IN MEMORIAM: MALINDA MARKHAM

Having just learned of the death of Malinda Markham last September (2012)

I’m in shock.

 

I knew her from a brief phone conversation (arranged by my husband who

knew how much I admired her poetry) and several email exchanges, which

I’ve cherished.

 

Her work is dazzling, her language a rare combination of idea, immediacy,

metaphor and emotion.  It has inspired my own poetry again and again.

And now with an added poignancy.  I was waiting for her third book to

arrive…but alas, the world and I are left wanting.

 

Sleep well, dear Malinda.

 

WEST COAST ARTS AND LETTERS FORUM

We’ve been meeting now for 17 years.  Norm and I

have been co-directors, choosing the topics for discussion

as well as films to stimulate it.  The success lies in the openness

of all participants, a willingness to express and to listen.  Our

topics range over the whole panoply of the arts, including fiction,

film, poetry, architecture and fine arts.  Our differences are well-

received…though we seem to focus more on intellectual and

subjective input.  Our participants vary in their backgrounds, mostly

professionals in a variety of fields.  That the Forum continues to

engage everyone enthusiastically is gratifying for us all.  I hope

it can serve as a model for others.

INTO THE UNKNOWN

Allowing consciousness to move from the familiar, the known, into the unknown as a creative process

Romantic Love Sustained

Ideas for keeping romantic love in a very long term relationship

POETRY AND LANGUAGE

On the whole, we in the U.S. speak and write in the English language…with the exception, of course, of those who
have kept native tongues. My consideration here is relative to English, as it is written…most particularly, as poetry.

Of late, I’ve been reading some of the theories and work of what has been called the L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E school of poetry. Obviously, the focus is on the words themselves…not on the poets’ intention, or prescribed meaning.
This is a very interesting approach. It allows the reader to participate in the process…not merely as a passive receiver. It tends to minimize the power the poet is exerting over the reader. In this sense, it becomes a viable political engagement. We are not being TOLD a narrative or simply given a description. We are being asked to
bring our own consciousness to the process. I like the word “engagement”….it suggests involvement and even a kind of responsibility for our own part in what’s going on. Another aspect of some Language poetry is its digression,
leaping from one focus to another, abruptly…so that the mind is called on to find connections in what appears to be disparate. Here is a language poem:

JOE

JOE

It was written by Robert Grenier, who looked on language as a visual construct. The interpretation given by Bob Perelman is that it is a call. How do you see it? I see it as rounded letters ending in a rigid one. Meaning?
A pleasant memory of a man named Joe. Or…the evocation of all the Joes in the world. So, is language a game?
Perhaps it is. The most important factor to me is that in an effort to communicate accurately we often misinterpret. Language poetry by focusing on the words themselves heightens awareness of the multiplicity of meaning…or meaninglessness…in what is said, or written.

Was Wallace Stevens an early language poet, without portfolio?

“The truth in a calm world/In which there is no other meaning…”

Does language give us meaning…or the other way around? Poetry has long been thought of as a kind of refuge…a sort of psalm or hymn….to assure the restless, vulnerable psyche. It may well be that, but I like to think of it as something more: a challenge to think as an independent thinker. That demands creativity on the part of the reader as well as the poet. Whether language poetry is an answer or not, I cannot say, or whether I particularly enjoy reading it. I do like the challenge, which also says, Meet me on your terms. That is more democratic than what passes for democracy in the world.

POETRY AND LANGUAGE

NOW IS ALL WE HAVE

My heading really says it all. Living in the NOW doesn’t mean I can or want to do away with memory…or even anticipation…but it does mean, to me, not carrying over old emotional baggage that destroys this now.

It, of course, means being conscious of what that baggage is. Anticipating the negative is a carry-over and makes this now bleak and fearful.

We’re all human. So what else is new? (Ooops, that remark lost me a longtime friend). Our own self-interest is primary…even when we are extremely altruistic and seemingly selfless. So that the love I give and love I receive are both life-preservers.

