Thoreau and...Poetry?

 

The redbud is just starting to bloom

April is National Poetry Month in this country. I love poetry. I have always loved poetry. Some of my earliest memories are my beloved Grandma Skatzes telling me nursery rhymes, and what are nursery rhymes if not poetry? And by hook or by crook, or sheer luck perhaps, I never had my love of poetry extinguished by a misguided teacher determined to make me flay and gut every poem they could get theirs hands on.

So even with decades of poetry in me, was I ever more than vaguely aware of Henry David Thoreau as a poet? Let alone consider him a poet rather than a naturalist and essayist?

In a word, no. In fact, I would think of Thoreau as a surveyor or pencil maker before I thought of him as much more than an amateur poet at best.

The Academy of American Poets, as part of National Poetry Month, highlighted Thoreau as a poet in one of their Poem-a-Day emails. Seriously? If you dig deeper into the Academy's website and look at his bio, the Academy itself notes that although Henry "thought of himself primarily as a poet during his early years, he was later discouraged in this pursuit and gradually came to feel that poetry was too confining." 

The reality is buried in the phrase "discouraged in this pursuit." His poetry was criticized, usually in correspondence and not in print, by, among others, Margaret Fuller during her editorship of The Dial. Henry's mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, also discouraged him from pursuing poetry, realizing early on that Henry's intellectual strength did not come out in his poems. 

So imagine my laughter earlier this month when my longtime friend Ken presented me with a birthday poem he asked ChatGPT  to write in Henry's style. 

It produced this: 

Oh joyous day, it's your birth,
A time to celebrate your worth,
Amidst the bustle and the noise,
I pause and feel a deep rejoice.

The world spins round and round each day,
But today it's your time to play,
To take a breath and bask in light,
To revel in this moment bright.

For you, my friend, I wish the best,
May life be filled with love and zest,
May all your dreams come true and more,
And blessings rain down, rich and pure.

So here's to you, on this special day,
May happiness be yours in every way,
May you grow wiser with each year,
And find joy in all that's dear.

Happy birthday, dear one, may you shine,
Like the sun that warms this heart of mine,
May you thrive and bloom like a flower,
And find peace in every hour.

Ken noted that the poem didn't seem "especially Thoreauvian" to him, but thought that maybe the Chatbot drew from other works.

I did not hesitate to respond: "Thoreau did write poetry. He was a mediocre poet even by the standards of the mid-1800s. The ChatGPT may have topped him. Thoreau certainly would not have been that exuberant, although it did capture his love of nature. It reminds me of Twain's remark to his wife when she repeated his profanity back to him: 'You got the words right but you don't know the tune.'"

Compare that one to a poem that Henry wrote:

I was made erect and lone,

And within me is the bone;

Still my vision will be clear,

Still my life will not be drear,

To the center all is near.

Where I sit there is my throne.

If age choose to sit apart,

If age choose, give me the start,

Take the sap and leave the heart.

You be the judge. 

Revisiting Walden

I finished my reread of Walden last night. As I noted back in March when I started it, I read it in between the flood of library books with due dates (15 of them to be exact; yeah, I'm bragging). I'm not sure Henry would have approved my setting aside one book (his or any other) to take on the others, but it is what it is.

I found an observation in the closing chapter of Walden that made me smile. Henry's experiment of living at Walden Pond lasted from July 1845 to September 1847. Walden was published in 1854. So he was smack in the middle of the nineteenth century. On that topic, he wrote that he preferred "not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by."

Restless. Nervous. Bustling. Trivial. We are six years shy of the 175th anniversary of the publication and Henry's words still ring true. He saw the railroad change his community and the Industrial Revolution change the nation in his day. What would Henry make of our day? Of climate change? Or automobiles and airplanes? Or (gulp) of social media? (I admit it: writing that last question made me burst out laughing, thinking of Henry on social media.)

On a personal note, Henry placed an "a" with a hyphen in front of several words: "a-fishing," "a-berrying." Blogger friend Kim quipped that she would be a-weeding this summer. I liked that and have adopted that phrase for my upcoming gardening season: "Time is but a garden I go a-weeding in." Henry had a star-pebbled sky, my garden will hold a weed-pebbled bed. I will be grateful if I can immerse myself and let go of time when I am a-weeding.

I wrote this post out longhand last evening, sitting on our front porch. The porch faces west; the sun was almost below our across-the-street neighbor's garage roof, so there was a bit of a glare yet as I wrote. We have had an erratic (at times) early spring—most of the daffodils are bloomed out, the buds on the dogwood tree are just opening. Birds were calling as the day wound down. I have seen the first bees of the season: both honey and bumble. And earlier, while eating lunch before open windows, I heard the spring peepers for the first time. I keep a very sporadic journal in which I make notes about the seasons, the sky, and such. After noting hearing the peepers, I looked back to last year to see if I had made any comment. Yes, I had; last year I first heard the peepers on April 12 as well. 

