old work for a new age

In the hopes of making time for this blog again I thought I would give you an old poem of mine I never feel is finished. I've revised it several times over, been told by professors that it is done and by literary magazines taht it doesnt make any sense.
enjoy, criticise, the floor is yours.



The similarities between turtles                                                  Was the old woman
&Tequila-lollipops                                                                    who swallowed a fly
                                                                                                (perhaps she’l die)
a cautionary tale to children not to eat bugs? Stevens read the dictionary, digesting
geniuses of crows for poem. I too should read the white pages to name you better.
My palette was situated with lemon, ocher, cadmium, alizarin, altra-marine and vermilion,
all other colors were illegal. I have kept a promiscuous purple.
She said she could contemplate with Matisse’s “Woman Before and Aquarium” forever, but the doors locked at five. The act akin to brushing fine gold hair ‘til one day you’re bald. An eighty-year-old man told me not to take life too seriously. The mealworm was at the center of the sucker, and I wondered if the nerve to eat it would come once I got there.

MIA

Dear Reader,

I'm sorry for going MIA on many fronts.  As I sit with endless information (and miss information) at my fingertips, I am amazed at how quickly one can become disheartened.  I have asked, because I have been trained to ask "What is the place of poetry in our modern lives?"  This is the question that has set my pen on fire and also burnt me out, singed bits of my personality escaping never to join me again.  Today as I looked for volunteer positions that might give me skills to work in writing I found many blogs worth following which led me here.  Oh here, where ever I am, somehow forgetting the endless resources left to me. 

Dear Chicago,

I am sorry I have been ignoring you, keeping to the frugal corners of my apartment.  I will do better dear to follow you in your loud parade in my pursuit of poetry.  The blogs, the projects, the journals of others including: The Poetry Foundation, Neighborhood Writing alliance and their Journal of Ordinary Thought, Logan Square Literary Review and so many others, all worth inspiring art through art. 

This week’s goal

To attend at least on poetry base event.

Best

-Hadley

IN

Finished the application to become certified as a yoga instructor.

Wish me luck as I "follow my bliss"

"Full Force Galesburg"- The Mountain Goats

It was sprung on me
in that i forgot

That for someone else's spring break I was to road trip to Western Illinois.  Galesburg it a three hour journey from Chicago and well worth every mile (as long as you only plan to stay a day or two). Now that I'm so close to where I did the first four years of higher education I go about once a season and write for hours on end.  The first time I went back it struck me as odd how the body and pen seemed to remember where things had left off.  I believe now that there is a muscle memory for geographies.  In college I wrote short poems, with deeply  confusing images, far too many adjectives on subjects that breed in the realm of ideas.  It's no wonder that I spent those four years wondering why everyone kept asking me to "write more directly".  

 :)

I sent an e-mail to J'lyn last time I was there asking her opinion on this phenomenon.  She agrees that we write consistently in varying states.  I now have to take this into consideration as part of my profession, include gas to Galesburg or airline tickets to Boulder as tax writeoffs.

Sadly, aside from this blog and a few failed poems I have no voice for Chicago.  My body doesn't yet know how to write here. Perhaps it will know on the pier.

Knox Prairie Burn 2007

The Space Between States

Last weekend I took a trip up a narrow staircase in a familiar part of town.  It's amazing how much we don't see on our way through our patterns.  In an echoing wood room (wood floors, wood beams, wood cabinets) I heard Rebecca George over the hum of air vents and toe tappings-

"…and I remember her great strength.  I came across a video of Akilah during the Summer Writing Program encouraging us all to 'keep writing'".  A small twinge of guilt seemed to reverberate from the crowed.  We note as writers how hard it is to continue the daily practice outside of the class room.  So simple, yet at the nine to five it is hard to hold in your center the importance of poetry.

The loss is so fresh I can see her face turning to the large eye with this advice, no recording necessary.

