Poetry Centered

Alison Hawthorne Deming: The Big Story of Life on Earth

July 01, 2020 University of Arizona Poetry Center Season 1 Episode 1
Poetry Centered
Alison Hawthorne Deming: The Big Story of Life on Earth
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Alison Hawthorne Deming introduces recordings of Diane Ackerman reading a love poem for an extraterrestrial (“Ode to the Alien”), Cornelius Eady choosing gratitude as a response to anger and racial discrimination (“Gratitude”), and N. Scott Momaday describing a memorable encounter with Georgia O’Keeffe (“Forms of the Earth at Abiquiu”). Deming also reads a new poem written during this time of quarantine and isolation, “Territory Drive,” originally published at Terrain.org.

Listen to the full recordings of Ackerman, Eady, and Momaday reading for the Poetry Center on Voca:
Diane Ackerman (1985)
Cornelius Eady (1991)
N. Scott Momaday (1992)

You can also find readings by Alison Hawthorne Deming on Voca, including her most recent, which was given as part of our Climate Change & Poetry series in 2017. 

Julie Swarstad Johnson:

You're listening to Poetry Centered, where we invite a guest poet to dive into Voca, the University of Arizona Poetry Center's online, audiovisual archive. Our guest poet selects three poems to share, and we round out the episode by having the guest read a poem of their own. In today's episode, we hear from poet and essayist, Alison Hawthorne Deming. Her most recent book of poetry is Stairway to Heaven. A Regents' Professor and Agnese Nelms Haury Chair of Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona, Deming served as the director of the Poetry Center from 1990 to 2000, and she continues to be a great friend and supporter. She joins us today from her home in Tucson, where she shares poems by Diane Ackerman, Cornelius Eady, and N. Scott Momaday. She closes the episode with"Territory Drive," a powerful new poem written in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Alison Hawthorne Deming:

Hello, this is Alison Deming in Tucson, Arizona. I've always loved this poem"Ode to the Alien" by Diane Ackerman. And I think as the 50th anniversary of Earth Day is upon us. It's a good time to revisit this poem. She read it during her visit here on November 20th, 1985. Of course, since that time, Ackerman has become well known and loved both as a poet and as a writer of prose, her novel, the Zookeeper's Wife and her wonderful prose books, the Natural History of the Senses and the Human Age. This poem addressing the extraterrestrial does one of the things I love poetry to do: that is, it takes on the big story of life on earth. And she does it by weaving her scientific learning together with her keen lyrical sensibility and her absolutely perspicacious use of language. Here, the story of life on earth becomes almost intimate, even though the story is millennia long. And she weaves in both cultural and natural history in understanding our place in the story of life on earth. I think it's a wonderful poem and I think it's a poem that we can enjoy now, when we're considering where we are in this story and where we want ourselves to be. And of course the ode is, as she says, a kind of love story, and perhaps this is a very good place to start. So here is Diane Ackerman reading"Ode to the Alien."

Diane Ackerman:

