Ko Un - Apr 25, Iyengar All Levels

An old favorite, a Zen Buddhist, contemporary Korean. We have magpies in Tesuque but I’ve never seen a nest or babies, but I’d like to.

BABY MAGPIES

…

Unskilled chatter of baby magpies at dawn. How lovely.

Dylan Thomas - April 24th, Fun with Chairs

Fun with Chairs is on Sundays, which is a work day for me (not religious), but in my mind, always has a celebratory feel.

HOLY SPRING

…

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

In the sun that is young once only,

Time let me play and be

Golden in the mercy of his means,

And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

And the sabbath rang slowly

In the pebbles of the holy streams.

Dylan Thomas - April 22nd, Iyengar III

Last July (2021), as simple way of reading broadly, I started going through my poetry collection alphabetically by author. This is how my collection is organized i my space, so a pretty simple thing to do. I have taken breaks from this exercise for holidays, or something specific comes up, or I get a new book, or…And I haven’t read every author I have, a haphazard structure at best. Now I am as far as the “T”s. This Thomas feels just perfect. Time passes, get going.

HERE IN THIS SPRING

Here in this spring, stars float along the void;

Here in this ornamental winter

Down pelts the naked weather;

This summer buries a spring bird.

Symbols are selected from the years?

Slow rounding of four seasons’ coasts,

In autumn teach three seasons' fires

And four birds' notes.

I should tell summer from the trees, the worms

Tell, if at all, the winter's storms

Or the funeral of the sun;

I should learn spring by the cuckooing,

And the slug should teach me destruction.

A worm tells summer better than the clock,

The slug's a living calendar of days;

What shall it tell me if a timeless insect

Says the world wears away?

Henry David Thoreau - April 21st, Iyengar II & I

My frustration with wind, fire, crazy weather continues. Reading Thoreau’s Journal from 1851, as much has changed, has stayed the same. Puts things in perspective.

Ap. 22nd 1851.

Had Mouse-ear in blossom for a week-observed the crowfoot on the cliff in abundance & the saxifrage

The wind last Wednesday-Ap 16th-blew down a hundred pines on Fair Haven Hill.

Having treated my friend ill, I wished to apologize; But not meeting him I made an apology to myself.

It is not the invitation which I hear, but which I feel, that I obey.

Francis Bacon - April 19th, Iyengar II & I

From Gigantic Cinema - A Weather Anthology, edited by Alice Oswald and Paul Keegan. Trying to reframe my relationship to wind as mysterious, which otherwise, is getting a little old. And dusty!

52.

To men the winds are as wings. For by them men are borne and fly, not indeed through the air but over the sea; a vast gate of commerce is opened, and the whole world is rendered accessible. To the earth, which is the seat and habitation of men, they serve for brooms, sweeping and cleansing both it and the air itself. Yet they damage the character of the sea, which would otherwise be calm and harmless; and in other respects they are productive of mischief. Without any human agency they cause strong and violent motion; whence they are as hired servants to drive ships and turn mills, and may, if human industry fail not, be employed for many other purposes. The nature of the winds is generally ranked among the things mysterious and concealed; and no wonder, when the power and nature of the air, which the winds attend and serve (as represented by the poets in the relation ofAeolus to Juno), is entirely unknown. They are not primary creatures, nor among the works of the sue days; as neither are the other meteors actually; but produced according to the order of creation.

A.E. Stallings - Apr 15, Iyengar III

For Linda Spackman, without whom I would have never learned the word “diacritical”.

Silence

Silence has its own notation: dark

Jottings of duration, but not pitch,

A long black box, or little feathered hitch

Like a new G-reek letter or diacritical mark.

Silence is a function of Time, the lark

In flight but not in song. A nothing which

Keeps secrets or confesses. Pregnant, rich,

Or awkward, cold, the pause that makes us hark,

The space before or after: it's the room

In which melody moves, the medium

Through which thought travels, it is golden, best,

Welcome relief to talk-worn tedium.

Before the word itself, it was the womb.

It has a measure. Music calls it rest.

Wistawa Szymborska - Apr 14, Iyengar II & I

I love this Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet, funny and fierce, with such an eye for the world around her. I never thought about it before, but perfect isn’t funny.

Warning

Dont take jesters into outer space,

that's my advice.

Fourteen lifeless planets,

a few comets, two stars.

By the time you take off for the third star,

your jesters will be out of humor.

The cosmos is what it is —

namely, perfect.

Your jesters will never forgive it.

-

Nothing will make them happy:

not time (too immemorial),

not beauty (no flaws),

not gravity (no use for levity).

While others drop their jaws in awe,

the jesters will just yawn.

En route to the fourth star

things will only get worse.

