Captain Turner

Where's JP?

Reflecting on Self (and Selfies)

This wasn't a selfie, but a driver's license.  A current conversation with a friend:

One old driver's license, I showed it to a very good friend and said, "Look at this. I look dead in the photo."

Old Friend said, "It takes ten years off you."

I said, "Ten years off dead--what's that?"

OF smiled, wryly.


(OF always keeps me down to earth.)

Sam Hamill: "Ars Poetica"

PREFACE: ARS POETICA

Some say the poem's
best made from natural speech
from the inner life.
I say, That is sometimes true.
The poem's a natural thing.

Some say the poem
should rise into purest song,
a formality,
articulate expression
achieved through complex structures

derived from classics--
which also is true enough.
Let the song arise
as it will.  Learn to revise
the life.  Beware.  Disguises

rise up everywhere:
most dangerously, self-in-
fatuation.  "More
poets fail," Pound declared,
"from lack of character than

from lack of talent."
Some insist the poem is
heaven-sent, claiming
angelic heirs.  The poem,
I believe, is a failure

elevated in-
to triumph, a form of truth
wrought from mortal flesh
and blood that will soon perish,
but which--for one brief moment

or an hour--reveals
the tragic human spirit
in the very act
of imagining itself
cured of the sickness of self.

The poem cannot,
finally, be explained nor
defined.  The true gift
poetry bestows begins
and ends with humility

before the task.  All
the suffering of this world
can be truly felt,
absorbed adn transcended, just
by the act of listening

to that deepest voice
speaking from within.  Forget
hagiography.
All the great masters are dead.
Forget rime and irony.

Forget words, meter,
diction, whole syllabaries--
the literary.
The heart by way of the ear.
What's that you wanted to say?

--SAM HAMILL



from Gratitude,
BOA Editions, Ltd.
Rochester, NY  1998


(This one is for Eric, a very welcome house-guest)

Captain, Helper

My good cat Captain loves to help me with the laundry.

What that means:  Our washer is not balanced properly, so until I adjust the machine, the washer flips out and becomes unbalanced and galumphs galumphs galumphs.  I tend to grab a book to read and just sit atop the washer (instead of dealing with the balance issues).  Captain, bless his soul, likes to help me and comes running when he hears the imbalanced washer struggling--and so we both sit atop the washer.

Yesterday while I was at work, the washer was in operation and Captain heard the imbalance and came running to the rescue, standing atop the heaving machine and gentling it with his weight, just a bit.

Waiting for Gadot

Soldate clay;
gray/green glaze:
8/10/15

If you've read my blog, you know I have a soft spot for frogs.

(I also appreciate a certain wonderful heroic character.)

Literary Vistas

A somewhat random sampling of a few shelves . . . .

Old friends; prime rereading.

Crime novels: Rankin's Rebus and the work of local California writers.

Stalwart friends from childhood: R. E. Howard's pulp adventures.

"Ice-Diving in Hudson Bay"

ICE-DIVING IN HUDSON BAY

When we dive down in those cool and crystal
Blue waters, clumsy with our double wetsuits,
Steel tanks, and that thirteen feet of frozen sea,
Will we worry whether the ropes rub raw
On the rough-edged ice--safety-lines snapping,
Drifting from the ice-hole as we lose our way?
Perhaps, as we dive, swimming along stiff walls,
Sea-carved corridors, chill labyrinths of ice,
Our lamps might dim, or die, leaving us to grope
Blindly in that deep and dark, sightless world?
Will we wonder, what if--while we blindly swim--
The ice-hole freezes over, trapping us
Forever until the slow spring thaw?

Or will we be just like that Captain Hudson
And his young son, boating out on those quiet waters
Of the new-found bay, watching their tall ship sail
Beyond winter's ice.  A grim Captain-Boatswain yells
Hasty farewells from the fleeing crosstrees.
Winds bring their cries across cold, shifting seas.

--Matthew Duckworth

A fragment, a figment, from my youth.  Winter 1980: Poetry-Writing with Carl Dennis.
Undergraduate work here that I'm enjoying with hindsight.

Keith, my buddy Keith, was my partner in imagination, diving beneath the ice.
Fare well, rest well, strive well, my friend.
I miss you.

--MD

Olympus and Jotun

Tomales Bay Morning

"The Other Worlds": Life's Largest Riddle

The Other Worlds is an excellent mythopoeic novel by a dear friend, Christoph Greger.  Christoph's own humble way of introducing the book to the world is worth quoting: "Hey all you cystic fibrosis lit fans, Ren fair geeks, and/or mythopoeic/modernist bildungsroman junkies -- here's something that might be of interest."

This fine novel deserves deep interest, presenting classic character-in-crisis; entertaining and evoking in the tradition of Yeats, Morris, Dunsany, de Lint, and Windling; and offering entry into multiple worlds, this one we share and those others 'beyond the fields we know'.  The setting and the style are distinctly contemporary; the themes and dilemmas, definitely timeless.  Life's largest riddle--mortality--met by mystery, measured by memory, and beset--or aided?--by magic waits at the heart of The Other Worlds.

Read this book.

Louise Gluck's "Dawn"

DAWN

1

Child waking up in a dark room
screaming I want my duck back, I want my duck back

in a language nobody understands in the least —

There is no duck.

But the dog, all upholstered in white plush —
the dog is right there in the crib next to him.

Years and years — that’s how much time passes.
All in a dream. But the duck —
no one knows what happened to that.

2

They’ve  just met, now
they’re sleeping near an open window.

Partly to wake them, to assure them
that what they remember of  the night is correct,
now light needs to enter the room,

also to show them the context in which this occurred:
socks half  hidden under a dirty mat,
quilt decorated with green leaves —

the sunlight specifying
these but not other objects,
setting boundaries, sure of  itself, not arbitrary,

then lingering, describing
each thing in detail,
fastidious, like a composition in English,
even a little blood on the sheets —

3

Afterward, they separate for the day.
Even later, at a desk, in the market,
the manager not satisfied with the figures he’s given,
the berries moldy under the topmost layer —

so that one withdraws from the world
even as one continues to take action in it —

You get home, that’s when you notice the mold.
Too late, in other words.

As though the sun blinded you for a moment.

--LOUISE GLUCK


(Thank you, AB, for the gift of the collected works!)

Captain and Lady

 Captain.

Lady.

 Settling in.

Captain and Lady settling in: blue-eyed siblings, about five or six years old, newly adopted.

Flotsam: Beach Rescue

 The poor fellow was lying on the sand, obviously washed up with the morning tide.  I couldn't help but think of some poor child bereft of his or her friend.

So I placed the elephant on a rock in a spot that would keep him above the rising tide and at a good eye-level for any adults walking the beach.  Of course, anyone seeking a lost friend like this would have their eyes glued to the sand . . . so here's hoping.

I think his name is Hannibal, by the way.

Foggy Paddling

Remembering Keith: Maui 2008

Keith, morning run to the Molokini Crater, Maui.

Keith, on the left.

I think he's smiling in this one.

I had thought this pretzel-yogic move was mine, but looking more closely, that's Keith.
We were both wearing our trusty Rocket Fins, which is what threw my initial indentification.

I miss you, man.