I'm going to read you one more poem. This is an old fashioned love ode. It happens to be to an extraterrestrial, the only usual element in it. I was asked to do it by a friend and this turned out to be quite a challenging poem to write for a descriptive poet. I have no idea what this extraterrestrial is going to look like. So instead I decided that I would write a poem really to all things in life that are alien. And as you'll discover the extraterrestrial in the poem and all alien things is addressed as beast. And I think in part that's because I assume whatever this entity will look like, it will appear beastly to us as we will appear beastly to it. And probably also, because I've seen Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, that film, 11 times: often enough to be able to read the Latin on the back of the Beast's chair, which says,"all men are beasts when they don't have love." Ode to the Alien. Beast, I've known you in all love's countries. In a baby's face knotted like walnut meat. In the crippled obbligato of a polio stricken friend. In my father's eyes, pouchy as two marsupials. In the grizzly radiance of a winter sunset. In my lover's arm veined like the Blue Ridge Mountains. To me, you are beautiful until proven ugly. Anyway, I'm no cosmic royalty either. I'm a bastard of matter descended from countless rapes and invasions of cell upon cell upon cell. I crawled out of slime. I swung through the jungles of Madagascar. I drew wildebeest on the caves at Lascaux. I lived a grim life hunting peccary and maize in some godforsaken mudhole in the veldt. I may squeal from the pointy terror of a wasp or shun the breezy rhetoric of a fire, but whatever your form, gait or healing, you are no beast to me. I who am less than a heart flutter from the brute. I who have been beastly so long. Like me, you are that pool of quicksilver in the mist, fluid shimmery fleeing called life. And life full of pratfall and poise, life where a bit of frost one morning can turn barbed wire into a string of stars. Life aromatic with red hot pizazz drumming, ha-cha-cha through every blurt, nub, sag, pang, twitch, war, bloom of it. Life is unlikely as a pelican or a thunderclap. Life's our tour of duty on our far flung planets, our cage, our dole, our reverie. Have you arts? Do waves dash over your brain like tide rip along a rocky coast? Does your moon slide into the night's back pocket just full when it begins to wane? So that all joy seems interim. Are you flummoxed by that mill pond deep within the atom rippling out to every star? Even if your blood is quarried, I pray you well and hope my prayer your tonic. I sit at my desk now like a tiny proprietor, a cottage industry in every cell. Diversity is my middle name. My blood runs laps. I doubt yours does, but we share an abstract fever called thought, a common swelter of a sun. So beast, pause a moment. You are welcome here. I am life, and life loves life.

Alison Hawthorne Deming:

This is the poet Cornelius Eady reading"Gratitude" from his visit to the Poetry Center on November 6th, 1991. The poem comes from his collection, The Gathering of My Name, that was published in that same year. And you'll hear in it, not only the beginning of the rise of his voice as speaking for the role of a social poet and particularly the role of an African American as a social poet, but you'll also hear his love of music with refrain lines that keep inserting themselves in the poem as if he's somewhat wonderstruck with his own awareness of his situation as an African American poet. I also am struck by the poem because I happen to have had the very good fortune to travel with Cornelius in Brazil in 2012 on a visit to three Brazilian cities with some American writers sponsored by the International Writing Program that is directed by Christopher Merrill. And while we were giving readings at many venues and somewhat exhausted, most of our crew would hang out in the hotel lobby, having caipirinhas and in general, just enjoying a little bit of leisure time in the somewhat demanding work schedule. Cornelius was often a little late arriving to these groups and the last one to arrive as our drivers came to take us out to our venues. And we were kind of wondering, gee, I hope he doesn't feel left out, or maybe he's tired from the long travel and whatnot. Well, by the end of our tour, we came to find out that all of that time when Cornelius was sequestered in his room, he was composing and recording songs on his laptop, which became a collection from the tour in Brazil. So, he was incredibly generative and very quiet about the wonderful work that he was doing. One of those songs in fact is titled Alison and it was based on my rash decision one evening after most of the customers had left the hotel bar to sit at the piano and play my jazz version of"Summertime." So I have great gratitude to Cornelius for writing that song. The interesting thing about the poem,"Gratitude," being read to these Brazilian audiences, was it helped to foreground for me the history that we as North Americans shared with the Brazilians in the long history of the enslavement of Africans that went on for centuries. Of course, most people will be aware that Brazil was one of the hubs, maybe near 4 million Africans brought to Brazil to be enslaved. And in this poem, you'll hear the wonder to be on the other side of that history, despite the perils, that still trouble our racially divided societies. And you'll also hear this spirit that the title suggests of gratitude as one to lead us forward. So here is Cornelius Eady reading"Gratitude."

