Thursday, May 14, 2009

It's Not Simple





"I've made her a large card with the numbers nine and five created out of Werther's butterscotch candies. It's what my mother loves and the only gift she wants for her birthday."

I remember reading about someone’s 87-year-old Aunt who enjoyed “chain-sucking one Werther's butterscotch candy after another.”

"We had " she added, "a wonderful relationship, but the mother I remember disappeared a while back."

The thought gnaws at my memories. Do we always parse a person's life? Do we parse our own life?

Some segmenting can't be avoided—before, after, during. We recall events that connect to particular time periods, to certain people.

Fifth grade:

Bernie, the class clown, whose antics made Miss Kissel laugh even when she wanted to keep a straight face.

This is the same Miss Kissel Bernie saw on the school roof kissing a married teacher—or so he said.


Am I not the aggregate of all my years?

A number of years ago I joined a poetry group at a local library. One member of the group, Norman, was an assistant editor of a poetry journal. His poem had been accepted for publication in the Atlantic Monthly a month before his car and another car met at an intersection. The accident left him a quadriplegic.

I never knew Norman before the accident, but I knew him at our meetings. I knew how his words resonated on the page. I knew how long it took him to write me a note upon the publication of a chapbook of my poems. It's a letter I treasure--because of the sentiments, the words.

One of Kirk's poems is about how his father didn't parse his life.

Father Again

All the men at the bar say, “What a damn shame.”
and you see your son lying totally paralyzed
except for his wit, his jokes about “retiring”
at nineteen, being “pensioned off” and “damn if
there isn’t much truth in that. How can it be
that your broken son seems stronger than all
the other sons you ever imagined? No more
bar room. No son of yours will be “a damn shame.”

from Some Poems, My friends by Norman Andrew Kirk


"One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time."--Andre Gide

I think the passage of time is similar to the discovery of new lands. When my father retired from the New York City Department of Education he left a lifetime of teaching and mentoring. "Now, " he said, "I have time to study history." And he did—another land—one he returned to after a hiatus of years.

It’s not simple? Is it?

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I found your entry mentioning Norman Andrew Kirk searching on his name. Norman and his wife Carolina were friends of mine too at about the same time; I illustrated and bound his book, SOME POEMS MY FRIENDS IN 1981, working with a small-press publisher who then had his presses in Sullivan Sq. Norman and I worked together to create Arts Wayland, which I founded in 1980. A few years after Carolina's death Norman remarried and we lost touch. I still have some of my half of the edition, and display the original illustrations at our open studios: Saxonville Studios, in Framingham, MA. If you are in the Boston area, please visit one of them and say hello--I am curious to know if you are a friend from the 80's.
- Colene

June 27, 2009  
Blogger Linda said...

Colene—
The world is small. I belonged to the Wayland Poetry group for several years and once went to a dinner at Norman and Caroline's house. the editor of Bitterroot Magazine was there and I remember him singing. I believe that Norman was an assistant editor of the journal.

July 04, 2009  
Blogger Linda said...

Just an aside: the editor of Bitterroot was Menke Katz. His magazine published Norman's book Panda Zoo in 1983.

July 04, 2009  

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