Greg Zeck Poetry

How to get going when the going gets tough

Let’s face it. Some days the poetic well is pretty dry. Try as you might, the quill just don’t dip the ink.

I’ve been working lately on an elegy, for example, a remembrance of a friend, who, like the rest of the mortal tribe, has moved offstage after his few lines. It’s been several years since his disappearance, however, and my thoughts and images are not as fresh as they might once have been.

This friend, Tom, committed suicide. He went not up garret, as poets do, but down basement, alas, in a house he had just bought near Little Rock, and opened canisters of nitrogen and propane gas. Soon the job was accomplished, and Tom’s psyche and soma were at peace.

Not too long afterward, some of his hiking friends gathered for a little memorial in the woods, each of us taking a turn to express what we felt at the moment. I recited an elegy I’d just composed, full of sentiment and perhaps sentimentality. We were all tear-struck, and perhaps fear-struck too, as if such an event might somehow descend on us too. Imagine that.

Tom Briggs
A memorial in the woods

This is the place we can say what we
did not say when you lived among us.
That we considered you a friend.
That we suffered when you suffered.
That we smiled when you smiled,
which you did frequently, and had our
own debts and our own need for forgiveness.

How could we forget the time
at Little Sugar Creek when you got
drunk, drunker than the rest of us,
and sailing a rope over water,
suspended momentarily, a boy
forever, never planning to die,
crashed on the rocks of the far side.

Now this is the place we put an arm
around your shoulder, kiss your cheek,
give you the hug you might have missed
in life that says that nothing, really, can be
that bad, our friend, neither crushed knee,
nor crushing debt, nor exploded hopes —
there need be no such things — because
this is the place, finally, just this zone,
apart and tearful, where no one is alone.

Years later, I find myself composing, bit by bit, a book of elegies about people famous, infamous, or obscure. In this context, this poem might not carry the weight it needs in order to stand among my better efforts or attract the audience I would like. So it’s time to revise.

I delight in revising, in seeing again the things I have seen only imperfectly. But sometimes it’s tough to see much of anything clearly and sharply. Times, perhaps, when you wake up and aren’t awake. The coffee hasn’t yet snapped you out of sleep. And you sit in front of your tablet or computer wondering now what, what the devil should I do or say?

No photo description available. — Tom with one of his ferrets on a hike at Devil’s Den State Park.

The first order of business, I think, as I might advise beginning poets, or open mic poets who have so much to say and are looking for a way to say it, is to replace some of the abstract or general ideas with images literal or metaphoric. In my case, I search through some Facebook pages that Tom kept and that friends commented on — and come up with a raftload of images:

- He loved to watch the Perseid showers.
- He was a “living alchemist.”
- He was fond of making chemical explosions, e.g., he and a friend demolished an old metal barrel via flashpowder explosions, melting a cast iron skillet in the bargain.
- Tom kept a pet ferret or two, little beasts he would bring hiking with him and insert into cracks in the rocks.
- Tom had just recently bought a small brick ranch house near Little Rock, the place where he asphyxiated himself.

So where do these images come in? I’m not suggesting we cram everything we find into what we already have in hand. But certainly in such recollections, and in other hints that the environment throws at us, we can find a lot more that’s interesting, immediate, and to the point.

Let me show a bit of how I have revised this poem in progress, a form that is still finding itself through seeing and re-seeing, vision and revision. The opening stanza forsakes the memorial ceremony in the woods and goes elsewhere, something like this:

According to one witness, children
and animals adored him. Other
survivors attest to his annoying
alchemistry, tossing firecrackers
into campfires, blasting eardrums
with flashpowder. When he offed
himself, departing this world a bit
ahead of us, he left his champagne
ferret behind, the beast he’d insert
into sandstone fissures at Devil’s
Den till it came back again from
the Pennsylvanian and stuck its
pink nose once more into sunlight.

Where do writers’ voices go?

Last week I dropped in at Fayetteville’s only remaining independent bookstore for new books, Pearl’s, for a biweekly Writers Night I had not previously attended. Coming in new and cold is always a challenge. I had no idea what the meeting would be like, or who would show up, but found out soon enough in a rambling hour and a half.

Must’ve been hoping the Night would resemble the old monthly open-mic night at a previous indie bookstore, Nightbird, which started out big, dwindled, and finally crashed. The bookstore space dwindled, that is, and out went the cafe; a brewery moved in next store and thrived; the bookstore owner herself, may she rest in peace, died of cancer.