Curdled smiles,

disrupted sleep and equilibrium,

idle chatter:

remember that crow with the cheese in its beak,

the fly droppings on His Majesty's portrait,

the monkey in the steaming bath —

now that was living.

Narrow-minded.

They 11 take Thursday over infinity any day.

Primitive.

Out of tune suits them better than the music of the spheres.

They’re happiest in the cracks

between theory and practice,

cause and effect.

But this is Space, not Earth: everything's a perfect fit.

On the thirtieth planet

(with an eye to its impeccable desolation)

they'll refuse even to leave their cubicles:

"My head aches," they'll complain. "I stubbed my toe."

What a waste. What a disgrace.

So much good money lost in outer space.

A.E. Stallings - Apr 12, Iyengar II & I

I read about plant, flowers, trees and gardens a lot. Not so much about the other inhabitants of the garden. Even so, I always delight at the sight of a lizards, snakes, even a worm. They make my garden feel “alive” somehow.

Momentary

I never glimpse her but she goes

Who had been basking in the sun,

Her links of chain mail one by one

Aglint with pewter, bronze, and rose.

I never see her lying coiled

Atop the garden step, or under

A dark leaf, unless I blunder

And by some motion she is foiled.

Too late I notice as she passes

Zither of chromatic scale—

I only ever see her tail

Quicksilver into tail grasses.

I know her only by her flowing,

By her glamour disappearing

Into shadow as I'm nearing

I only recognize her going.

A.E. Stallings - Apr 11, Iyengar All Levels

A contemporary Greek classicist with gift for elevating the ordinary. The longer I’m around, the more I’ve come to embrace being unsure.

Pencil

Once, you loved permanence,

Indelible. You'd sink

Your thoughts in a black well,

And called the error, ink.

And then you crossed it out;

You canceled as you went.

But you craved permanence,

And honored the intent.

Perfection was a blot

That could not be undone.

You honored what was not,

And it was legion.

And you were sure, so sure,

But now you cannot stay sure.

You turn the point around

And honor the erasure.

Rubber stubs the page,

The heart, a stiletto of lead,

And all that was black and white

Is in-between instead.

All scratch, all sketch, all note,

All tentative, all tensile

Line that is not broken,

But pauses with the pencil,

And all choice, multiple,

The quiz that gives no quarter,

And Time the other implement

That sharpens and grows shorter.

Ada Limón - Apr 10, Fun with Chairs

Some days I’ll read a piece at the end of class and afterwards get an email from a student with another piece in response. This is from Patricia Wallace, who thought I’d like more instructions/advice after hearing Coco Chanel last week. Pat’s right, I do like Instructions…And this suits this moment, spring, pandemic, etc.

Instructions on Not Giving Up

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out

of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor's

almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving

their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate

sky of Spring rains, it's the greening of the trees

that really gets to me. When all the shock of white

and taffy, the world's baubles and trinkets, leave

the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,

the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin

growing over whatever winter did to us, a return

to the strange idea of continuous living

despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,

I'll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf

unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

The Ramayana - Apr 8, Iyengar III

Happy belated Birthday Hanuman (Apr 4th). I sometimes get asked “why practice a pose like Hanumanasana?” It’s hard, extreme even. See below for why.

…

Who is this monkey Hanuman? Rama has let him loose in the world. He knows Rama and Rama knows him. Hanuman can break in or break out of anywhere. He cannot be stopped, like the free wind in flight.

Hanuman can spot a tyrant, he looks at deeds not words, and he'll go and pull his beard. Disguises and words of talk cannot confuse a mere wild animal. Hanuman’s rescue of brave poets in any peril may be had for their asking, and that monkey will break the handsome masks of evil kings.

Hanuman will take your sad tune and use it to make a happy dance. We have seen that white monkey. Strong is his guard. Especially take warning, never harm a free Poet

The Son of the Wind. The warm dry night wind, and all the trees swaying! I don't care for love or death or loneliness— here comes the high Wind, and what am I…?

…

Alice Oswald - Apr 7, Iyengar II & I

I love that she also writes about WEEDS, and they are equally wonderful! Sometimes I feel like a flower; sometimes I am a weed!

BristJy Ox-tongue

It is Bristly Ox-tongue,

too shy to speak.

Long silence.

It is Bristly Ox-tongue.

Who stands rooted

with his white hair uncombed.

Long silence.

He stands rooted.

He stands rooted

with his white hair uncombed,

pulling it out in handfuls.

This is no good.

Long silence.

He carries this silence everywhere,

like an implement from long ago,

he carries it everywhere.

This is Bristly Ox-tongue.

Long silence.

He has enormous jaws, chewing on silence.