The recent death of my much-loved daughter has challenged me in many ways to practice what I preach. I do grieve for the shut down of her accomplished and much appreciated life. She deserved many more than her 63 years. My emotions fluctuate from feeling unnerved to feeling sad to feeling calm. Those are my NOW…but I know (anticipate) that these emotions will level off, despite the continuing sadness…and that helps my moment.

In relation to that, there are lines which have stayed with me for many, many years and speak to this very subject:

“Life gives us moments, and for
these moments we give our lives.”

The most imprtant, and often difficult trick, is to experience fully those moments we are given…without contamination. Yes, the contamination can be the moment itself, because it’s a lived experience, but it destroys the gift. I refuse to give over to that destruction…for myself, and for those who love and care for me…or even for the world at large

NOW IS ALL WE HAVE

COMPLEX GRIEF

Last Saturday my much-loved daughter, Christie Romero, died after 21 months of struggling and in a sense, conquering the limitations of the dread disease that has yet to be cured: pancreatic cancer. She was sixty-three.
But her spirit and enthusiasm for her world belied the years. I mourn. I grieve. As in the Hopkins poem…”It is Margaret (i.e., Christie) you mourn for.” His meaning is that the loss of life is mourned by the person who dies.
Those of us who are left are grieving for ourselves, what feels like a deprivation. No, the tragedy and mournfulness is in the ending of a life that still had so much life within it to be lived.

Christie has rightfully been extolled for many things: her valiant fight not to give in to the pain and demands of her illness… She accomplished more in the period after her diagnosis than most people do in a lifetime. She is being given tribute from people all over the world not only for her scholarly, uncompromising work as a jewelry historian (totally auto didactic), but for the generous, spirited way she helped and inspired her students, colleagues and friends. She is a powerful loss to that world.

The umbilical cord that tied me to my daughter is primordial and her death was, at first, something I thought I couldn’t bear. But she belonged to her own world, which is only right and I rejoice in how much she filled it and was rewarded by it. Realizing this, makes the release possible…especially knowing that her suffering has ended.
Am I somehow less of a mother than a woman who wails and tears her hair at the loss of her adult child?
I hope…and even think…not.

NOT THE SAME OLD, SAME OLD

Only the universe itself defies the dictum: the more things change the more they stay the same. Not so the heavenly bodies. All is in flux.
Nothing stays in or returns to the same place as the galaxies, stars, planets rotate and glide in their constant shift. What an interesting anomaly!

Okay. So how have my attitudes and perspectives changed of the years?
I’m more forgiving, but still vulnerable to guilt (is that why I’m more forgiving?) I see the socio-political world as immature, self-serving, often cruel – not much change there. While I’m not sure I forgive the world, I have some understanding of its slowness in evoloving.

As one of the more or less comfortable U.S. middle-class privileged –
and grateful – I long to be part of a country that is more beneficient than merely self-serving and aggressive both at home and abroad. Look to your own beneficence, Peggy! And watch your own selfishness and sometimes aggressive mouth! (There’s a bit of change in attitude.)

In a culture touting, in large letters, NEW! (products, that is) there is such a fearful resistance to flexibility and shift from the familiar. When things are relatively “good”…who wants to plunge into something different. If it ain’t broke, it don’t need fixin’. Hmmm. Well, that might apply to many situations, personally and publicly, but if we’re not willing to take at least a small leap into the dark, the unknown, where is the creativity…the movement, in behavior and interaction with others (not always as good as it could be)…as well as in impersonal fields of exploration…science, the arts, technology, etc.?

What is a constant inspiration for me is the memory of a television program interviewing artists, all in their eighties, in which, to a person they said that the next project was what interested them…not what they had already accomplished. I do apply that to my creative writing and attempts at art…but what about my daily interactions? I believe heartily in transcendance in art…How do I transcend my petty annoyances, my foolish prejudices, my unnecessary defenses? As in creating a new poem…I listen not to just the surface image or phrase…but allow surprise to leap and inform…So it’s attentiveness, awareness at a new level that can bring more than the same old, same old.