Cornelius Eady:

This is from The Gathering of My Name. And these poems are again dealing with the idea of becoming, becoming more conscious of yourself as a black writer, but also as, as the idea of, I think it more, be more to the point, might be the idea of a question between the, your responsibility as a poet to your community, or maybe, maybe even through another way of putting it is the idea of, the idea that the responsibility of the social poet, which we don't seem to have that much anymore. We, or maybe if we do have this and it doesn't let, be paid much attention to. So this poem was, this first poem I'm about to read is about a lot of stuff. It's about the idea of, your idea of, of identity is also about, deeper way of, when you get to a certain point, being able to look back and see how other people look at you, but you weren't really paying attention to, luckily because they weren't expecting much. So, and also the idea of saying thanks because, I know you have to do that. It's necessary. This is called"Gratitude." I'm here to tell you an old story. This appears to be my work. I live in the world, walk the streets of New York, this dear city. I want to tell you, I'm 36 years old. I have lived in and against my blood. I want to tell you, I am grateful because after all I am a black American poet, I'm 36 and no one has to tell me about luck. I mean, after a reading, someone asked me once, if you weren't doing this, what, if anything, would you be doing? And I didn't say what we both understood. I'm a black American male. I own this particular story on this particular street at this particular moment. This appears to be my work. I'm 36 years old. And all I have to do is repeat what I notice over and over. All I have to do is remember. And to the famous poet who thinks literature holds no small musics, love. And to the publishers who believe in their marrow that there's no profit on the fringes, love. And of those who need the promise of wind, the sound of branches stirring beneath the line, here is another environment poised to open. Everyone reminds me what an amazing odyssey I'm undertaking, as well they should. After all, I'm a black American poet. And my greatest weakness is an inability to sustain rage. Who knows what will happen next. This appears to be one for the books. If you train your ears for what's unstated beneath the congratulations, that silence is my story, the pure celebration and shock of my face, defying its gravity, so to speak. I claim this tiny glee, not just for myself, but for my parents who shook their heads. I'm older now than my father was when he had me, which is no big deal, except I have personal knowledge of the wind that tilts the head back. And I claim this loose seed in the air glee on behalf of the social studies teacher I had in the 10th grade, a real bastard who took me aside after class, the afternoon he heard I was leaving for a private school just to let me know he expected me to drown out there. That I held the knowledge of the drowned man, the regret of ruined flesh in my eyes, which was fair enough, except I believe I've been teaching far longer now than he had that day. And I know the blessing of a narrow escape, and I claim this rooster, pull down morning glee on behalf of anyone who saw me coming and said, yes, even when I was loud, cocky, insecure, even when all they could have seen was the promise of a germ. Even when it meant yielding ground. I am a bit older than they were when I walked into that room or class or party. And I understand the value of the unstated push. A lucky man gets to sing his name. I have survived long enough to tell a bit of an old story. And to those who defend poetry against all foreign tongues, love. And to those who believe a dropped clause signifies encroachment, love. And to the bullies who need the musty air of the clubhouse all to themselves, I am a brick in a house that is being built around your house. I'm 36 years old, a black American poet. Nearly all the things that weren't supposed to occur has happened anyway. And I have a natural inability to sustain rage, despite the evidence. I have proof and a job that comes as simple to me as breathing.

Alison Hawthorne Deming:

This poem is by N. Scott Momaday, the Kiowa novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet. It's entitled"Forms of the Earth at Abiquiu." He read it during his visit here on March 30th, 1992. Momaday, of course, is beloved as a novelist of the book House Made of Dawn. Also the memoir, The Names, many other works crossing, many genres. He's been honored with some of our highest recognitions, a Pulitzer Prize for House Made of Dawn, the National Medal of the Arts for his work in the preservation of indigenous oral and art culture. The great thing about the archive is not only that we get to hear the poems that our visitors read over the years, but we also get to hear their, in some cases, astonishing storytelling abilities. In this case, you will wait quite a while to get to Momaday's poem, but you will not be disappointed because this poem is based on his first visit to the painter Georgia O'Keeffe at her home in Abiquiu, New Mexico. And here with that voice of Momaday's, that is so rich and deep it sounds like it comes from the depths of the earth. You will hear the oral tradition being brought to life in the introduction of his poem. So here is N. Scott Momaday reading and introducing"Forms of the Earth at Abiquiu."