The open mic night at Nightbird, run by Ozark Poets and Writers, had been semi-curated: one main speaker was scheduled ahead of time, that is, and then on the night of the reading anyone could sign up for five minutes and try his or her luck with the listeners. As I recall, it was a lotta fun. I put in my two cents’ or five minutes’ worth several times, and we all got to hear some rambunctious verse.

When Pearl’s opened, about a half mile away, it attracted a good selection of local book readers and set up events, like Writers Night, for after hours. Necessarily, it could be, the focus from the start was more on commercial or pop genres than literary stuff. Pearl’s had to sell to stay alive, after all, in this not book-hungry day and age.

I don’t think the Pearl’s Writers Night is for me. There were about 15 people there, including me and Gerry Sloan, a poet friend and retired music professor; guests kept trailing in and eventually filled and overfilled the big table at the far end of the room.

Most were scifi and fantasy writers, or said they were. No one read anything. Instead, it was a free floating bull session facilitated by a gal who works at the bookstore.

Some intelligent and funny people, but I’m not interested in scifi or other pop genres nor, at this stage of the adventure, in helping newbie writers.

Better to stick with, and fortify, seems to me, existing poetry groups or those waiting to be born in whatever form.

Don’t you too want to take a chance with an open mic? To test out your ideas, images & voice? You may not have a ghost of a chance unless you put your name in the hat. Come on. We’ll call you up a bit later in the evening. Meanwhile, buy a soda or a beer from the eager to please store owners.

Till deaf do us part

William Shakespeare (1564–1616), the greatest writer in the English language.

I’ve been married more than 50 years. And to the same woman. Which puts both her and me in a fairly rare category.

Jennifer’s father, a part-time evangelical minister, performed the wedding ceremony, in fact, at their house, which sits on Lake Minnetonka, in the western Minneapolis suburbs. It’s a pretty poshy place now, but way back when Max bought it on the cheap, about $15,000 and a used travel trailer. It had been a lodge in the 1930s and ’40s, and in fact the family called it “the lodge.” We were married in a big hall, with a picture window looking out over the lake.

As I recall, Max had us recite the standard marriage vows — no dithering, no quibbling, but “love and honor” if not, at his daughter’s insistence, “obey.” That would be taking it too far back into the patriarchal past. So it was “love and honor” we both vowed “till death do us part.”

Over the years, like most married couples, we have had ample occasion to question our union. There have been the usual frictions over love and money and the usual divergence of interests and hobbies. Jen is a homebody, a wonderful cook and entertainer, and not much interested in athletic or corporeal exercises. I’ve learned to be more outgoing, to lead hikes and bike rides, to socialize easily even with strangers.

But one of the things that really has challenged our marriage is that I’ve become, since my 50s, increasingly hard of hearing. Have had to ask for Jen, and others of course, to repeat what they said, sometimes several times. And this is exasperating for all concerned.

It occurred to me this morning, somehow (who knows how these poetic or lunatic associations occur), that our vows might just as easily have been “till deaf do us part.”

Well, I’ve been wearing hearing aids the last 15 years. If I am wearing them, I can hear pretty well. And heed pretty well what’s being asked or said.

15 Interesting Facts About Shakespeare It’s true that Jen’s paternal grandfather, Walt, was also quite hard of hearing. In his day, back in the 1970s, when Jen and I were married, he would solve the problem of his wife’s considerable shrewishness by simply winking at others in the room and turning his hearing aids way down or off.

That’s one way to tame the shrew, yes? Or get around her? Or around yourself and your limitations.

Hamlet's to be or not to be speech — Shakespeare’s first folio, dated 1623, seven years after his death, of Hamlet’s to be or not to be soliloquy.

Jen and I are still together, almost 54 years post-wedding, and working even now on the deaf- and-death parting business. We’ve had occasion, recently, in our golden (crumbling) years to approach more nearly the mystery of death, what Henry James called “that distinguished [extinguishing?] thing.” There’ve been bouts of illness, that is, that remind us, pretty sharply, of “The undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveler returns,” as Hamlet says).

What we say, in response, in defiance even, when possible, is that life continues to be good, and love, until deafness and death do us part.

Taking shape

Following up and for now concluding the exercise of the last two posts, let me show, and also tell a bit, about what happened to the early versions of the poem on Wallace Stevens.

The nonce stanzaic forms, or no-forms, that appeared above struck me as being in need of shaping. The first stanza went, remember, like this:

Yet what he said who knew? He was poet,
after all, not executive, not poohbah
of the boardroom. He wrote,
he did not underwrite. He took,
he did not undertake. He was
focused, not schizwit.