He has enormous jaws, chewing on silence.

This is no good.

He has come indoors in his boots

and anyhow, his hands are more like hooves.

This is no good.

If only he was among his own kind,

rutting and feeding by night, hiding by day.

Long silence.

I said if only he was among his own kind.

If only he was among his own kind

standing in groups by the roadside

or making small clumps on the cliffs.

Now that would be good.

Alice Oswald - Apr 5, Iyengar II & I

More of Oswald’s flowers, who are so fierce and beautiful. As they should be.

Narcissus

once I was half flower, half self,

that invisible self whose absence inhabits mirrors,

that invisible flower that is always inwardly

groping up through us, a kind of outswelling weakness,

yes once I was half frail, half glittering,

continually emerging from the store of the self itself,

always staring at rivers, always

nodding and leaning to one side, I came gloating up,

and for a while I was half skin half breath,

for a while I was neither one thing nor another,

a waterflame, a variable man-woman of the verges,

wearing the last self-image I was left with

before my strength went down down into darkness

for the best of a year and lies here crumpled

in a clot of sleep at the root of all nothings

Alice Oswald - Apr 4, Iyengar All Levels

I’ve been saving this Oswald collection, “Weeds And Wild Flowers”, for Spring. Starting with the flowers.

Snowdrop

A pale and pining girl, head bowed, heart gnawed,

whose figure nods and shivers in a shawl

of fine white wool, has suddenly appeared

in the damp woods, as mild and mute as snowfall.

She may not last. She has no strength at all,

but stoops and shakes as if she'd stood all night

on one bare foot, confiding with the moonlight.

One among several hundred clear-eyed ghosts

who get up in the cold and blink and turn

into these trembling emblems of night frosts,

she brings her burnt heart with her in an urn

of ashes, which she opens to re-mourn,

having no other outlet to express

her wild-flower sense of wounded gentleness.

Yes, she's no more now than a drop of snow

on a green stem - her name is now her calling.

Her mind is just a frozen melting glow

of water swollen to the point of falling,

which maybe has no meaning. There's no telling.

But what a beauty, what a mighty power

of patience kept intact is now in flower.

Coco Chanel - Apr 3, Fun with Chairs

Take good advice wherever you find it.

IF YOU WERE BORB WITHOUT WINGS, DO NOTHING TO PREVENT THEM FROM GROWING.

Billy Collins - April 1, Iyengar III

As April Fools-y as I could find. Collin’s super-power, kind of tongue-in-cheek, kind of not.

Today

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

Orlando White - Mar 31, Iyengar II & I

A younger, talented, credentialed Navajo poet. Perfect as a retort for the Florida law banning the use of the word “gay” in public schools. I am deeply furious…

n

undulates

between

page, ink: a language

blood vessel.

Oxygenates cadence.

Without it being

will not have breath.

Write, means to

place life

into book.

Letters live,

reaffirm self

within it.

An ink vein

funnels

plasma thought

through word

in moment one

pens it.

Billy Collins - Mar 29, Iyengar II & I

After a long-awaited retreat to Mexico, teaching with Melissa Spamer. Hoping to soften the blow for all who couldn’t come on this especially magical trip. I’ve had that experience of feeling inept and holding coins out to a cashier.

Safe Travels

Every time Gulliver travels

into another chapter of Gulliver's Travels

I marvel at how well traveled he is

despite his incurable gullibility.

I don t enjoy traveling anymore

because, for instance,

I still don't know the difference

between a bloke and a chap.

And I'm embarrassed whenever

I have to hold out a palm

of loose coins to a cashier

as if I were feeding a pigeon in a park.

Like Proust, I see only trouble

in store if I leave my room,

which is not lined with cork,

only sheets of wallpaper

featuring orange flowers

and little green vines.

Of course, anytime I want

I can travel m my imagination

but only as far as Toronto,

where some graduate students

with goatees and snoods

are translating my poems into Canadian.

Eavan Boland - Mar 22, Iyengar Level II & I

For a Saint Patrick’s Day. I forgot to wear green but remembered an Irish poet…

BE

If l think of it

what I see are hills—

kinetic, never still

shadows building

necessary blues

to make dusk.

…

If l think of it

what I see are

the first days of spring,

snowdrops just barely

visible, but how

they came to be there

I will never know.

…

All I know is

some days

should simply be.

Not be remembered.

Gary Snyder – March 15, 2022 Iyengar Level I

Beauty, hope, because we need them. Thinking of the stories of Ukrainian artists continuing their work in terrible circumstances.

Earth Verse

Wide enough to keep you looking

Open enough to keep you moving

Dry enough to keep you honest

Prickly enough to make you tough

Green enough to go on living

Old enough to give you dreams