All still just the same

I heard Pete Seeger singing this song on the radio this morning. Brought back a memory.

7th grade, I was in guitar class and the final exam... we had to choose a song to play and sing... And I don't know why, but I chose *that* song... I think there was a very limited selection.

Anyway, I sucked. Big time. Couldn't play it. Couldn't sing it. Not to save my life.

I'm not exaggerating. I got a D in guitar.

So I always associate that song with my failure.

I actually like the song. Very hippie protest kind of thing.

Too bad there wasn't a Kate or Tori or Jewel around then. I might have had a chance with one of their songs.

Today, I really listened to the words. I don't know if I totally grasped it back then, but today... it's more meaningful than ever.

Anyway, here it is.


Little Boxes
~Pete Seeger

Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes
Little boxes
Little boxes all the same
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same

And the people in the houses all go to the university
And they all get put in boxes, little boxes all the same
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same
And they all play on the golf course and drink their martini dry
And they all have pretty children and the children go to school
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university
And they all get put in boxes, and they all come out the same
And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
And they all get put in boxes, little boxes all the same

There's a green one, and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same

The going forth is home.

Ars Poetica

Achilles, long after Troy,
ventured forth again,
and in the going out,
returned home to homelessness.

And what could he know but like Odysseus
slap of wave on bow
and the stories they tell
about the dear dance of Thanatos and Eros

and the loves,
triumphs and betrayals of ordinary men . . .

Odysseus, homeless on the wine-dark sea,
with aching heart
dreams of his Penelope
as he sails into infinity.

Heroes are the ones
move forward in the dark,
Seferis said as he groped on,
neither Thetis nor Circe enticing him,

but the slap of wave on shore,
scorching Mediterranean sun
"riveted" to a rose,
and the voices,
always all those many voices in a poet's ear,

begging him to pause
during war
to observe the certain sway
of a tall palm tree,

a sleepy Arab garden in the harsh sunlight

recalling the house that once was ours,
that was, for a moment,
a kind of Paradise.

But dreams can sour. And wars don't simply arise.
Paradis ne pas,
but is within,
waiting to be found
beyond the pain,
the suffering
to which we are not bound,
but to which we so tenaciously cling.

Paradise, Old Tom, the
Oirish revolutionary,
liked to say,
is a sometime thing.

And Elytis, that grand land-bound sailor
of dreams, reminds: Heaven and Hell
are made of the exact same things—
confirming Lao Tzu: Success and failure
each are mother of the other.

Heraclitus: The way up is the way down.

The sea retreats; the sea swells.
We need the story that only
the going-forth can tell. We need the tale
that spins the spell that gives us
eyes to see.

Thus, we grope, talking to ourselves,
unable to find
meaning in a growing darkness
wherein no meaning lies.

The heart sees far beyond the eyes.
This is no country for this old man.
I'll not find Byzantium.

My friend Ransom, no man's
idea of a pacifist, but a medic,
a humanist nonetheless,
gets it exactly right:
Peace is not idle inaction, but
a constantly negotiated
activity—
in the home or between nations.

I negotiate this poem with my Muse.
How could it be otherwise?
Some build prisons, some
write prisons,
and call them sanctuaries.

Between Eros and Thanatos,
a moment of enlightenment,
moment of bliss
amidst the redundant thunder of unholy
Ares.

Thus the oarsmen sing
against the pull of oar in water,
back bent to the rhythm
as sails unfurl the song.

In the poem of our lives,
there are many masters,
many tongues.
The seas are mysterious, deep and wide.

We listen to the rattle of the riggings
sailing on, on,
hungry and homeless,
sailing toward oblivion,

talking to ourselves
as if it mattered,
eyes fixed
on the rising smoke of precisely what
horizon?

Achilles with his bloody hands and aching heel,
Odysseus with his ears on fire,
Dante emerging from the bowels of Hell . . .
eyes peeled

skyward . . .
each with his heroic dream of Justice,
a dream of Paradise . . .

