Except as noted, all images copyrighted by and should be attributed to E B Hawley.
I had become many eons ago a traveling literary gnome, inquisitive about places I had and had not visited,
walking the same paths of peoples from the past, through places once grand and still grand,
photographing images that now show me the places about which I still dream . . .

Friday, April 15, 2011

Poetry with Matthew: After Joanna Solfrian

      I feel pleased to say that I've studied poetry for some time now with Matthew. Every week we delve into the work of a particular poet. This week we studied Joanna Solfrian. Matthew commented about Solfrian's poem 'First Snowstorm, 2003,' "It's a slow poem, a quiet poem. I guess, all poems about snow try to be slow and quiet. Snow has that effect. Wouldn't it be interesting to write a poem about snow that was loud and fast?" The effect of his words made an image in mind of thunderbolts through falling, wind-blown snow, a response to semantics that I often find fascinating. But this week's exercise has more to do with having three or more abstractions to weave in one poem, which Solfrian does effectively in "First Snowstorm" as she touches upon a church, a snow, a belly-ache, childhood, and death. I chose the appearance of a gnome at my doorstep the same day I returned home with three rose plants. My first observation during the exercise came quickly, and now helps me to articulate that a work alluding to, or weaving together several things adds depth to a poem or a story. Note: I have not heard yet about the golf gnome. I left her on Ann's doorstep, and that is the last I saw or heard about her.


First Gnome  

At Garden Club last month I learned
Plant the rose bushes on Good Friday  
and I with the brown thumb wait
the upright thorny green stalks  
with a scant few leaves sit by the window
waiting with me for Good Friday  

I walk outside my front door
to get my mail and see a gnome  
standing on my front porch
looking up at me. I blink and ask

Are you here to live among my roses?  
but looking closely at him --
rather, her, I see she wears a skirt  
despite her beard, and a necklace
from which dangles flamingos
and in her hands she holds a golf ball. 

To confirm her gender she calls
herself Juliette, and she hands me a note 
Please take on this mission. Please
take on this mission. Take me to a
golfer's home and leave me on her porch.   

Will you return by Good Friday?
but I thought better about asking her
to live among my pink hybrid roses
her skirt being tangerine, her gnome hat red --
What would Garden Club think about that?  


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Let Lovely Turn of Phrase Begin

JMHawley Gave Me a Kiss to Build a Dream On

Listen, will you? I think that . . . literature, poetry, music and love make the world go round . . . while mathematics explains things; I fill my life with them, then go walking in snowy woods.
Let us go then, you and I
like two etherized patients floating
through life, together feeling prufrockian.
DDB Jr. makes my world go 'round; during his absence, Pachelbel fills it up.
One summer I sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, then through the Gulf of Finland to reach Saint Petersburg; I pursued Joseph Brodsky in its alley ways. I dream of making that two summers.
I read “Biking to Electra;” found my way in a Jaguar car, and glanced at the flashing steel grasshoppers at sunset. I’ll follow K.O.P.’s footsteps after he followed N.Scott Momaday’s; find warmth and inspiration on a rainy mountain.
Throw chinese coins for the I Ching.
Save the whales, the spotted owl, the woman in toil.
Cast a fly for trout; my memories of fly fishing under the sunny blue Colorado sky remain; I yearn to build more . . . with more trophy Browns.
Listen for the swan’s calls on the Baltic Sea. Feel KKII's joy, his arms spread wide in Yazilikaya.
Good night, Jimmy Durante, where ever you are.