Apollo Greek God — The Belvedere Apollo, originally in the Belvedere Gallery of the Vatican Museum in Rome.

And the second stanza drizzled down in very skinny lines to what I’d wanted to be a resounding ending.

Better, I thought, to achieve some sort of equity, or equal apportioning, of lines among the stanzas. And to slow down the motion — and leave more room for rest and contemplation, even in going, on the reader’s part. So I divided the content into more or less equal-length stanzas, and eliminated a few of the promising but misleading ideas of the original (the “shizwit,” for example).

And came up, for now, with this:

Hartford

Yet what he said who
knew in the insurance
company? He was poet,
apart, not executive
of the boardroom,
sitting godlike, throwing
thunderbolts, decreeing

policy: simply legally
enforce it. He would write
not underwrite, take
not undertake, the letter
of the law, and when he left
the office for his home,

walking back the three
miles he had trod that
very morning, the letters
forming in glory, in words
that effloresced, he wore
them like the casque
of the sungod that he was.

So we have three stanzas, in order: seven lines, six lines, seven lines. A nice symmetry, easier on the eye, the tongue, the ear. And more compact in the pursuit of theme. Though Stevens had a job in business, and was in fact an executive of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity company, he exercised his power not in Jovian thunderbolts but Apollonian splendor.

Which is certainly one way to make your mark.

More sweat, no sweat

Sweating it out — Even sweat is no sweat when work is play. Image: Jeff Lipsky.

To continue sweating over what may be the beginning of a poem, a new poem, maybe an ekphrastic poem (done in imitation of another objet d’art).

To continue sweating, and yet swearing it’s no sweat, it’s fun. At least that’s how I find playing with language, and playing is the essence of the game. It’s form more than content, especially at the start, and form creates the content that is.

“I gotta use words when I talk to you,” said T. S. Eliot, another crucial modernist. But what words, what words we talking here?

Our own, we would hope, even when interfused with those of the poet we are imitating. For if imitation is flattery it also may mean flattening, drowning in another’s voice.

So taking up, carefully, consciously, playfully, where we left off:

Yet what he said who knew? He was poet,
after all, not executive, not poohbah
of the boardroom. He wrote,
he did not underwrite. He took,
he did not undertake. He was
focused, not schizwit.

This is pretty tight but, sure, frankly imitative of Stevens: especially poohbah and schizwit. If this is a tribute, an ekphrasis, that’s one thing. But it if means to launch out, rocket like, from the gantry of another’s voice, that may be something else altogether. Will these words, launched, in other words, find their own orbit?

To this end, let’s play around with what we have, taking out the Stevensian effects:

Yet what he said who knew?
He was poet, after all, not
executive. He would not
sit godlike at the head,
executing policy,
throwing thunderbolts,
but enforce it. He would
write, not underwrite.
Take, not undertake,
the letter of the law,
and when he left
the office for his
home, walking
back the three
miles he had
trod that
morning,
the letters
formed in
glory, in
full words,
and he wore
them like the
helmet of the sun
god that
he was.

Well, good gods, I have gotten ahead of myself here, you see. Forgotten that I was to shape the sestet into another sestet. Got wordy, perhaps, adding ideas but not yet shaping them.

Proof if anything that I may be in the early stages of development. But let that be as it may. I can always go back, recursively, you see, and press and mold these words into six-line stanzas if that’s that they seem to want or warrant.

But now merely letting some ideas play, along with the nascent shapes and sounds of the words. Here it’s the idea that Stevens didn’t want to be too much a businessman or lawyer, though he was that gladly during the workday. From what I surmise in the Brazeau book (see yesterday’s post), he would sometimes fiddle around with words in the office, even have his secretary type up a few lines, and then he’d stash ’em in the lower right-hand drawer of his desk.

But as I’m fooling around here I’m operating under poetic license, with no oath of fidelity to the letter of the law or the law itself.

The office was one realm for Stevens, an earthly realm. The home, and the walk home, were another, a celestial realm, a place of resting from work and wrestling with the angel of the word, a place of contemplation (aside too from the wife, with whom Stevens did not share a bed or bedroom for many years, for poetry was his muse, his mistress, you see).

As a matter of course, to make the process clearer, I take early versions of a poem, early drafts, and print them up as I go along. Let them rest and breathe on the desk a day or two. Fiddle with them with my pencil, crossing out certain words or phrases, asking questions. And then waiting for the next, I hope clearer, vision of the whole when I come back the next day and have at it.

So let’s see what will happen tomorrow, shall we? Or what already has?

