Ancestors

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Paternal Grandparents

~ Recent Family History ~
a poem
by Ernest Sandeen (1908 - 1997)
Looking out at us from their photographs,
mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles,
now dead for forty - five years or more,
don't recognize us, can't even imagine us.
And we are helpless to penetrate the safety
of their innocence . . .
from Collected Poems (237)

Maternal Grandparents

" . . . we start [that which] we will not live to see,
just as our ancestors could not live to see us.
And yet they, who passed away long ago, still exist in us,
as predisposition, as burden upon our fate, as murmuring blood,
and as gesture that rises up from the depths of time."
by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)
from Letters to a Young Poet (62)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

See more
"Ancestors"
on the
The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A fortnightly [every 14th & 28th]
literary blog of connection & coincidence; custom & ceremony

Choosing Day ~ The Hour is Real

Taking His Time!
~ Great Grandfather Benjamin Franklin Relaxing ~
Whimsical statue on the campus of
The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Those Elders of the Great Tradition & the Rest of Us
It's as if they dreamed their knowledge
and what they dreamed is what we know.
Who can blame them? They could hardly
have believed this sequel to themselves,
that all their wisdom is really happening.

Yet how can we endure these great grandfathers
of the best we know, who still must sit on every
committee of our thought, who interrupt
our counsels with their wise irrelevancies?
They take their time too, having at their leisure
all history while for us the hour is real. [emphasis added]

Notre Dame Professor and Poet
Ernest Sandeen (1908 - 1997)
from the Collected Poems

~ More Great Grandfathers ~
Sitting on Every Committee!
Washington, Jefferson, T. Roosevelt, Lincoln

Mount Rushmore, Keystone, South Dakota

Election Day, November 1884If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
’Twould not be you, Niagara—nor you, ye limitless prairies—nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon’s white cones—nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes—nor Mississippi’s stream:

—This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name—the still small voice vibrating — America’s choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen — the act itself the main, the quadrennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous’d-sea-board and inland-Texas to Maine — the Prairie States — Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West — the paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling — (a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:) the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity—welcoming the darker odds, the dross:

— Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify—while the heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails. [emphasis added]

Renowned American Poet
Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
from Leaves of Grass (first published in 1891 - 92 edition)

The Countless Snow - Flakes Falling!

[well, actually, countable!]

Autumn Nights

In response to Wednesday's post on "Autumn Days," my brother Bruce said, "All of these platitudes about the beauty of fall are designed for one end, I think: To take our minds off the fact that fall means everything is dying. Somewhere in there is a metaphor for life, but I'm too depressed to deal with it right now. First, lunch."

Bruce's observation reminded me of the following lines from one of my favorite poets, Ernest Sandeen. Yes, autumn holds the metaphor, but what chance do we have of discerning its meaning?

A Fool of the Late Autumn Night
A fool of the late autumn night
he stumbles indoors, slamming the screen
behind him, his hair full of cold
rain, his head full of clouds
whose end and meaning
he knows he will not have time to decipher.

Ernest Sandeen (1908 - 1997)
Notre Dame Professor and Poet

Time Traveler

The dates on their headstones
reveal that even in their graves
they grow older year by year
just as we do. They are all still with us.
We are all going in the same direction.

from the poem "Memorial Day"
by Ernest Sandeen

Willard M. Carriker, 1970s
A year ago, in observance of my father's birthday (18 July 1923), I wrote a post concerning Tennessee Williams' poem "The Summer Belvedere," including a footnote explaining that on "the day he died (Saturday, 27 June, 1987) we all watched Cat On A Hot Tin Roof that evening on TV. This was before the days of movie rentals, so it's not as if we planned or chose it; it's just what happened to be on. Although my dad's personality was nothing like the character of Big Daddy, we were all kind of mesmerized by the appropriateness of it." (See also my previous posts from "Father's Day" 2010 & "My Father's Birthday" 2010).

Even though I've never been one to put much stock in dreams or remember mine or analyze them or anything like that, a few years ago, I had an unforgettable dream in which my dad comes to a school picnic, wearing a white linen suit and Panama hat -- not like anything I ever saw him wear in real life -- with a camera around his neck -- again, nothing I ever saw my dad do. He looks like a tourist, which I guess is the point, as if he has traveled back from the afterlife.