On the day I was told Akilah had passed I couldn’t accept the suggestion that this strong figure had been mortal.  I went immediately to my computer to disprove the text message “Akilah Oliver had passed L…..Ah fuck…. I’ll keep you abreast.”-S.B. Her Facebook page had a string of fair wishes and goodbyes to confirm. Family students hadn’t thought to inquire about molded each comment with words of gratitude.  I began to sob thinking of how months ago we had danced to “I saw Tu Pac at McDonalds” such silly freedom.

At the memorial reading people comment on how she had shaped or challenged their work, they sang, shared audio recordings, cried as they read from her books.  So many things struck me, but I didn’t want to reach for a pen and the mind is an imperfect thing.  One of the event organizers stood and pulled words from the great Bobbie Louise Hawkins.  “Bobbie once leaned to me and said ‘the thing about memorial readings is that people seem to talk more about themselves than who the reading is for.”  This was the second twinge of guilt I felt in our echoing space.  However, as moments of experiences with this activist, poet, friend and teacher were shared they came back as a dialogue even to the self-proclaimed interlopers. People identified their relationships and out poured a volume of missed opportunities.  The side glances and waves that should have been invitations to coffee, the poems that could have used one more edit, it was an offering of love.  The hum escalated to a choirs of what needed to be said before  goodbye.

To a dear teacher and new friend, for myself I must in closing say that I will always sit so everyone can see the poet.  I will remember the paper shadows of heritage and personal lore. I will watch dancers with a loving and critical eye, ask not if it is beautiful but what it says about my society in time. I will miss that I never got to New York to visit like you said I should.

-Always a young poet 

“Educate yourself for the coming conflict.”

-Mary Harris Jones to railroad strikers in Pittsburg

“Mother” Jones Aug 1st 1837-Nov 30th 1930

  I came across “The most dangerous woman in America” when purchasing an album of Ani DiFranco collaborating with Utah Phillips (Fellow Workers). I’ve burned this album for no less than seven people since and made a car full of twenty-year-olds pull over in Mount Olive, off highway 55, to visit the agitator’s place of rest. 

It’s taken seven years since hearing this recording to sit still and read about what else qualified Mary Harris Jones for the title of “Mother Jones”.

Originally from Cork, Ireland Mary’s family had always been entrenched in the fight for equality in the political realm.  Her paternal grandfather was a member of the IRA and eventually hanged by the British Army.  The family moved then with a fifteen-year-old Mary to Taranto where she was educated as a teacher in the Catholic Monasteries.  The life style didn’t suit her and she moved to Chicago to work as a seamstress for the prominent families on Lake Shore Drive. Later she went back to teaching in Memphis where she would meet her husband George Jones.  It was through George and his role as an organizer of the National Union of Iron Molders that Mary learned about the struggle of the unionized man.  Sadly she lost George and their four children (all under the age of 5) to the yellow fever epidemic that hit Tennessee. She stayed nursing as many as she could through the epidemic before moving back to Chicago and opening her second dress shop. She lived above the dress shop until it was leveled in the great Chicago fire of 1871.  The fire killed hundreds and took out four squire miles of Chicago in the two days in burned.

 Mary never had a permanent residency again.  When asked where she lived she is quoted as saying “my address is like my shoes, it travels with me.”