And for that, Henry might have given me an approving nod.

Commonplace Quote: The Heart and the Tongue

 

Photo by Unseen Studio on Unsplash

"The truth is that what the heart hungers for, the tongue talks of."                             Charles J. Finger

That quote is from the 1925 Newbery Award book, Tales From Silver Lands.  It captured my attention enough when I read it in 2011, the year I read all the Newbery Award books to date, that I copied it into my commonplace book.

A decade plus later, I am not as drawn to it and not as certain I agree with it anymore.

In 2023, I would say that what the heart hungers for, the fingers talk of. I firmly believe, now that I have been writing steadily and almost daily for three months, that my heart comes out through my fingers penning their way across a page. I know full well there are things in our hearts that our tongues cannot talk of, past disappointments and missteps key among them.

A close friend recently had a restless night during which thoughts came to mind unbidden. One was "my life is becoming a collection of regrets I'm finding hard to overlook." I understood that immediately. I, too, have my own list of regrets—none of them, I hope, so heavy and burdensome that I will drag them around with me forever—but I know they are there.

And sometimes, in the quiet of the night, or even while taking a walk, random ones will rise up. And my mind starts churning: I shoulda, woulda, coulda...you finish the sentence.

Regrets are not unlike bad debts from when I practiced law. At some point, I had to accept the bill would never be paid and close the account. (This was also the excellent analogy for forgiving someone, a technique my brilliant therapist Doug Kramer taught me many years ago.)

So let me hold thoughts in my heart. My tongue does not need to tell them.

But my pen might. And does. And will.

One Down, Three to Go

 

As I have been doing for the last several years, I am again tracking our groceries: food and common household items (dish soap, toilet paper, for example). The First Quarter results are in.

For the first three months of 2023, we spent $532.57 on food and household items, for a monthly average of $177.35. $30.25 was spent on household items: less than 1% of the overall expenses. The rest was spent on food. (Note: "food" means items we buy at a store and eat at home; it does not count "eating out," which in our case we rarely did before the pandemic and now limit to only takeout on very rare occasions.) 

We finished 2022 averaging $240.62 a month on that front. As I noted when I totaled up that year, there was the, ahem, surprising discovery about how much food I had squirreled away in the freezer, especially the refrigerator's freezer. I had vowed to concentrate more on eating down what I had put away, and our January grocery bill reflected that: of the $73.88 spent, $66.98 was spent on food. (And I had a $30.00 credit with Kroger, so our out-of-pocket cost for the month was only $43.88.) February held a major stock up at Aldi: that month finished at almost $272.00, of which about $257.00 was food. 

And March? March came in at almost $187.00, all but $8.30 of which was food. I will note that there were two opportunities we truly had to take advantage of: butter at $2.49 at Aldi (we bought 12 pounds in two separate trips, $29.88 total) and spiral-sliced hams at 99¢/pound at Meijer (two hams: $24.95). If those sales had not taken place and we had not purchased those items, March would have been closer to $157.00.

Last year's hams

Unlike last year, we did NOT purchase and stuff our freezer with six hams, tempting though that was.  Well, let me call myself out: it was more than tempting. With both the butter (still on sale through next Tuesday night) and the hams (sale ends tonight unless Meijer or another store picks it up with Easter coming up), I found myself struggling internally with whether we should buy more "just because." Just because what? Because it's a good sale? (Yes.) Because I think about food insecurity a lot? (A. Lot.) Because...whatever. In the end, we talked it over and I managed to quell my internal qualms and stressors. I can truly look at what we purchased and say "that is enough." And mean it. 

When I examined our 2022 expenditures, I hoped that we could average $200.00 a month in 2023. We hit that mark for the first quarter. 

Onward to the next! 

Commonplace Quote: A Chair

 

Photo by Kelly Miller on Unsplash

"Remembering is a chair that is hard to sit still in."

Sarah Broom, The Yellow House

"A chair that is hard to sit still in."

I have to think about that concept. 

When is it hard to sit still in a chair? 

When you are waiting for something to happen or someone to arrive. That happened to me last week when longtime friends who live far away but were in town for family matters said they would come over "sometime" that afternoon. Indeed they did come over, but for the last 30 minutes or so before their arrival, as the afternoon wore on, I found it impossible to stay seated for more than a few minutes. Instead I kept prowling by the front window to see if they had arrived yet.

Even reading could not hold me.

When else is it hard to sit still in a chair?

When the chair is uncomfortable. Goldilocks, of course, had this issue: too big, too hard, too whatever. I don't mind a hard chair, provided it has a sturdy back (our kitchen chairs, now in their 21st year of service). I have not had too many experiences with a chair that was physically uncomfortable to sit still in. 