In the dream, the school kids are all playing and the parents are sitting at picnic tables. When I see my dad come into the park, I say to one of the other parents, "Look, there's my dad." She says, "He can sit with us!" I say, as if it's just a minor setback, "Well, I have to tell you, he's no longer living." And she says, "Oh, that's okay. Tell him to come on over anyway," as if it doesn't matter in the least -- living or dead, all are welcome!

I've often felt sad that my father died before my boys were born; so what I want to do next in the dream is show him which of the children are Ben and Sam so that he can meet them, but when I look across the park, I see that he already has them standing side by side and is taking their photograph! That's when I realize, in the dream, that he already knows who they are! At that point, I woke up and, in real life, felt the same certainty.

I've shared this story with a few friends, one of whom pointed out that perhaps my father's uncharacteristic outfit was his way of saying, "Kitti would never pull this outfit out of her imagination for me, so I'll wear this. Just to let her know." I loved that interpretation, for truly, what I experienced that night did not feel like a dream from within so much as a visitation from without, a surprising, comforting visit from a time traveler.

I've had this same sensation only a couple of other times in my life; but I'll save those stories for another post. For now, Happy 89th Birthday, Dad!

Summer Solstice Elves

Daybreak, 1922
by Maxfield Parrish, 1870 - 1966
A Summer Solstice Long Before Now

It cost you only the expense
of a single puckish summer night
to discover that elves, pixies,
or even old - fashioned angels
can't lead your life for you.

They are too inexperienced.

The most they can do is exclaim
in amazement at your follies,
then gasp in wonder at how
you manage to escape, your life intact.

~~from the Collected Poems
of Ernest Sandeen (1908 - 1997)
Notre Dame Professor and Poet

All Our Time

How Time Is Kept

In the flurry of our beating hearts
there is never time enough for what we dream of.
Our intimate dead, however, lie calm of face
as if to say, no need for hurry.
They idle in such a wealth of stillness
it can never be wholly spent.

Yet they are close, deep in our one affair.
Don't disturb us, they say, we are busy
at the leisure of not breathing. It takes all our time,
it takes more time than being alive.

~~from the Collected Poems
of Ernest Sandeen (1908 - 1997)
Notre Dame Professor and Poet

For this poem and more
see my recent Fortnightly Post
"Poems for Memorial Day"

Poems for Memorial Day

Memorial Day Service at Sunnyside Cemetery
Caney, Kansas
New Post for the 28th on

The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker

Poems for Memorial Day
Headstone For My Parents
in Sunnyside Cemetery ~ Caney, Kansas

#1: Memorial Day

On this day every year
our dead afflict us with
a kind of solemn astonishment
at how close to us they remain.

The dates on their headstones
reveal that even in their graves
they grow older year by year
just as we do. They are all still with us.
We are all going in the same direction.

from the Collected Poems
of Ernest Sandeen (1908 - 1997)
Notre Dame Professor and Poet

For this poem and more
see today's Fortnightly Post
"Poems for Memorial Day"
and from awhile back
"Day of the Dead"

The Atoms of Our Hearts

When I recently downloaded a tulip photo from wikipedia
onto my book blog, my husband Gerry said,
"You should take your own photographs of our own tulips!"
So I gave it a try! My results:


I like the way, in the following passages,
we humans share our bodies with the world,
our atoms with the sun,
and our time with the galaxies!
from The Memory Keeper's Daughter
by Kim Edwards" . . . the body was, in some mysterious way, a perfect mirror of the world. . . . Sometimes I think the entire world is contained within each living person. . . . as if the underlying correspondences between tulips and lungs, veins and trees, flesh and earth, might reveal a pattern he could understand. . . . the intricate and exhausting task of trying to transform . . . the body into the world and the world into the body" (149, 201 - 02, 319).


from The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
by Paul Zindel"For one thing, the effect of gamma rays on man-in-the-moon marigolds has made me curious about the sun and the stars, for the universe itself must be like a world of great atoms . . . but most important, I suppose my experiment has made me feel important--every atom in me, in everybody, has come from the sun--from places beyond our dreams. The atoms of our hands, the atoms of our hearts" (101-02).


