Swell

The Waves: sculpture mix; denim glaze, layered.

Brendan Kennelly's "Begin"

BEGIN

Begin again to the carolling birds,

To the sight of light at the window,

Begin to the roar of morning traffic

All along Pembroke Road.

Every beginning is a promise

Born in light and dying in dark,

Daily deception and exultation

Of Springtime flowering the way to work.

Begin to the pageant of queuing girls,

To the lonely arrogance of swans in the canal,

To bridges linking the past and future,

To old friends passing though with us still.

Begin to the treasures that we have squandered,

To the profit and the loss, the pleasure and pain,

Begin to the knowledge that to-morrow

Is another beginning for every man.

Begin to the loneliness that cannot end

Since it perhaps is what makes us begin,

Begin to wonder at unknown faces,

At crying birds and the sudden rain,

At branches stark in the winter sunlight,

At seagulls foraging for bread,

At couples sharing a sunny secret

Along together while making good.

Begin to the surge of the waking city,

To familiar streets that are always strange,

To words of greeting in the Dublin morning

Proving that we have come through again.

Blessed with the promise and the disappointment

That make the minutes of every day,

We step into the streets of morning

Walking the pavements of come-what-may.

Though we live in a world that thinks of ending,

That always seems about to give in,

Something that will not acknowledge conclusion

Insists that we forever begin.

--Brendan Kennelly

P.S. Many years ago, one of my students from English 40--Irish Carl--gave me a book of Kennelly's verse, and in particular this rousing poem, and though I've proven to be a poor correspondent, I've always appreciated that giving and treasured this poem.

W.B. Yeats: Twilight and Fire (in the Head)

INTO THE TWILIGHT

Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,

Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;

Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,

Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Your mother Eire is aways young,

Dew ever shining and twilight grey;

Though hope fall from you and love decay,

Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:

For there the mystical brotherhood

Of sun and moon and hollow and wood

And river and stream work out their will;

And God stands winding His lonely horn,

And time and the world are ever in flight;

And love is less kind than the grey twilight,

And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And some one called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

--W.B. Yeats

Folly's Champion

The Sea-Jester: sculpture mix; shino and denim glazes, layered.

To quote Yeats again: "And dance like a wave of the sea."

From "The Fiddler of Dooney."

And, to quote a friend quoting Reba McIntyre, "To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone, and a funnybone."

Forty Winks

Puck, Sleeping: now glazed.

Mermaid-in-Waiting

Wet clay.

A Flying Visit

Quick jaunt last night to the studio. Finding parking in Berkeley on a Friday evening was an ordeal; have to plan that part better next time. Studio almost empty though, so a good relaxed vibe there. Must go again at that time.

The reindeer was broken even before his first trip to the kiln; here, he's almost ready to go in again as a glaze test.

No horns, only one leg: I still think he's a jaunty flier. You know the reindeer song: On Dasher, on Dancer, on Comet, on--yes, this might be Cupid.

I had a difficult time trying to work out the best glazing for Puck here, and I settled for a fairly standard harlequin effect. Or so I think. You never quite know how the glaze will react in combination, or . . . unless you have more practice than I do.

Waves. I borrowed the design idea from an old Viking funeral stone. I still think it's lucky.

Puck and Kipling's "A Tree Song"

A TREE SONG

Of all the trees that grow so fair,

Old England to adorn,

Greater are none beneath the Sun,

Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.

Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs,

(All of a Midsummer morn!)

Surely we sing no little thing,

In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Oak of the Clay lived many a day,

Or ever Aeneas began.

Ash of the Loam was a lady at home,

When Brut was an outlaw man.

Thorn of the Down saw New Troy Town

(From which was London born);

Witness hereby the ancientry

Of Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Yew that is old in churchyard-mould,

He breedeth a mighty bow.

Alder for shoes do wise men choose,

And beech for cups also.

But when ye have killed, and your bowl is spilled,

And your shoes are clean outworn,

Back ye must speed for all that ye need,

To Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Ellum she hateth mankind, and waiteth

Till every gust be laid,

To drop a limb on the head of him

That anyway trusts her shade:

But whether a lad be sober or sad,

Or mellow with ale from the horn,

He will take no wrong when he lieth along

'Neath Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,

Or he would call it a sin;

But - we have been out in the woods all night,

A-conjuring Summer in!

And we bring you news by word of mouth-

Good news for cattle and corn-

Now is the Sun come up from the South,

With Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs

(All of a Midsummer morn):

England shall bide till Judgment Tide,

By Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

--Rudyard Kipling,

from his playful historical panorama Puck of Pook's Hill

Comfort Reading

"The Sounding Furrows"

Keith Sanders, Drake's Bay, February 1980.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

--from Tennyson's "Ulysses"

I really missed my pal Keith today. He died back in March.

Very unexpectedly, I choked up while reading Tennyson's "Ulysses" aloud in class today and had to stop. Ulysses is asserting his need to keep seeking, to going out beyond the horizon, rather than just slowing down, just dying at home. The poem is many things: the complaint of an underemployed, active man; a celebration of ambition and exploration; a variation on happy-ever-after; a paean to friendship; a poetic death-wish; a farewell. Even as I was reading aloud, I was looking ahead at the place in the poem where the Ithakan king calls upon his comrades, his sharers in adventure, to seek further conquests, further explorations, and the thought of my belated best friend took hold of my voice. I staggered, as it were, to a stop.

Keith is supposed to be here; we were supposed to grow old together, you know?

We were supposed to say the sorts of things Ulysses is saying to his crew to each other. Glory days and scars. Rallying cries. Shared folly and achievement. So much loss and anger flashed through my head.