It is the dream itself, the listening,
the going-forth, singing,
that keeps us all alive.

We go down to the sea and set sail
for a world beyond war, knowing
we will never find it. We are not heroes.
We sail the Justice and the Mercy
because these boats need rowing.

And when our boats go down—
as, surely, all boats must drown—
we will not
walk upon the water
into the open arms of the Eternal Mother/Lover,

she whom we idealize in our robes of need
as the mind turns and the heart bleeds. . .

No. Not for us, salvation.
Sustained by a few essential metaphors—
the tale, the telling,
the mind’s music, the heart’s vision . . .

we venture out, each alone, to find
that the going-forth is home.


~Sam Hamill




Sam Hamill is Director of Poets Against War. "Ars Poetica" is from a collection, Measured by Stone, to be published by Curbstone Press. A volume of his literary essays and introductions, Avocations, will be published by Red Hen Press in April.

Squeezing the Watch

"What are you squeezin' that watch for? Squeezin' that watch ain't gonna stop time."

~ 3:10 to Yuma




( I have not seen this movie, but now I'm intrigued...)

I *am* Little Red Riding Hood. Know ye not that?

I taught my first class today. Folktales: with an emphasis on Little Red Riding Hood. Also, a recap of my trip this summer. It went really well. I had lots of enthusiasm (gawd, just open a vein--has this not been in me my entire life?) and the students responded with questions and discussion afterwards.

At the end of class, an undergrad with shining eyes came up and asked me, "How can I get where you are? How do you do what you do?" And I thought, Oh my God.... She's me. I was there, I used to be there, and now I'm here...

I get so caught up looking ahead to where I want to be, I forget to look behind and see how far I've come. The forest is deep and endless and the wolves are not always what they seem...

Illustrations by Gustav Dore

Starlight, Starbright...

You know, every time I read a reviewer's complaint that a movie's plotline is too "convoluted", I begin to wonder if they all have the mental capacity of a teaspoon. Stardust was brilliantly executed, with a very straightforward plot, and, from what I can remember, follows the book closely (with only a few minor variants). Charlie Cox is charming as the young hero, Claire Danes is quite fetching as a blonde and simply can do no wrong in my book, and Michelle Pfeiffer exceeds expectations in a role that was clearly written just for her. This one has a spot reserved on my DVD shelf for sure.

Two thumbs way up!

P.S. Of course, the Number One reason to see this film is Robert De Niro! He is perfectly hilarious!

Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007)

She once described herself as a French peasant cook who drops a carrot in one pot, a piece of potato in another and an onion and a piece of meat in another.

“At dinnertime, you look and see which pot smells best and pull it forward,” she was quoted as saying in a 2001 book, “Madeleine L’Engle (Herself): Reflections on a Writing Life,” compiled by Carole F. Chase.

“The same is true with writing,” she continued. “There are several pots on my backburners.”

Her deeper thoughts on writing were deliciously mysterious. She believed that experience and knowledge are subservient to the subconscious and perhaps larger, spiritual influences.

“I think that fantasy must possess the author and simply use him,” she said in an interview with Horn Book magazine in 1983. “I know that is true of ‘A Wrinkle in Time.’ I cannot possibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice.

“It was only after it was written that I realized what some of it meant.”

(To read the rest of the NY Times article, click here.)

He'll never work in this town again!

Figures something like this would happen the year I decide to go to Burning Man.

Where's the tar and feathers? Shall we have a real Burning Man this year? What an ass! He looks so smug in his picture, too.

Two consolations:

One: Burning Man people are artistic and clever and will have a replacement up by the time I get there.

Two: Burning Man people will remember and curse his name. I'm sure he will not only be banned from the Playa for life, but he may never work in this town again.

I hope the curse nips at his heels all the way to that rock he's going to have to live under for the rest of his days.




1 Day til Burning Man