A Blip on the Magnified
Computer Picture
On your way to the barbershop
you're almost blown off your feet
when it occurs to you that you're
using some of the very same time
needed to keep the galaxies
spinning through the light - years.

from the Collected Poems
of Ernest Sandeen

Spring ~ Time

Early Spring in Hanover, Germany, on the river Leine
The Doppler Effect
One face of the clock is saying
there's not much time. Finish
what you think you were born to do.

The other rounds and spheres
like sleep, it questions
over and over, what is time.

Did we pass through winter
or did winter pass through us?
You creak your windows open

to this familiar green clutter
called the spring. But nothing happens.
You only change places with yourself.

****************

Surreal and Real
Although you were barely prompt enough,
you did glimpse time blending into space
in Einstein's brain. But luckily you
didn't throw your watch away;
because it's Newton who has remained your closest friend
and neighbor.

Ernest Sandeen, 1908 - 1997
Notre Dame Professor and Poet

A fascinating little book about time, that goes hand in hand with Sandeen's poems, is Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. I mentioned it briefly on my book blog a few years ago in connection with The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which is now an award - winning movie in addition to being an endlessly intriguing book.

[I wrote earlier that Brian Selznick's Hugo was an absolutely amazing novel / picture book for kids and grown-ups, about time, space, secrets, automata, and movies. Some history, some fiction, some magic. You will be living inside this book for a little while!
. . . and that Einstein's Dreams was another book of another dimension. Also some history, some fiction, some science, some poetry. Prepare for time travel. Days of future passed, back to the future, forward to the past, and so forth.]

Lightman writes, "For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back" (37).

Who could forget the chapter describing the world of no memory? And even more memorable are the people who stand in line to worship the Great Clock in the Temple of Time: "They stand quietly, but secretly they seethe with their anger. For they must watch measured that which should not be measured. They must watch the precise passage of minutes and decades. They have been trapped by their own inventiveness and audacity. And they must pay with their lives" (p 152).

Equally contradictory is the world where the people live up on the hill because they think the high altitudes will make their lives longer, when in fact the thin air makes their lives shorter. It's sort of like my own personal theory about staying up 'til all hours when I can't (or don't want to) sleep. Sleeping as little as possible is my strategy for cheating Death. The more hours I'm awake, the longer my life is, right? Though secretly I realize that this plan could backfire!

A few timely songs that I love to put on "replay"
and listen to time and time again:

John Denver:
"Rocky Mountain Suite
(Cold Nights in Canada)"
And the time is upon us, today is forever
Tomorrow is just one of yesterday's dreams

*************

Enya: "Only Time"
Who can say if your love grows
As your heart chose
Only time
And who can say where the road goes
Where the day flows
only time

*************

Alan Parsons: "Time"
Who knows when we shall meet again
If ever
But time
Keeps flowing like a river
To the seaThousand Hills State Park, Kirksville, Missouri
~ Photo by Jay Beets ~

Saving Time & Full Hand

Not Unworthy

Rebecca & Kitti, All Dressed Up & No Place To Go
"John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose" (Luke 3: 16)

I have been trying to track down another quotation that I recall reading awhile back, something along the lines of "When our shoelaces come untied, it's so that the gods can give us a kick in the behind when we bend down to tie them up" (very rough paraphrase). Does that ring any bells with anybody? I have searched all my saved files but just can't put my finger on it. I do remember that at the time it reminded me of the following poem, which has been one of my favorites for many years:

MY TWO LIVES

The life I could have lived,
that other, better one,
is also mine. Who else
can claim it?
Each morning, stooping down,
I know that I am not worthy
to tie my own shoelaces.

Ernest Sandeen, 1908 - 1997
Notre Dame Professor and Poet

I've always regretted that I did not take a photograph of Professor Sandeen and his wife Eileen when they came to an "All Dressed Up and No Place To Go" Party at my house in South Bend, back in April 1986. I can see now that he was legendary. I just wish I'd had the foresight to ask for his autograph while I had the chance.