Our day has come--but not our poem

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For the first time in my life, the president is younger than me, and likely than you too, if I know my readers.

The president does not let onto being a baby boomer, but he is. He won't be fifty, however, until August 4, 2011.

It was welcome for him to give a shout out to nonbelievers in his Inaugural; I am almost certain that's the first time that that has been done. It came right after the most compelling line in the speech, and it came after a 30-em dash in the text. "For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and nonbelievers." The word "patchwork" stood out for media, but the word "nonbelievers" stood out for me.

But what I'd really like to register are my thoughts on the poem.

I confess, as a poet, I did not like the poem. Not at all. It was not a quarter as good as Maya Angelou's at Clinton's first Inaugural. It was the opposite of that poem; it was especially trite without being especially democratic. I found it tedious and banal, even insufferable. It made no point that hasn't been made a hundred million, yes a hundred million times before:

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Ick. Will you read that last phrase? It's not only both ungainly and ungrammatical, it's also fraudulent. These are not the same people, not at all: the builders and the office workers and the janitors are typically of three distinct classes. It's almost as if she were hoping, by calling it a "praise song," to imbue it with a musical quality. But it didn't have any musical quality at all.

It would be welcome if American poets who feel obliged to make a pact with Whitman nonetheless sidestep the vast potential triteness of the Whitman run-on, which hit the poet like a freight train here.

But even insofar as poetry is language made memorable, Brother, Can You Spare a Dime (1932) said it far more forcefully:

Once I built a railroad, I made it run,
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad, now it's done --
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once I built a tower, up to the sun,
brick and rivet and lime.
Once I built a tower, now it's done --
Brother, can you spare a dime?

No, the speech was far better. It ducked the temptation of the easy soundbite and engaged the complexity of America and the world straight on. The speech was worthy of the moment. The poem---the poem was awful.

The Year of Cups and Swords

JM, The Year of Cups and Swords, 1.7.09

And so what were the thirteen cards I drew for the year?

January: The Sun.
February: The Queen of Cups.
March: The Knight of Swords.
April: The Hanged Man.
May: The Queen of Swords.
June: The Knight of Wands.
July: The Magician.
August: The Ace of Swords.
September: The Six of Cups.
October: The Nine of Swords.
November: The Page of Cups.
December: The Three of Swords.

The thirteenth card, the year’s ruling card: The Seven of Swords.

My sorceress began and ended with this: she identified the Seven of Swords as a very fortuitous ruling card for the year, even though the card has negative connotations. It didn’t to her. She said it was the card of writers, of words, of communication, and that my words would serve me well through the year if I let them, if I stuck to them. It is also to most readers the card of guile, of dishonor, of stealing away; I think my reader knows writers too well.

Immediately discernable to my sorceress was the astounding regularity: the pattern of the first seven cards, or from January through July, were Major Arcana, Queen, Knight, Major Arcana, Queen, Knight, Major Arcana. And then: closing out the year were alternating Cups and Swords, with no Coins and no Wands; this was perfectly consistent with what I had told her about money: I don’t care about it, I’m not after it, I’m most concerned with relationships, and transformation from one kind of writer to another kind.

My sorceress, whose name is Mara, was excited, even satisfied by my layout for the year. As I had uttered the word "transformation" as the word which I most anticipated describing the year, she saw it nearly everywhere. She saw alternating masculinity and femininity, alternating action and contemplation, lots of drama but also consistency throughout, and cards that were very consistent with the seasons (drawing the The Sun for January and Hanged Man for April was really too much!) She was amazed by how the pattern made sense for someone undergoing transformation: the sunburst, the energy of January, followed by the murkiness and mystery of the feminine side in February, followed by the take-charge, just-do-it Knight of Swords in March, followed further by the perfectly timed Easter death and resurrection, sacrificial tale of the Hanged Man.

Queen of Swords in May? A challenging month. The blaze of the Knight of Wands has power; June would be a good time for writing and for something new. The Magician is the second card in the deck (the first is the Fool) and July would be the time in which the year re-started and projects came to fruition. August with its Ace of Swords would be a bit of a golden month as well.

But she told me that September could be very September-like, weepy in a nostalgic way if I let it, and to watch out for overindulgence, and that I should not dwell on whatever was making me wistful, that it would be a good time to undertake something new. And she told me October would be bad, dark—the Nine of Swords is a dark card— as something died away, and to let it die away, as there will be a bit of a rebirth from it. (After she read this card, I had to dismiss myself from the table: I was surprisingly seized by a sudden asthma attack that came and went very quickly once I made it to the bathroom and medicated myself.)

When I re-seated, she told me November would be the time when something would spring from whatever had died away, and then that December was a month in which the whole damn year would resolve and the transformation would indeed have been accomplished.

My sorceress Mara uses the Medieval Scapini deck, the best-known deck of contemporary Italian artist Luigi Scapini, who has done many Tarot decks, some in collaboration with Tarot historical scholars. It is based on what is generally acknowledged as the oldest Tarot deck in Europe, the Visconti-Sforzi, named for its likely commissioners, the Viscontis, of Quattrocento Italy. Reviewers especially acknowledge its "accuracy" in readings. To the degree that "accuracy" exists in Tarot readings, I would take that to mean that the images it provides are most likely to stimulate the reader’s imagination in a way that engages the querent to the most stimulating degree. Indeed, the deck has an ancient feel and also an air of complexity and even authority that I have not seen in other Tarot decks. I think most of it was drawn in 1982.

I confessed an affection for the number 13. I've worked on the thirteenth floor twice, once for three years, and when I first came to Los Feliz, I lived at apartment 13 in the building of the old Onyx Sequel. How can I not like the number? If you read his biography, Larry Durrell had it too.

2009

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Beyond wishes for good health and wonderful living to all, my overriding personal aspiration for 2009 is to publish more fiction, essays, and poems. In that spirit, here's a timely and wild page devoted to some work of mine at Yareah. This new zine, based in Madrid, Spain, publishes work in both Spanish and English.

Both poems as well as the short essay originally appeared here at mainbrace. I'm very glad Yareah found me, especially as I have very dear friends in Spain.

If you fancy a hard copy of this new zine, you can order it here.