N. Scott Momaday:

This poem that I would like to read you is entitled"Forms of the Earth at Abiquiu." And I wrote it, several years ago. And I have to, I have to tell you a little bit about it. It is, it is dedicated to Georgia O'Keeffe, and, I met George O'Keeffe in the very early seventies. It was like 1971 or 72. I was living in Santa Fe and I admired her work very much. Still do. And so I drove up, you know, full of, I was nervous to, to, oh she's a great, great woman, great painter. One of the great artists of our time. And I was so nervous about meeting her. I went up and knocked on her door at Abiquiu and she opened the door. She was dressed in a tuxedo. Her hair was swept severely back, even as mine is tonight. And, she had these wonderful big artist's hands. She was very beautiful and she invited me into her house and we sat in the, in the living room, which was like a museum. She was doing her so-called rock paintings at the time. So she had rock paintings on the wall and she showed me the fireplace, which she had built with her own hands. And she, there were window boxes filled with stones. She loved rocks, and she liked to go out into the river beds and pick up stones. And she filled window boxes with them. There were, bones, of course she loved bones. And so there were the skeletons, the skulls of cows and sheep and everything like that. There was a snake, the skeleton of a snake in a glass box. And so I was admiring all of this and we were talking, and after about 30 minutes, Georgia O'Keeffe realized that she had neglected to offer me refreshment. So she got very fidgety and she said, Oh, I'm so, I'm so sorry. I've been, I've been remiss. What would you like to drink? And I, I couldn't have cared less. I was having, you know, a wonderful time and I said, Oh, I'm fine, please. But she persisted, you know? And she said, no, no, you must, you must have something to drink. And, so finally I said, well, I'll have a scotch and soda. And so she nodded with satisfaction and she left the room. She went out in the direction of the kitchen and she did not return.

Audience:

[laughter]

N. Scott Momaday:

And I waited.

Audience:

[ laughter]

N. Scott Momaday:

And I waited and I waited and I became extremely uncomfortable. She was already well into her eighties and I thought, Oh dear, Is she in trouble? Should I, should I go and investigate? Or should I stay here? You know, and wait. And then to make matters worse, there came this din from the kitchen, like the clanging of pots and pans banging metal on metal, you know, and it, I didn't know what to think of this. And I was extremely uncomfortable and, you know, I began to, then she returned at long last, but she was more flustered than ever. And she said, Oh dear, it's my maid's day off. And I don't know what she did with the key to the liquor pantry. And I was so relieved to see her that, you know, I said, Oh, please, it doesn't matter. Please don't go to any more trouble. I'm fine. Let's resume our conversation. And so, but that old, that 80 year old woman had got it into her mind that I was going to have a drink. And to my distress, she excused herself again.

Audience:

[ laughter]

N. Scott Momaday:

She went out in the direction of the kitchen and she did not return.

Audience:

[ laughter]

N. Scott Momaday:

And I waited and I waited and I waited and again, the din, the banging of pots and pans, noises that I cannot describe to you. And by that time, I had developed a tick under, under this eye. Beads of blood began to appear, appeared on my forehead. You know, I was a wreck, a nervous wreck. And I wanted just to leave. I wanted to die.

Audience:

[ laughter]

N. Scott Momaday:

Whereupon Georgia O'Keeffe returned with my drink on a silver tray. And it turns out that this 80 odd year old woman, and this is true, had taken the pantry doors off, at the hinges

Audience:

[ laughter]

N. Scott Momaday:

With a screwdriver

Audience:

[ laughter]