The silence lengthened, and then I picked up the next line, continuing, but I had to stop again. Instead, I paced around the front of the room, and I told them why I had to stop, that the poem brought back my dead best friend, even though I hadn't expected it too.

Then, I shifted back to the beginning of the poem and the rather difficult first five lines, which I had written on the board already, and we considered the voice and the tone of that voice together. Shoring up my fragments--to steal from Eliot--against my ruin, I used the intellectual to hold the emotional in its proper place, more or less. As an English teacher, I moved forward in the poem, meaning to do honor to friendship as well as to Tennyson and his Ulysses.

Today, the students took all of this in stride, working with me. I've gotten a bit emotional, a bit engaged, with our reading before, treating characters and situations "as if they were alive," as if they mattered. They seem to like that. I'm not sure how many other teachers have acted this way, and the thought occasionally hounds me.

Here's a favorite image from the poem that transcends mere character, that we can all engage with, I hope. Certainly, the lines recall Keith's amazing energy, his wonderful engagement with life, his own aspirations and actions to "shine in use."

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

I recall years ago preparing to teach an essay by Ellen Mairs, I think, on "being a cripple" (her choice of phrasing) and on multiple sclerosis, her affliction, being behind in my prep, and so I arose at 4 a.m. to catch up, and something about that early hour allowed me to be more vulnerable and I just wept reading the piece, a piece I'd always approached intellectually before. I went in and told my students how I wept, and more of the students than usual opened up to discuss the emotional and then the intellectual aspects of the essay.

I have learned to teach, for example, Richard Rodriguez's essays through the emotions first, and the students get so much more, emotionally and intellectually, out of these pieces. And so forth.

Another arrow in the quiver of instruction? I say that as I don the armor of the intellectual for another day in the classroom, but whether or not I am wearing such armor, my heart is still on my sleeve. Emotions matter, and critical thinking that doesn't consider and value emotional responses isn't really all that properly engaged, is it?

Here is the whole of Tennyson's poem on the Greek adventurer long after the close of Homer's epic:

ULYSSES (1833)

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed

Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honoured of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this grey spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle—

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and through soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me—

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

--Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

P.S. Today, one student thanked me after class for being openly emotional in relation to our reading and commented on how the class was helping her to revisit a slightly younger self, as self who read, who had time to read, feel, and be.

I appreciated hearing those words, and I think the ghost of my pal appreciated them too.

"Woodnotes Wild"

There are many intriguing trees on the Berkeley campus. I have my favorites.

I've always thought that such trees have spirits, and Nigel here just embodies that belief in a playful way.

Here's a favorite poem from Seamus Heaney about walking in the woods:

THE PLANTATION

Any point in that wood

Was a centre, birch trunks

Ghosting your bearings,

Improvising charmed rings

Wherever you stopped.

Though you walked a straight line,

It might be a circle you travelled

With toadstools and stumps

Always repeating themselves.

Or did you re-pass them?

Here were bleyberries quilting the floor,

The black char of a fire,

And having found them once

You were sure to find them again.

Someone had always been there

Though always you were alone.

Lovers, birdwatchers,

Campers, gipsies and tramps

Left some trace of their trades

Or their excrement.

Hedging the road so,

It invited all comers

To the hush and mush

Of its whispering treadmill,

Its limits defined,

So they thought from outside.

They must have been thankful

For the hum of the traffic

If they ventured in

Past the picnickers' belt

Or began to recall

Tales of fog on the mountains.

You had to come back

To learn how to lose yourself,

To be pilot and stray--witch,

Hansel and Gretel in one.

--Seamus Heaney

Reindeer and Waves: Clay Play

In progress, but fun.

Sleepy Puck: Two Views

I am not sure why I ended up moving the clay into this shape, into this trickster's face. And, I am not sure why the infamous Puck should be sleeping either.

Wonder what mischief he's dreaming of?

Sculpture mix: freshly formed, drying. The trick now will be to avoid messing about trying to make it better. Sometimes, you do the work, but then just stop; leave well enough alone.

But glazing, now, that deserves a bit of contemplation. Not too much. It is Puck, after all, the spirit of improvisation and play.

Neo-Classic: Playing with Clay

Rough draft w/Glenlivet, Pope's poetry, and Dougie MacLean's Scottish music.

Wet clay. A very forgiving medium. Easy to recycle too. Half-hour break.

I'm thinking about--but ignoring--Denham's lines on the Thames right about now.

I'd been reading one of Martha Grimes' Richard Jury novels, and that character made me think of Virgil, which made me think of Roman river gods, which made me recall the 18th-century poets I've been reading around in too.

None of which matters really, other than to say "I am playing with clay," and that's a good thing. Oh, and to recommend Grimes' Deer Leap, say, or Five Bells and Bladebone.

The next step is to let that mask sit and harden enough to work the features more fully, more appropriately. I've got the basic set, but I haven't decided on the expression quite yet. There's a slight smile at present, but that came second; at first, I was channeling my anger and unease at the world today, but that's not why I pick up the clay. I need to feel my way into this figure, this character. What is he trying to tell me? This is a river god, so I want to listen. I can't quite hear him yet.

"In progress" is a healthy phrase.

King Puck

There's that play by Shakespeare or that novel by Kipling.

(Words to follow.)

The Sleeper in Autumn

("The Sleeper": this mask has to be one of my best pieces. I started this blog with this vision of a dreaming man here. I like to look at and handle this piece--letting my hands "see" also--to remind myself to try harder each time.)

Two Heads Are Better Than One