I Am the Child of Earth and Starry Heaven

In Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past, a gift from a friend who like me will soon enough pass, Lewis Hyde cites a spooky passage from an Orphic poem (“The Hymn of Orpheus”) of the 4th Century BC. It’s not the earth that we need fear forgetting, but the heavens themselves and the gods, the poem suggests.

In the halls of Hades you will find on the right, by a ghostly cypress tree, a spring where the dead souls descending wash away their lives. Do not even draw close to this spring for it offers [only] the Waters of Forgetfulness.

Farther on you will find the pool of Memory. Over this stand guardians. They will ask with keen mind what is your quest in the gloom of deadly Hades. Tell them the whole truth straight out. Say: “I am the child of Earth and starry Heaven, but of Heaven is my true lineage. I am parched with thirst and perishing: give me quickly chill water flowing from the pool of Memory.”

Assuredly the kings of the underworld take pity on you, and will give you water from the spring; then you, when you have drunk, traverse the holy path which other initiates and bacchants tread in glory. After that you will rule among the other heroes.

Orphiká. I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven II - YouTube — The Greek text is set to music in this video.

How to forget that which doesn’t really matter, our life on Earth? And remember that which does, our life before our Earthly life?

Is this a little Platonic for you, or neo-Platonic?

It’s not the verbal spring from which we drink every day, for sure. It’s a paradox: we must forget in order to remember, die in order to live.

A little too Christian or salvific?

How about, more simply, poetic? To be a poet, or maker, we must cast aside that which doesn’t matter, which is matter itself, paradoxically, and all that matter begets. Mother, we might cry, like the dying old man in Chaucer, let me in! And in this reverse birth seize that which does matter, the starry Heavens, the starry night, and day of making things anew.

Glioblastoma

See the source image — Last stages of glioblastoma. Image from MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Almost six years ago my older brother Gerry died of glioblastoma, a cancerous tumor of the brain. Today I had lunch at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art with an old friend, Bob, though not as old as I am (he’s a mere 64), who recently was diagnosed with the same malady. As he says on social media, “I’ve now started a non-drug, electrical field treatment called Optune which offers the possibility of extending my life for several more years.” This treatment consists of an electronic device inserted in a pack hanging at his side, from which wires go up through the shaved and gauzed head into the brain, where they are used to “disrupt cancer cell division.”

Good luck with that, Bob. The Optune and the continuing chemotherapy.

Optune has been around since 2011, he told me, though few doctors even now apparently know about it. It was certainly not something offered to my brother in 2016 when his tumor was discovered and a craniotomy performed. (Gerry died within four months of the diagnosis.)

Northwest Arkansas, says my friend, is not somewhere where you want to get a brain tumor. (Or anywhere else, I would think.) According to him, his NWA doctor has been ignorant and feckless, and it’s only through the intervention of a neurosurgeon based in Little Rock that he came to know of the Optune treatment and the (limited) hope if offers him. (According to the Optune company, “Nearly half of people using Optune + chemotherapy were alive at 2 years compared with 31% of people on chemotherapy* alone,” while another source suggests that the malady is “Very rare (Fewer than 20,000 cases per year in US)” (data from Focus Medica cited on Bing search).

Not encouraging data, all in all, I would think, though Optune, as in opportunity, may temporarily help preserve unity of body and mind, or prevent separation, before the final decision is handed down by the fates. So where would you put brain cancer, friends, in the list of the top 100 maladies by which you might choose to die? Up there at the top? Down near the bottom, just above drowning and fire and torture in an Iranian or Russian prison?

This unhappy malady, at any rate, leads us to wonder what it is and where it comes from as well as the course it takes. According to a quick look, I see that the exact cause is not now known, though it appears to be associated with a gene that also causes early childhood cancers.

And according to the Moffitt Cancer Center it may spring from

- Inherited DNA defects
- Cumulative effects of exposure to chemicals and other carcinogens
- High-dose exposure to ionizing radiation

My friend Bob told me his great grandfather died of a cranial malady not known or appreciated at the time, which may well have been glioblastoma. Not sure about any genetic factors in my own family.

Do chemicals and carcinogens include marijuana? My brother indulged lustily and often. But I may be off the mark here.

And as for ionizing radiation (say what?), see the Biology Dictionary, which suggests that occupational factors are just one source.

All definitions and etiologies, however, are technical and don’t help shield us from the effects of cancer. Nor reconcile us to them. For that we might need philosophy or poetry. Some way of continuing to be in the world without being overwhelmed by horror and hopelessness.

Any ideas? Any of us might be struck, at any time, by such dread disease, after all, or another form or putting our existence into sudden question.