 As a new resident of the Windy City I am a bit star-struck by the accessibility of Jones’ life and work here.  She worked as an organizer for the Knights of Labor (the largest labor organization of the 1880’s) who’s primary focus was to fight for the enforcement of an eight- hour work day (they were also adamant about ending child and convict labor).  When the Knights of Labor became too large and fell in on itself one sect merged with The National Progressive Minor’s Union to create The Union Miner Workers Union.  The Union’s focus was to improve the safety of mines and to give workers influence by providing collective bargaining power. They are still active today taking a stand in issues of public education, universal health care, rights of truck drivers, heath care workers and manufactures.  Mary Harris was present in 1886 when the labor unions in Chicago struck to enforce the eight-hour work day, a concept the state of Illinois had approved and scheduled to reinforce two years prior.  The protest was peaceful until the second day when a brawl broke out and officers killed two strikers.  News of the deaths spread quickly and thousands gathered in Chicago’s Haymarket to rally on behalf of the cause. Again the efforts of the protestors were carried out in a peaceful way with speeches and sit-ins but when police forces began to march in formation though the crowds an anonymous soul through a bomb killing one police officer instantly and seven more in hospitals later.  Several men were charged for the bombing though no real evidence was given.  All were hanged but one who killed himself waiting in prison (for more on the ripple effect of this instance see Lucy Parsons).

In 1897 Marry Harris was referred to as “Mother” Jones for the first time in print.  In response to this new title she began to fib about her age, sport heavy black dresses long out of vogue and refer to the unionized minors as “her boys”.  She was a renowned public speaker known for her colorful language, use of props and ability to involve the audience in her outrage on the soap box through song.  It’s a pity the only known recording of her is her self-proclaimed 100^th birthday.

In her life she led a children’s strike marching a group of youth from Philadelphia to the home of President Theodore Roosevelt in New York.  The president refused to see her when she arrived and she was instructed to write him a formal letter requesting a face to face conversation.  She wrote this letter but never received a response.  The children, many with missing fingers from mining accidents, carried signs calling for education over child labor. She tried to publicize this injustice towards youth and grown men alike, but the coal mine owners shared stock in the prominent papers and blocked her efforts.

In the year of 1913, at the age of 76, Mother Jones was imprisoned twice.  The first time she was put up for the agitation her children’s crusade cause, the second time was in Ludlow Colorado.  As I drove through Ludlow on my way to Texas friends point at the highway sine “Ludlow Massacre Memorial, exit 34”, I wanted to pull over but didn’t.

 The Colorado National Guard attached a tented settlement of coal miners on strike.  The working conditions in the mines of Colorado where the most dangerous in the state and minors had begun to demand that mine owner adhere to the safety laws in place.  With the national average of mine related deaths holding steady at 3.15/1000 Colorado hit 7.05 deaths per 1000 that past year.  The Ludlow Massacre is said to be the most violent and deadly strike in the United states.  The National Guard asphyxiated and burned two women and eleven children burning several at the steak.  When all was said and done nineteen people were dead including police officers.

Mother Jones had been in Colorado for the strike and when she refused to leave they imprisoned her and later had her escorted out of the state.  She was able to smuggle her way back in and after the incident John D. Rockeffeller, Jr. requested an audience with her.  Their conversations lead to a formal examination and betterment of the conditions of the Rockeffeller’s mines.  The struggle was by means over but reform was on its way.

 Mother Jones was involved in numerous other protests and rallies “You don’t need the vote to raise hell” she said, but as I miss my Colorado and appreciate Chicago I will continue to love her in these places and “educate myself for the coming conflict”.

Experiments in Gratitude

4:19pm

Moving through landscapes into new cities and experiences I’ve had many small lives and vast deaths.  Not even a year ago I left my first self-appointed home (Boulder) a city I’d dreamed of living in since the age of 13.  We move because stagnation doesn’t suit our biology and circle back because patterns do.  In this new tall city (Chicago) I remind myself that I have had the perfect moments.

I was introduced to the concept of Wabi-Sabi in Selah Saterstrom’s “Dreaming Language” class in the summer of 2009. It’s filed next to an image of wilting Irises in a saturated corner of my mind. The idea, as it was presented to me, is to appreciate the transient nature of life. All things are predisposed to their own cycles of creation, peek and eventual decomposition.  It’s in this slow erosion of perfection that we can observe beauty.  Through the art of Wabi-Sabi we escalate the asymmetrical, the modest and objects/compositions that pull forward emotions of longing.