poetry week, day 2

I was going to post something else, but I was reading the NY Times poetry comments again and found a new favorite. This is by Rudyard Kipling, who (factoid!) lived for a while in none other than... Brattleboro, Vermont. His house is just down the road from where I work. He wrote Jungle Book here, and also built the first tennis court in Vermont and supposedly introduced skiing to the state. You can rent out the house for a few nights (it's expensive but sleeps something like 17 people). I'm not kidding.

"If"

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

happy poetry morning!

I'm generally nothing but annoyed by the endless opportunities for readers/listeners/viewers to express our opinions of whatever the sound bite of the day may be - I don't watch the news to get Mike from Omaha's opinion on things, and I don't really think everything from NBA Finals (go Celtics!) MVP to President of the Unites States should be treated like an American Idol-esque popularity contest in which the people with the twitchiest text-messaging thumbs get the illusion of majority rule.

But occassionally what I might (on a good day) call collaborative or open-source journalism is actually delightful. Such is today's call in the NY Times for readers' favorite poems, pursuant to a wonderful story about a team of young poets from the Santa Fe Indian School competing at the International Youth Poetry Slam Festival in Washington D.C.

Have you ever gone to a poetry slam? Yeah, they vary in quality and you might hear a poem that is laughably lousy (or squirmingly inappropriate). But a good slam poet will make you laugh, cry, shiver and gasp for breath, all in a few stanzas. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the semifinals (not even the finals!) of the National Poetry Slam Championships in Minneapolis a few years ago, and honest to God I walked out of that building with my faith in the magical possibilities of humanity restored.

And that's not a bad way to spend a few hours.

(For an excellent introduction to slam poetry, watch this.)

So I started my workday today by reading some favorite poems of people all over the world, and commenting on a few of my own. In case you're curious, below are a couple of my favorites. And now that I'm on this kick I just want to keep sharing poems. I think I'm declaring the first official Poetry Week on Monkeyhippy's Adventures (OK, so some of my adventures are fairly low-key). Watch for more poems. This particular week might not end up being exactly seven days long, we'll see... And if you have a favorite, post it or at least the title in the comments, please!

Como Tu (Like You) by Roque Dalton [click for translation and more info about Dalton]
Yo, como tu,
amo el amor, la vida,
el dulce encanto de las cosas,
el paisaje celeste de los dias de enero.

Tambien mi sangre bulle
y rio por los ojos
que han conocido el brote de las lagrimas.

Creo que el mundo es bello,
que la poesia es como el pan,
de todos.

Y que mis venas no terminan en mi
sino en la sangre unanime de las que luchan por la vida,
el amor, las cosas, el paisaje y el pan,
la poesia de todos

To Be Of Use by Marge Piercy [and, truly, anything by Marge Piercy]*
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

*Particularly "Report of the Fourteenth Subcommittee on Convening a Discussion Group"

it's about time

I was just wondering aloud yesterday with some friends/future housemates why no one is talking about the coming disaster that is the ever-climbing price of heating oil. Turns out a few people are talking about it, notably my governor. Go Vermont!

It may not be an issue for people in other parts of the country, but most New Englanders still heat their houses with oil. The title of this story is: We Are Completely Screwed.

Me? I have a good job, so while I'm not thrilled at the thought of how much of my money is going to go toward heating my (new and otherwise exciting!) house next winter, I will be able to pay for it without real hardship.

But a lot of people around here? The ones who have no savings, no health insurance, and are spending all their earnings just to keep the gas tank full enough to get to work and back? They simply won't be able to turn on their heat when it gets cold. And if it's anything like last winter, the nastiest and snowiest in decades, it is going to get really cold.

I'm serious: disaster in the making. It may be slow and quiet, but that doesn't make it any less scary.

why i love risk management in study abroad

Hazard: Bureaucracy
Management Strategies: Keeping papers up to date, making sure students have passports with them at all times.

Hazard: Street Cattle: cows, water buffalo
Management Strategies: Educate students not to get chummy with sacred cows

growing up

As I write this in sweltering (believe it or not) southern Vermont, almost everyone I went to college with (or so it feels) is partying in Minnesota at our five-year college reunion. I didn't know that people actually go to college reunions, at least not until there are several decades between you and the graduation dais, and hadn't imagined going to mine until suddenly it seemed that everyone and their uncle was going to descend upon St. Paul, MN this weekend to relive our glory days.

I'm not there for several reasons, (lack of) money and vacation time being at the top of the list. Also up there is the feeling I got when I envisioned myself there trying to catch up with about 100 people while spending actual quality time with at least 10 people. In two days, three if I stretched the fantasy. That sounded half fun and half awful, so I stayed home.

But the half fun part would have been really fun. I'm not going to say wistfully that college was the best four years of my life. But those were four damn good years. I laugh to think how much I've changed and how much I haven't. And to look around at my friends and where we've been and ended up in the last five years, some more mildly predictable than others (with me probably on the rather unpredicted end, I'm guessing, especially when you consider that I searched out my current job because I wanted to live here, not the other way around). And it would probably be great fun to drink beer and listen to all the stories from the people I haven't kept up with, or only know through Facebook these days.

So, y'all at reunion, I hope you've had a blast, and I hope you are taking notes, because I'm going to ask. Except I really don't want to know who is reliving college by hooking up with who. Thank you.