Indiana Gothic

Indiana Gothic ~ by Emily Bunder
You probably don't need me or Wikipedia to tell you that Grant Wood's American Gothic "is one of the most familiar images in 20th century American art, and one of the most parodied artworks within American popular culture. . . . one of the most reproduced – and parodied – images ever. Many artists have replaced the two people with other known couples and replaced the house with well known houses."

In the picture above, my neighbors Katy and Peter got dressed up and posed in front of an historic Indiana frame house in our neighborhood. Then their talented daughter Emily took a photograph and added her own artistic finishing touches.

Grant Wood's American Gothic is also the inspiration behind a number of American poems:

American Gothic
after the painting by Grant Wood, 1930

These two
by now . . .

ought to be
in mortal time
about their businesses

Instead they linger here
within the patient fabric
of the lives they wove

. . . asking the artist silently
how much longer . . .

a few lines from the poem by John Stone (b. 1936 - )
found in Where Water Begins, 1998

Above excerpt is from my
NEW FORTNIGHTLY BLOG POST
for more, see
"American / British / Indiana Gothic"
on The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker

Kiddos

Fall Break Photograph by Karen Jordan:
"Taken on a covered bridge the length of a football field!
Not that far from West Lafayette."

KIDS
They dance before they learn
there is anything that isn't music.
short poem by American poet
William Stafford, 1914 - 1993
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
W. B. Yeats, 1864 - 1939
from his poem "Among School Children"

William Stafford

Here is the cover of one of my most prized possessions, the poetry collection Some Haystacks Don't Even Have Any Needle that I have mentioned a few times before. As you can see below, the title of the book is taken from the short poems by William Stafford that appear on the final page of the anthology. In the Spring of 1977, Stafford gave a poetry reading at Northeast Missouri State, where my friend Milly and I had the privilege of interviewing him for our campus literary magazine and requesting his autograph:

I remember Stafford telling us student editors that writing is a "conversation among friends," friends talking: "Writing comes out of talk . . . from talking and deciding to write. Everyone can do it; everyone does it all the time. Writing is simply deciding to sit down and do it and work at it often." He said that writing can be a way "of helping readers see other options and different ways to observe life," as he hauntingly illustrates in the following poem:

A Ritual to Read to Each Other
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

I especially like Stafford's insistence in this poem that "awake people be awake." Eudora Welty makes a similar point in her story "Livvie." It should be so obvious, but apparently is not, since the poets and storytellers have to keep reminding us: "that people never could be sure of anything as long as one of them was asleep and other other awake." Back in 1977, Stafford concluded our interview with the thought that writing is a way "of talking and thinking about the world and of learning to talk and think even more about the world."

To do that, of course, you need to be awake, wide awake, in touch and in tune with that "remote important region in all who talk."

William Stafford, 1914 - 1993
American poet, recipient of National Book Award in 1963
for Traveling Through the Dark
United States Poet Laureate, 1970 - 71
Poet Laureate of Oregon 1975 - 89

P.S. Stafford's poetry has been called gentle, quotidian, focused on the ordinary" -- just right for this blog! (See also 9 January 2010, 26 February 2010, 18 November 2010.

L'anniversaire

I started my Fortnightly Literary Blog exactly one year ago this weekend; thus it seems only appropriate to go back and take a look at the initial feature. Here's the link,

http://kitticarriker.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html

and, better yet, here's a re-post:

ANOTHER SHORT POEM BY WILLIAM STAFFORD
An excellent motto, one of my lifelong favorites: "Some haystacks don't even have any needle." But some friends I mentioned it to recently immediately objected to my choice, finding it "utterly depressing." I was confused! This is a hopeful little poem, full of optimism. But no matter how I defended it, my audience just couldn't see how. They said, "Searching and searching forever and never finding anything? How is that optimistic?"

Now this was bewildering indeed! I was first attracted to these William Stafford poems back in high school when we studied from a poetry book entitled Some Haystacks Don't Even Have Any Needle. I was so taken with this anthology that I squirreled my copy away at the end of the year, claiming to have lost it, so that I could pay the replacement fine and keep the book to myself. A few years later, William Stafford came to speak at my college and I was honored to interview him for our literary magazine and ask him to autograph my book, the title of which was taken from his sequence of short poems included as the anthology's closing selection.

So, back to the present, why was the message suddenly coming across all wrong?

Then I had a "Eureka" moment and realized that the reader needs the title of the poem in order to grasp its liberating message that you don't always have to be searching for a needle in a haystack, performing a goal - oriented task, or striving for a particular outcome. Sometimes you can just take the haystack for what it is (think Monet), maybe even jump into the haystack with joy, as into a snowdrift or a pile of leaves, and with confidence that there's nothing hidden there to hurt you, no puzzle to solve.

At last, here's the poem complete with title:

"AN ARGUMENT AGAINST THE EMPIRICAL METHOD

Some haystacks don't even have any needle."

--short poem by William Stafford

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


THE LIMBS OF THE PIN OAK:
"Gravity -- what's that?"
--short poem by William Stafford

THE MIGHTY OAK
When we first moved here, we hired a tree trimmer to assess the entire yard, which was a mess. We observed that the original owners who planted that oak tree as a nice finishing touch to their front yard a hundred years ago probably never envisioned that it would flourish to the point of one day nearly obscuring the front of the house. Our tree guy just shrugged his shoulders and delivered his conclusion: "The tree wins. It'll be here long after we're gone."

Always nice to have a bit of existentialism thrown in with your tree service! Since then, whenever we're faced with the inevitable, we look at each other, shrug like the tree guy, and acknowledge the truth: "The tree wins."

P.S. ANOTHER SHORT POEM BY WILLIAM STAFFORD

"COMFORT:
We think it is calm here,
or that the storm is the right size."

P.P.S. September 2013
"But on the other hand, and I can't really understand why, I do care about the birch trees. . . . all the swaying, rustling birch trees and I felt light, so light.

"After I'd had a chance to think about it for a while I began to understand why I felt this sudden joy . . . when anyone talks about trees, any trees: the linden tree in the farmyard, the oak behind the old barn, the stately elms that have all disappeared now, the pine trees along wind - swept coasts, etc. There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature -- yes, that's it: just thinking about trees and their indifferent majesty and our love for them teaches us how ridiculous we are -- vile parasites squirming on the surface of the earth -- and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we can honor this beauty that owes us nothing. . . . I suddenly felt my spirit expand, for I was capable of grasping the utter beauty of the trees." (169 - 70)

Our Little Snowstorm

COMFORT:
We think it is calm here,
or that the storm is the right size.

short poem by American poet
William Stafford, 1914 - 1993