Once more unto the breach...

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, 
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'
                                                         …Henry V, Act III

 

   All-grown-up Prince Hal/King Henry a Jersey guy?  Well, not at all, really.  I chose this passage today because it's about being brave, trying the same thing again and hoping for a victory this time, and heading the call to "follow your spirit."  On this wet and wintry day on what were once the fields of Middlesex, I am seated across from my own Agincourt, a populated box as active as Harfleur and just as daunting. I am trying, as overwhelmed as I am by the great numbers of other writers, the lousy weather, the lack of respect I have been shown lately, and the great many St. Crispian's Days I have passed,  to be a writer.  
     I used to tell my students that the only difference between them and writers was that writers actually wrote something.  Neil Gaiman, it seems, would agree.  Now it is time for me to face that fact myself.
     So, I am a Jersey Writer, too.  I will still report to you about the great work of the great writers from our great state, but I will also keep you informed about the writing process as I go through it myself.  "It's never too late to be what you might have been."  I will also return to my "Today's Writing Prompt" element .  I hope that they help you to think and make you read and write.  First word of advice?  Don't think so much that you forget to write anything!

Today's Writing Prompt:

We are being visited by various mushy forms of snow, sleet, and rain here in the Garden State.  It's nothing like e.e. cummings' "mud-luscious" and "puddle-wonderful" spring day.  Write a short poem in which you play around with the word slush.  (Is it a noun or a verb?  A command?  What does the dictionary say? ) Send me your poem with an image attached.

Keep reading and writing, my band of brothers,

Maureen 

Jersey Boys in All Four Seasons: New Books by BJ Ward and Joe Weil

287 was the long road to the newspaper plant
   my black-handed father would ride beneath
the weight of a night sky.
   A father who works the night shift
knows that weight, how it accumulates from within
   when his mistakes and debt
begin to press on his children and wife.
   And so went his life --

If the stars spelled out something real,
   they might spell the equation
that my father never mastered --
   the news that just ran through his hands
and what slid there left a black residue
   of the world's doings, pressed knowledge
that read like misaligned tea leaves in his hardening palms,
   and in his life line and heart line and other lines
that would normally speak a fortune,
   the night just accumulated itself --
the little sky he would spread over us
   when the world redelivered him in the morning.

…The Star-Ledger in Jackleg Opera by BJ Ward, Asbury, NJ

To be all by yourself in a diner, to stare into the coffee cup and watch the milk disperse, to hear your own spoon scraping the bottom of the cup…Poetry is nowhere near as beautiful as the sound of that spoon.  That's why I keep writing it - ambition.

…Ars Poetica from Nine Diner Poems in The Great Grandmother Light by Joe Weil, Elizabeth, NJ

The two beautiful new collections by BJ Ward and Joe Weil elevate the commonplace, writers running their hands lovingly along the banisters of our experience here in New Jersey.

   Ward's high school poem The Fury, in which "good boys do bad things just not to be good," pretty much spells it out for those of us who were never quite "sprung from cages on Highway 9" or 18 or 17, the compliant kids who became practical adults.  We all get ushered back into the building by some Cerberus after our brief flings.  To Ward, Shakespeare is a waiter in a lonely diner, waiting for his shift to end; a writer with a chthonic grin (I had to look it up for my own sake so I figured, well…); and the cause of a celebratory dance with a teacher.  There are lots of classrooms, roads, diners, highways and factories in Ward's observations, places where loss is contemplated, where knowledge grabs students, and the mundane threatens to grab us all.  Like Billy Collins, he contemplates having sex with Emily Dickinson, while his wife, in the poem, parries that fantasy with some literal drum-banging by Robert Bly.  Lots of allusions there, all of them rolling around with good humor.  (Who knew Wild Nights - Wild Nights! could be such a call to arms?)

   When Joe Weil was a teenager, he ate four new potatoes with butter and pepper and salt off the blade of his Swiss army knife, and read William Carlos Williams in the early morning hours, alone, in his kitchen in Elizabeth.  He fooled around with the tattered linoleum on the floor (Do kids even know what that is today?) and was perfectly content.  Now, Weil is encouraged, comforted, and energized by the "pleasing sound of a vacuum releasing" as he opens a jar of pickles - the sound, the smell, the quiet, the aloneness temporarily warding off "the next ho hum" "at three in the morning, when everything is merciless" "against the scarred linoleum."  Would Williams demand so much of plums?  In this collection, Weil walks through such a series of devastating losses that he becomes unused to "things that stay," retaining his confidence in the commonplace, the small things that make the big ones less scary.  So much depends on them.