So let me go back to the "remembering"  that starts the quote. 

If I am remembering something good, something warm, something satisfying, I can sink into that memory, let it wrap its arms around me like a comfortable, broken-in chair.

The chairs I can see from the couch in our downstairs study - those kitchen chairs, the green chairs in the living room  - those trigger some warm memories. I bought them all when I was moving out of the house my then-spouse and I had bought 12 years earlier with such high hopes. These chairs were my steps in making a new home for myself and my sons. They served us well then, they continued to serve us well when Ben went off to college and Warren joined our home. They are now in their 3rd home since their initial purchase, and I cannot imagine our house without them.

If I am remembering something that hurt me something that did damage - then the chair of remembering is indeed hard to sit still in. No matter how far I have come from that long ago event, it can still sting or worse. At that point, I am all over the place, wriggling on that chair, until I can let the memory go, take a deep breath, and once again sit easily in the chair. 

I saved that quote in late 2019. I would probably save it again, even when I find it easy to sit in that chair of memory. While typing this out this morning, my mind went back to my grandmother Skatzes and the study chairs she sat in - kitchen or living room - and the joy of sitting beside her. 

That is a chair of remembering I could sit still in for a long, long time. 

And Sometimes Where You Start Is Where You Have Already Been

After just writing that I plan on writing some posts using quotes from my commonplace books as prompts, I ran into an omission in my commonplace books of such enormity that I burst out laughing. 

My new-to-me Walden arrived a few weeks ago and I have been reading it slowly, sometimes setting it aside to read a library book (due dates, you know). Last week, I concluded chapter 2, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For."

At the very end of the chapter, beginning the very last paragraph, are lines that have become ones I hold dear in my heart: "Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars."

The cause for my laughter? When I look at my oldest commonplace book, Volume 1, which I filled with a number of quotes from Walden, guess which lines I did not bother to write down back then?

You got it.

I am fairly sure that if I thumb through later volumes, I will find that quote, probably more than once. But then? Nope. 

Going back to my last post and my wondering whether my curated quotes would hold up over time, this is not unrelated. In my early 30s, I read Walden closely  (as opposed to dashing it off as I have done more than once) and apparently did not find those sentences worth saving.

If I had to guess why, I would say that early-30s-April did not give much thought to time other than the most immediate days and hours. But older (way older) April, who has lived with cancer for so long? Oh, yeah, she is a lot more aware of time.

I have written before in this blog that somewhere along the line, probably post-diagnosis, I stopped thinking of time as linear. Time became far more fluid for me: a lake that I float in. For me, it was realizing that I couldn't control time or, more specifically, I couldn't control how much time I had left. That was where I let go of time, of trying to hold it tight in my closed fist. Don't get me wrong. Yes, there are birthdays and anniversaries and appointments tied to the calendar and I did not toss them out. But I threw time as in "how long?" into the lake years ago. 

Time was but the stream that Thoreau went a-fishing in. And time is but the lake that I go a-floating in.

All That Time

 

Photo by Eric Rothermel on Unsplash

14 years ago tomorrow, I started this blog with a post about the magic of opening doors.

This is my 842nd post. If I play with the math, that means I have averaged 60.14 posts annually. But the average is meaningless. If you look at the Blog Archive in the column to the right, it shows how many posts I wrote in any given year. Best year? 2009, the year I started, where I came in with a mighty 101 posts. Worst year? 2021: a year of still coping with the pandemic, five brutal months of hard school mediations, and my wrapping up my paid professional life. Small wonder I did not write; I am surprised I even managed 8 posts that year.

Through these years, there have been some common themes: the garden, the Symphony, pies, my children, my grandchildren, money, traveling, reading, books, writing, family, cancer, community. There have been births along the ways (those grandchildren!) as well as deaths, including my older brother, my mother, and my Aunt Ginger. 

Time has just kept flowing along.

For the next few weeks (months?), I may be putting up posts using quotes from my commonplace books as the jumping off point for the post. My first book dates back to the later 1980s; I had started one before that in the mid-1970s, but that one got tossed decades ago (before starting the current volumes. Why did I toss it? I have no idea. (For the record, I am now in volume 5.)

I skim through the various volumes (always close at hand in our downstairs study) every four to six weeks, often looking for a reference or a quote I just know is in one of them. I am usually successful. But what I wonder, considering that the books scan some 35+ years of collecting quotes, is whether I would now find some of the quotes of little interest or even invalid for the person I am now. So I will use the quotes as random prompts and see where they take me.

Like any blogger, I have made friends in the blog-o-sphere along the way: thank you for reading my words. There are also personal friends from my pre-blogging life who have been on this since the onset or have joined on: thank you for reading my words. And thank you,dear Warren, for being there all along the way.  

I am grateful.