N. Scott Momaday:

And I visited her several times after that, those meetings were not nearly so excrutiatingly painful, but, I had to write a poem of course, and dedicated to Georgia O'Keeffe. And so I read it to you. By the way, another footnote is that when she died, on the day she died, I was giving a reading at Bucknell University and I had this poem. And so I was able to read it as a kind of a commemoration, which was a thing of which I'm grateful, for which I'm grateful. It's called"Forms of the Earth at Abiquiu." I imagine the time of our meeting, there among the forms of the earth at Abiquiu. And other times that followed from the one. An easy conjugation of stories, and late luncheons of wine and cheese. All around, there were beautiful objects, clean and precise in their beauty like bone. Indeed, bone, a snake in the filaments of bone, the skulls of cows and sheep, and the many smooth stones in the window, in the flat winter light were beautiful. I wanted to feel the sun in the stones. The ashen far flung winter sun. Then in those days, too, I made you the gift of a small, brown stone. And you described it with the tips of your fingers and knew at once that it was beautiful. At once, accordingly, you knew, as you knew the forms of the earth at Abiquiu. That time involves them and they bear away. Beautiful, various, remote, in failing light, and the coming of cold.

Alison Hawthorne Deming:

This is a new poem of mine written during this period of our pandemic isolation. And I felt the need to try to mark the experience of this strange, strange time. And it begins with an inspiration from A. R. Ammons and the poem of his,"Corsons Inlet," which is about taking a walk as is this poem. I've also been reading a lot of 20th century poetry this spring as part of a graduate workshop in poetry writing and those words and rhythms have put little nuggets in my brain. And several of those will show up in the poem. You might notice a little nod toward George Oppen, one toward William Carlos Williams, and one toward Richard Wilbur. But, you may not. And in either case, the poem is called"Territory Drive." I went for a walk again today over the hilly street bordering my subdivision. Went a mile to where the street splits, then climbed to where the median strip shelters brittlebush and penstemon in wild bloom. And there where the road split, I was relieved of commodity and commerce. As the street was relieved of our customary speed to get somewhere. The air was mild, the sun sharp, desert light intense as is my isolation made requisite by a being, or is it a non-being, dispersing in the global humanosphere. Non cellular, non metabolic, unable to grow or replicate without a host. Crumbled bunch of twine, oily membrane, protein spikes that velcro to human lungs. The virus needs us and we, the numerous, comply. Or not walking alone, noting pleasures in the familiar that we had once found abroad. Lyon's silk looms, the Alhambra's heavenly garden of Islam, Delphi's mystic air. Now it's mica flecks in roadside gravel, little stars in the firmament of what keeps us grounded when the angst makes us spin. I don't know how to speak of grief. I feel the floor break open beneath my feet, fall into abysms of the unthinkable, just imagining my daughter, my grandsons. But seeing the semis lined with quick built wooden shelving stacked with white wrapped corpses, the sheen and contour of the shrouds, I force myself to write, learning to see each one of them as among my beloveds, each word, an act of defiance against the unspeakable. I walked out and returned. The phainopepla churring from atop the leafless mesquite, fearless in its black satin cammo. Matchtip flames, atop ocotillos, the yard man loading his trailer with pulled weeds, ring of shovel, scraping dirt. Then heart swelling at scent of orange blossoms, neurologic memo, to the sense of smell, a paean to hope that my body, my brain can still equate with spring and all, while the neighborhood contracts behind disinfected doors, and we winter ourselves, keeping the difficult distance.

Julie Swarstad Johnson:

Poetry Centered is a project of the University of Arizona Poetry Center, home to a world class library collection of more than 80,000 items related to contemporary poetry in English and English translation. Located on the campus of the University of Arizona in Tucson, the Poetry Center library and buildings are housed on the indigenous homelands of the Tohono O'odham people. Poetry Centered is supported by the work of

Diana Marie Delgado:

Diana Marie Delgado

Tyler Meier:

Tyler Meier

Julie Swarstad Johnson:

And I'm your producer, Julie Swarstad Johnson. Explore Voca, the Poetry Center's audiovisual archive online at voca.arizona.edu

Introduction
Diane Ackerman's "Ode to the Alien"
Cornelius Eady's "Gratitude"
N. Scott Momaday's "Forms of the Earth at Abiquiu"
Alison Hawthorne Deming reads "Territory Drive"