they have one. Swinging a hat seems like a joyful, ebullient gesture—a celebratory salute to the tippler, perhaps. And Saints -- to windows run -- The references to seraphs and saints may be intended as a slight jab at the church-goers who listen to hymns with traditional lyrics. In other words, the sitters in pews may think they are the holy ones, and that the Speaker over-imbibing celestial air is a sinner; yet she claims that the true heavenly holy ones—seraphs and saints—will be interested in and exultant about her activity rather than theirs; they will run to the windows of heaven to view it. To see the little Tippler “Tippler” is the “I” or speaker of the poem, “tippling” being another synonym for drinking alcohol. Leaning against the -- Sun -- The speaker of the poem has drunk and drunk and is no longer capable of reeling, as she was in verse 2—now she must simply lean for support on the sun. In the mind’s eye, the two are not disproportional: the creature who sups like birds and butterflies on the morning air is perceived to be a fair size for leaning against the sun as it peers, along with the seraphs and saints, over the horizon at her. The dashes before and after "Sun" wrap it with special emphasis, even if we aren't sure what that emphasis is to mean. Perhaps it lends a feeling of "At last!" to the line, as in, "At last I have risen so high, I am so high, as I have been desiring to be, up through the clouds and the sky until I rest on the--at last!--sun itself!" Repeated sounds and partial rhymes: |s| in seraphs/swing/snowy/hats/saints/windows/see/against/ sun; short |a| in seraphs/hats; |l| in till/little/tippler; |t| in till/to/saints/little/tippler/against; |w| in swing/snowy/windows. As if gathering force to end the poem conclusively, the lines of verse four are more than usually united with the repeated sounds of many S’s. As we have seen, Dickinson certainly did find a fresh and personal way to shake us out of our doldrums about nature; she has a gift for it. Her conceit of drunkenness is surprising, yet not at all off-putting because first, we know this is a delicate and sensitive young lady speaking, not some burly, bluff imbiber. Second, the language is delicate, precise, and beautifully calculated to invoke an effect that is none the less convincing for being whimsical. She loves to rise very early, to watch the sky turn molten with the approach of the sun, to drink in the air moist and sweet with dew, and to exult in these sensations. She has expressed all this in a way that invites us to exult with her—and to wave our snowy hats at her, too, should we have one to hand. * I don't believe Emily Dickinson would have used "hat" for "halo." Though I may be mistaken, I believe haloes were depicted mainly in Roman Catholic art, which would not have been so much regarded in Protestant New England.

Faribault School Loom

I just acquired a Faribault School Loom,  9 x 12, (price: free!) and found this old advertisement in "School Arts," a google book from 1909, to document it. Now I can make a homey rug!