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Sunday, November 21, 2010

Poetry in the Church Kitchen

Tonight, I read Babar's Family, The Gardener, and Yesterday I Had the Blues to Elspeth. I made my way through that beautiful, gentle book, The Year at Maple Hill Farm, by Alice and Martin Provensen, and it might have been as Elspeth and I studied the cows snuggled into the hay that sleep began knocking on my head. And then I was gone for two hours. My Martin just awakened me to drink tea. Falling asleep early is a Sunday night tradition for me, especially after a weekend like this one, where we partied. And partied. And then partied some more. Our Mennonite Church had a big anniversary bash all weekend. We attended the coffeehouse Friday night, skipped the hymn sing Saturday, and came back for a full day today. In the afternoon Martin and I strapped Bea into the car for a short nap before he and I led a workshop on poetry as prayer.

The workshop was small but good, in a tiny, airless room with bright frogs on the wall. We looked over a diverse group of poems Martin had compiled, from Rilke to John Berryman, sacred East Indian verse to Denise Levertov, and some great ones by Maurice Manning, where he addresses God as Boss. We'd just started into our own writing exercise--I had begun:

You are the great huge boulder I saw
as we drove past broken-down houses
and bars with cold neon signs
Fast food wrappers clogged the gutters
and a woman staggered across a bridge past sealed cars

I had the boulder fixed in my mind: immovable, striped black, in the middle of a wide creek banked by bare trees--the water lapped and beat and foamed and streamed over the rock. . .I was looking forward to getting that boulder on my page. It had so delighted me as we drove a depressed, ugly part of town. That was during our drive where Bea slept--and just as I wrote To my, a little girl in a purple dress popped her head in to say Bea was crying.

And was she ever. Her little chest heaved against me when I lifted her up, her face was streaked with tears and snot, and she wanted to go home. I couldn't blame her--it had been a long day. She smeared chocolate on her face as I arranged a platter of cookies for the post-workshop reception, and soon other women from the Poetry workshop appeared in the kitchen, arranging things on platters, filling white coffee pitchers. I helped find a broom and a dustpan to sweep up the shards of a broken mug in the hall. I never got to finish my poem, and when I stopped back in with a clinging Bea, Martin was finishing up. I was disappointed at the timing of Bea's breakdown.

Now, looking back, I realize that there was a really good sort of poetry happening in the kitchen--the story of community, the movement of people in a kitchen, a smeared and broken child sitting on the counter comforted at last, food being placed carefully on plates and a stream of hot coffee filling pitchers. It's such a old, familiar poetry, and one I know well from growing up in churches--love becoming tactile, feeding and being received by hungry people. Poetry, incarnation, food--these together are good.

4 comments:

Ratto said...

I want to see those poems! Will you share?

AppDaddy said...

Really nice column this week!
Americans are resilient, and will find a way to make it when the rug is pulled out from under us.

I also love a good 'dog'.
In fact, your Auntie and I are going to use the last of the pot of chili I made Sat. and have chili dogs for lunch.

Yummm!

Kimberly Long Cockroft said...

Amy, which ones? The packet? I only scribbled four or so lines before the kid broke down, but Martin's got some dazzling prayer poems and I dare say he wrote a fine one yesterday at workshop. I really love this form. A good place to start is, "You are. . ." and go from there. And Rilke, of course, blew the top off prayer poems. I mean, talk about Emily D's saying about losing the top of your head when you read a good poem--I feel my whole body crumbling away when I read from Rilke's Book of Hours. I have to add, I love the John Berryman, though--it was so honest. It's called "Eleven Addresses to the Lord" and starts: Master of beauty, craftsman of the snowflake,/inimitable contriver,/endower of Earth so gorgeous & different from the boring Moom,/thank you for such as it is my gift.

Then there was an excellent ancient Indian prayer called "To the God of Fire as a Horse." I must say, Martin's selection was exciting and eclectic.

Kimberly Long Cockroft said...

Whoops. Make that "boring Moon," not boring moom.

Though a moom sounds like it would be anything but boring!