ModPo 2013 Assignment #4: Meditation on Mansanitas and The Shared Nature of Language

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Meditation on Mansanitas

rese	Mbles
	All
thi	Nking.
era	Ses the
cl	Arity
clow	N-
b	Irch
	The
bec	Ause
i	S
bra	Mble
bl	Ackberry
correspo	Nds,
i	S
wh	At
sig	Nifies.
	It is
la	Te
	And
querulou	S.
wo	Man,
	And
holdi	Ng
	Small
	At
prese	Nce
l	Ike
sal	T,
isl	And
willow	S,
fro	M
ple	Asure
pumpki	Nseed.
	Say,
h	Ave
bee	N
	I
	The
w	Ay
	She
drea	Med.
	Are
mome	Nts
i	S
th	At
co	Ntinuing.

Instructions:

Visit the link to the "Mesostomatic" here. First, choose a word or phrase to enter into the field marked "Make a mesostic using the spine." Then, insert into the "textual data" field either a URL (web address) for one of the poems we've read in ModPo or the URL of another poem that interests you. Alternately, you may enter the text of a poem in the box marked "Or paste text here." Finally, select any number of mesostics you want to produce, and then hit the button marked "mesostomize." Using the Mesostomatic, you will be "writing through" the poem you selected for your textual data field.

Then, in a short essay of approximately 500 words, describe, explain, closely read and/or "interpret" the results of your mesostic.
Essay:

"Meditation at Lagunitas" by Robert Hass is one of my favorite poems. I can't pinpoint exactly why it is a favorite of mine. I do know know that it has to do with the word "numinous" (a word I just love) and because it has to do with the mysteries of the universal and the particular and how that dilemma has to do with words. 

I chose this poem so I could confront it in a defamiliarized way. The spine text that I used is "manasanitas." Mansanitas (Cebuano term translated as "small apples" in English) or aratiles (the alternative name in Tagalog) is a word that I've always associated with this poem because we don't have any blackberries in the Philippines. As a way of experiencing the poem, I always imagine mansanitas because they have so much to do with my childhood and the experience of picking them in the summer from low-hanging branches. It is my contribution to the experiment. 

The result of the mesos-tamitized poem is fascinating. The "meditation on mansanitas" resembles all thinking and "erases the clarity." What a happy coincidence! The clown-birch is created in the first strophe. It sounds like an organism straight from the dystopia of the Hunger Games, a mutated tree. What would that look like? The erasure of clarity continues in the last three lines of the first strophe: "the because is." There are no reasons, there are no answers. There is only being. 

The second strophe then moves on to the bramble blackberry (it should be "bramble of blackberry" but I let it be, soaking in the alliteration of bramble blackberry). The bramble blackerry is what signifies. I like how that leads nowhere. Signifies what? Nothing. It only signifies. And that should suffice! I also love the last four lines: It is/ late/ and/ querulous. "It" appears, signifying everything and nothing. What is late and querulous? This question? My attempt at getting answers? What signifies is late and querulous? What signifies does not matter. 

The third strophe starts with "woman," followed by "holding small." I was very tempted to add "shoulders" to small... following Mac Low's "engaging with contingency" and still "not being in control." But I realized that adding "shoulders" was being in control. So I let it go. When I put that together: woman and holding small...I think of "My Emily Dickinson." The world of woman is also holding "small." It is holding the crawl space that comes with being female. The stutter, the hesitation. So I love it as it is. "Holding small" is an accidental and wonderful phrase that comes with woman. And then, further on, this connects with the phrase "at presence." "Holding small/ at presence" is a difficult phrase. Holding small in the face of presence? Projecting "holding small" against presence? It's fascinating how these words have lined up. And then the lovely last four lines (a simile) of the strophe follows: like salt, island willows. Woman, holding small, at presence...like salt, island willows. Salt, being so essential. Salt like "salt of the earth." Woman, holding small...so essential...like salt. And then "island willows." I loved Robert Hass' poem partly because it evoked something of my childhood. But in this mesos-tamized poem...the willows become the second part of a simile of salt. So essential. 

The fourth strophe has another alliteration: From pleasure/ pumpkinseed. It could be interpreted as from pleasure, pumpkinseed arises. Or it could just be "coming from pleasure pumpkinseed" with pleasure as the "adjective" of pumpkinseed. Either way, I like the musicality of it and I did feel the pleasure of saying that line. There is also a command that follows: Say. After: "Have/ been/ I/ the way/ she." It's a cut-off line. But it contains something like a jumbled-up question: Have I been the way she? And it gets cut off. But I like how "the way" has emerged in the text....calling back Rae Armentrout into this poem. Of course, if I never took up ModPo, I never would have made that connection! I like how the command to just say is followed by a difficult phrase, a fragmented phrase. It is a dare. Go ahead and do it. Let this not make sense. 

The last strophe begins with: "dreamed" (in the past tense!). It's such a loaded word. And then a couple of fragments: are moments/ is that continuing. The last line, in particular, should be a question but is in statement form. This whole poem are moments... and it is "that continuing" of the project. I also like how this strophe is also connected to the previous strophe, creating the phrase: "Have been/ I/ the way/ she/ dreamed." Wow! That's just amazing. The way she dreamed. Moments always continuing.  

