Myth of Arrival

In his review of Jarman's and Mason's Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism in the Antigonish Review, Keith Maillard says the following of New Formalism:

[Jarman and Mason] claim, quite rightly, that "the most significant development in recent American poetry has been a resurgence of meter and rhyme, as well as narrative, among large numbers of younger poets, after a period when these essential elements of verse had been suppressed." The label that has been applied to this development is "New Formalism," and, although some poets have objected to the term, it has, by now, established itself in the critical vocabulary.

Having spent the last two years writing, almost exclusively, sonnets, I am rather glad that rhyme is finding a voice again. Being raised on Dr. Seuss helped (thanks, Mom!) but also the simple truth that rhyming is fun. Words are fun.¹ This is not to take away from Free Verse; almost all my poetry leading up to 2003 was in Free Verse and it seems rather obvious that the world is big enough to have all forms of poetry sit down at the same table. Still, what I find exciting with the sonnet are all the new things we can say with it; that is, as we expand our poetic conventions and social attitudes in this global village (I know that's a cliche and problematic, still I'm using it) we shall find some rather subjects to compress into its 14 lines.

Rupture of small membranes, the insane screak
of odd muscles strained to their limits. Pain
in all its forms from lifting, hauling, freak
breakage at work. We are told when we sprain
an arm, a leg, to "take it easy." But
how do you rest in a world without health
care? "Health care should not be in a sonnet,"
you say. Maybe you need to leave your wealth
and pelf behind for a while? I eat hills
of pain killers and valleys of aspirin.
I walk with a limp and what little skills
I have are in manual labor, in
pushing this body to its limits just
for base pay, as if you hadn't noticed.

1. Or as my brother Eli put it once, "logs is cool!" [back]

Laura Love's CD Octoroon is playing, beautifully. As is with a lot of things in my profession, nurse aides (as well as everyone within the medical field) are governed by an unspoken code of conduct. "To help heal." "To help serve." "To help protect." Something like that. Still, I know my place: I must care for those who ask for it. I must make sure those who are in danger of hurting themselves (or others) are being protected. I must make sure never to abandon my residents, reagrdless of my own pesonal safety. This really isn't written down anywhere, rather it is a couple of maxims handed down by my head nurse when I joined the staff.

As the nurse aide ranks expand with the aging Baby Boomer population, I can only see more people taking this time-honored oath, whatever exactly it is. It is a shame we do not live by more traditionally bound sets of rules. In Japan, the servant-warrior class followed Bushido, a code of conduct, a way of life no less, that helped in dictating how one responded to everyday pain and events.

If samurai means one who serves, then answer this riddle: Which more exemplifies Bushido: he who is loyal to a fair and kind lord or he who remains loyal to his wicked lord?

The answer: The one who is loyal to his unprincipled master because he who remains faithful even in adversity has the greatest warrior spirit.¹

I think about that when the stresses of work become great. When I arrive at work at 2:54 p.m. to find we have been scheduled with only three aides for 34 residents again; when I see my administrators taking month long vacations or "winning" the in-house raffles when my co-workers (many of whom are single mothers trying to make ends meet on minimum wage) remain sincere and loyal and labor through the night.

"Warrior Spirit," what a term! Nurse aides
should not aspire to such excessiveness,
take on such haughty postures. For decades
we have labored hard to care for illness,
for the senile, for the demented. We
work long hours, poor pay, "thank yous" are rare,
if at all. Still, we return. Why? Simply
put, "Nurse Spirit," is powerful. We swear
we shall aide you. Not cure, but to assist.
Tonight I shall return, go on rounds, clean
adult diapers; feed, wash, care. We persist
even when those over us appear mean
spirited. Even we, with no edict,
code, law, persist against stunning conflict.

1. Thank you, Stan Sakai! [back]

I am not sure where the motivation of this poem came from. I think I found the French phrase first and thought about how I could put it into a poem. Shelby warns me that dropping foreign phrases and words into poetry is a bit posh, especially if the reader has no idea what you are saying. But I think the meaning here is rather clear. I don't know, perhaps it is OK not to be able to follow the multi-layered patterns of thought and musing that led me to where I could type it up onto the blog for you. Perhaps.

I am not sure who started the rumor
of rife and unruly libidinousness
among nurses. An ex-candy striper,
perhaps, working nights on the syphilis
ward? Not in a rest home, that is for sure.
In the films nurses all have thick Euro
accents, "le sexe j'adore," and the cure
for what ails you is not what my fellow
nurses give out. We tend to be hardened,
battle-tired; coming off shift with other
people's feces on our scrubs, backs stiffened
with pain, fatigued. This is not a glamor
job, we are not glamor nurses. Maybe
that is the truth, we survive but barely.