"Composing" this poem was a great pleasure. And doing a close reading of this deterministic poem was the second half of the pleasure. It made me come to realize that aleatory poetry is indeed a participatory kind of poem. It is "owned" by Robert Hass (source text), me (close reading and oracle spine text), and UPenn computer program (actual randomization of text and creation of spine index), and Mac Low (creation of process), and ModPo (context, references, additional insights). 

I experienced the resistance of being "author," the creator of the resulting work. But when I let go of that temptation, that urge to "own" what was being created...I realized that meaning is always shared. This generosity in reading and creating opened up what was not possible before. It allowed me to experience "Meditation at Lagunitas" in such a personal and meaningful way. Language is always continuing. And clarity is not necessarily the end, the purpose of language. It is play, it is pleasure. It is the way we dream. It is our way of continuing and engaging each other. It is the endless puzzle of being human and it is bearing witness to the simple (and complex!) presence of you and I. There is no language if it is not shared. Fantastic! 

ModPo 2013 # 5 On The Dickinsonian, The Whitmanian, and Being Filipino

Stepping into experience

Note: I am currently taking a course on Coursera.org called Modern and Contemporary American Poetry taught by Al Filreis of the University of Pennsylvania. I will be posting my thoughts on the course discussions here.

Wow! First week done. Three Dickinson poems and one (very long) Whitman poem.

It's been an interesting week. I've been really busy and I would go home tired but still willing to read the assigned poem and watch the ensuing videos. I've never had this opportunity to go deeply into the works of particular poets and I love the experience.

I couldn't possibly conclude this week by pitting Whitman against Dickinson. I enjoyed the false binary between Dickinson and Whitman created in the video discussion but I ended up really appreciating the role of both poets in creating the path for future poets.

I have two things that I'm bringing up in this post. One: the enjoyment of poetry and two: writing poetry in English in the Philippines.

On The  Enjoyment of Poetry

I truly enjoyed Dickinson. I enjoyed her brevity and economy. I was annoyed by all the words that began with capital letters and all the confusing dashes. But I did remember writing a poem, way back, where I employed a capital letter for a noun. My teacher might have been just as annoyed. Was I influenced by Dickinson? I'm not sure. I'm an eclectic reader but I didn't really appreciate reading poetry books until after college.

I was particularly struck by "I dwell in Possibility." I realize that it is the kind of poem that I truly enjoy. And I liked the work of figuring out the puzzle of poetry = possibility and prose = the opposite of possibility. I also loved the powerful ending: For Occupation --this--/ The spreading wide my narrow hands/ To gather Paradise --. It reminds me that poetry is a worthwhile endeavor. It requires work,yes, but the work is rewarded with epiphany.

To my dismay, I realized I deplored Whitman. Maybe because his poem was soooo long. I wanted to sleep already. Yes, there was exuberance, yes, there was ecstasy. But at what cost? It was too tiring. As I wrote in another post somewhere: it was like reading a Facebook wall with random content.

But, there was a reward. The last section was priceless. On its own, it would probably the kind of poem that I would enjoy on a normal day. It starts beautifully, powerfully with that "barbaric yawp" and it ends tenderly, intimately with "I stop somewhere waiting for you." Absolutely beautiful.

All in all, I want the poetry I read to be succinct. Does that sound like I am going to be rooting for the imagists? I can't wait to get there.

Writing Poetry in English in The Philippines

Secondly, I am a Filipino writer who writes almost exclusively in English now taking up a course on American poetry. Well, UPenn can hardly be blamed. It's an American University. But on my end, I try to see how I can stretch the experience of this course into my own territory, into my own life. It's good to get into the history of the poetic form in America, after all, colonization did play a role in my own history. The generation of my grandparents were taught American poetry for sure and that affected the generations after. I am heavily influenced by the Western Canon. Some of my favorite poets are actually American: Robert Hass, Jane Hirshfield, Gary Snyder.

I am a conflicted writer because I do long to write in my native language but that opportunity has passed. English is my primary language. I think in English but my experiences are Filipino. Being a writer, I know the power of language. It creates experience and possibility for me just as much as the physical world informs my experience as a human being. Elsewhere, in another poem, I write about appropriating the language to be the medium of my expression as a Filipino. I don't know if I'm only justifying my experience. But it's a reality that I live with.

I once had a very interesting conversation with a friend of mine about the importance of being Filipino in my writing. I told him: "That's part of who I am. I cannot claim to come from elsewhere." And he answered that it was more important to be a human being, perhaps to be a citizen of the world. I took solace from that.

So, that's where I'm going to stand. As I go through this course, I understand that the poetry that I am reading is coming from a canon, coming from a pre-selection from an academic institution, coming from a tradition. But I will choose to look at it as a way to inform my being human, wherever I am and whatever my nationality or ethnicity. Poetry encompasses all of that. And I continue the challenge of writing...from wherever I am.

A Poem that I Love: Meditation at Lagunitas by Robert Hass

I love this poem. I discovered it in college. It must have been during one of my English Lit classes. I just fell in love with it. I could never forget it. I've never memorized it, either. But I think I would like to.

I keep a copy of it in my Daily Planner, like a prayer or a talisman. I discovered, later on in life, that this poem comes from a collection called "Praise." It was fated for me, I'm sure, given that I would like to one day name a daughter, Clea, or Greek for "Praise."

Meditation at Lagunitas
by Robert Hass

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

“Meditation at Lagunitas” from Praise. Copyright © 1979 by Robert Hass. Reprinted with the permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

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