We are poets who are in love with single word titles. Something a bit odd, with double or triple meanings, is nice. A poem about a dying star and an affair called Quirk. A poem about a beloved dog called Clod. This is a shame, really. Titles aren't as flashy as the once were. For example, in my university library, I found the following poem: Ode to the mammoth cheese: presented to Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States by the inhabitants of Cheshire, Massachusetts, January 1, 1802. Now that's a title! Plus it is about cheese and I am a sucker for cheese poetry, in whatever form it takes.

But this poem does not have a title, since it is one of my Nurse Aide sonnets, a series for the month. Two nights ago an ice storm rattled the roof as I typed away (ah, Michigan in February) but Amii Stewart was on the stereo, I had my fuzzy slippers on, my cat on my lap, so nothing bad really happened. One more night, that really is all I ever ask.

Couplets flying like stray bullets, the thought
of what maniacal family members
have done gives me pause. How many distraught
adult children have snapped? There are pressures
I know nothing of, motives far beyond
what I can dream. I walk our corridors each
night, one more night. We are trained to respond
to our resident's needs, rare do we reach
out to their families. A high school friend's
mom took care of her father for endless
years then shot him, shot herself. Who pretends
care of the elderly could not drive us
to despair? Give us strength with each nightfall,
one more night, that's all I ask. That is all.

"solid life, of crime/ a man of odd circumstance/ a victim of ghetto demands/ feed me money for [stahuh]/ and i'll let you trip for a while/ insecure from the past/ how long can a good thing last?"
– Curtis Mayfield, Pusherman

Mozart's Don Giovanni is on the stereo, conducted by Herbert Von Karajan. It is an opera that has not aged as well as I hoped. Of course, the part I recall fondly is the scene in the movie Amadeus, the end of the opera when the Stone Guest, the statue of the slain commandant, invites the Don to dine with him in hell while his servant, Leporello, cowers under the table. Giovanni is cast down into the fires not because he was a wicked rapist/ murderer, but because he refuses to repent his crimes or be accused of cowardliness. It is a morality tale.

I recall a reviewer of a modern day production of Don Giovanni wondering if the tale of the libertine's downfall still held significance for today's jaded audience? After all, the triumphant chorus that the virtuous Donna Anna and Elvira and Don Ottavio all sing is: This is the fate of miscreants/ evildoers always come/ to an equally evil end. And if we look at American popular culture, the assumption is that "downfall" is the last thing that happens to miscreants here.

However, if we look beyond the probable fact that Mozart's audience saw these final lines as just as tongue and cheek as today's audience, can it not be argued that with the rise of gangsta' rap in the 1990s with its tale of rags to riches to the morgue, with its intolerable misogyny, with its soap opera, paint by numbers drama and cliched plots, can it not be argued that most of what passes as plastic posturing and fabricated features is all geared to thrill, titillate, infatuate audiences? That they are themselves morality plays of sorts? Can it not be argued that such modern ghetto pantomimes then have certain parallels with this opera? I think an updated gangsta' version of Don Giovanni has certain interesting possibilities, though purists will scream and snort.

Thinking of all this, I considered another theme of Mozart's character, which is the troubling question of what drives the rake to commit the acts he does? Boredom? Hunger? Regret? Unlike other characters in other fairy tales motivated by poverty or dire circumstance, Don Giovanni does what he does almost on random whims. Who said evil is banality? Giovanni's compulsions remind me of many of my own residents. They keep doing things repetitively at the end of their lives. Why must Bernice take her wheelchair on a circuit of the dining room every night at 7 p.m. and almost melt down emotionally if prevented? These actions remind me of the popular wisdom of lost and hungry ghosts, endlessly searching for something they can never really find — for the tragedy is not that they can't find it, but they are obsessed in looking. To this end Giovanni, my residents, the ghosts that linger in the hallway, all have similar elements. The only difference is that at some point my residents will cease doing what they do, grow sicker and pass over. Giovanni and the ghosts will live on forever.¹

My co-worker laughs, bends to her duty,
red betel juice, henna patterns her hands,
a smirch of camphor. She believes hungry
ghosts are all about us. A ghost demands
so much. She knows what the rake hungers for.
Had Don Giovanni reached the ripe old
age of ninety two, would randy amour
still sound in his ear? Would he rise, stone cold
swagger afire, crying, "Leporello,
my cloak, my rapier!" Yes, she says, regret,
that's what ghosts are; misery and sorrow
over failures. But the living have yet
to find peace, I say. Yes, she nods, almost
as bad but you can't tell that to a ghost.

1. Unless, of course, opera collapses under its own archaic weight and the MET folds. Unlike the destruction of the oceans, the melting of the polar caps and the world population hitting 15 billion souls, I don't see that happening in my lifetime. [back]