So, look, while everybody else at the beach, around the pool, or in your living room is transfixed by their eye-phones (bad pun,) take this chance to read and re-read some of these poems in which you will find yourself, your dad, your wife, a waitress, or some other real people.

Keep reading and writing,

Maureen

Put Your Makeup On. Fix Your Hair Up Pretty. And Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City

Now our luck may have died and our love may be cold
But with you forever I'll stay
We're goin out where the sand's turnin to gold
Put on your stockins baby, `cause the night's getting cold
And maybe everything dies, baby, that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back

Now, I been lookin for a job, but it's hard to find
Down here it's just winners and losers and don't
Get caught on the wrong side of that line
Well, I'm tired of comin out on the losin end
So, honey, last night I met this guy and I'm gonna
Do a little favor for him

…from Atlantic City by Bruce Springsteen, Freehold

     American Hustle?  I think not.  This film has Jersey Hustle as it rises from the boards in Atlantic City, loiters in the lobby of Convention Hall, and hangs out on the corners of Camden.  Despite a constellation of stars, a cornucopia of glitz, and a gaggle of Diane Von Furstenburg wrap dresses, the movie is at its heart one that poses what we in education like to call an "essential question":  Can we still like/support/vote for a politician who skims a bit off the top for himself while letting the remainder go to benefit the people of New Jersey?

     Can somebody just a little bit crooked be a public servant?  It's a Jersey question for the ages as we consider the type of guys we want pontificating under that golden dome in Trenton or shaking hands on our town's Facebook homepage.
Since 1582, the term quid pro quo has meant "something for something."  You know, "you do for me, I'll do for you."  It's a dilemma - a problem whose solution causes another problem.  We can give our politicos "a taste," as Silvio Dante might say,  without corrupting a nice, clean deal for the state's benefit.  This theory very far is not far from Steven Covey's plan for each of us to build an emotional bank account except that it's a bit greener and comes with a condo in Boca (wherever that is.)  It is the basis of the corporate system which, increasingly, we are told should be the model for our public  servants.
For me, the most interesting character in American Hustle was Mayor Carmine Polito (really, far too easy a name for a politician,) a front for real Camden Mayor Angelo Errichetti who was arrested in 1978 in the Abscam (Abdul-Scam) debacle that caught up some congressmen, locals, and  even a U.S. senator.  The movie story plays him a bit sympathetically and lets him off easier in the end than real life did.  This character played by Jeremy Renner of The Hurt Locker, makes us confront our state's ambivalence about getting the bad guys who are really "our guys."  Remember Bill Musto in Union City?  My family loved that guy.
     The central ideas of this smart movie are varied, but this is the one that I related to.  In New Jersey, we often expect the extended hand to be fill with cash, not camaraderie. That's how it works.  Skim, but don't let your peeps sit for too long on the GW Bridge.  Maybe that's the unspoken rule that was broken last week.  Take a little bit for yourself, but don't take sides against the family.

Keep reading and writing,

Maureen

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields were glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

…To an Athlete Dying Young by A. E. Houseman

A sad poem, a bright memory for Nicole and Jeff, who remain eternal champions and beloved friends, teammates, students, and family members.  

We join ourselves to you in love and open-heartedness.  

We remember your joy.

A Clawing Winter...

ON THE WATER

the breeze
sweeps the surface,
and ripples a buoyant man’s neck.

His hairs begin to bristle,
every current chills him gently.
The cyan clarity reflects only the sun.

Leaves of amber and fulvous
meld cohesive piles
sprinkled with slits from autumn rains.

Tree’s fallen branches
man’s stroking arms
limbs float over the foam

the gust
abrades the surface,
and stings a surprised man’s shoulders.

A clawing winter challenges,
A short tranquil autumn

The water churns.

...Samuel Berzok, East Brunswick in the Tufts Daily Observer

You may think this is a poem, but it's really my first grandchild.  My son Sam composed this during his initial semester at Tufts University in Medford, MA when he was a member of the Tufts Crew Team.  Sending one's firstborn off to college is a magical, sad, wonderful, scary thing.  We are all a bit out to sea and just getting used to our new way of being a family.  Sam is right.  This winter has been clawing, and the tranquility of autumn ended with Sandy here in New Jersey.  As in this poem, first a breeze, then a gust carries us across the churning water. 

This poem recalls a simpler time, though that time was only five months ago.  We think that we can control everything, but we can't.  Seasons change; storms come.  All we can do is keep rowing.

Remember it's still Lent.  Let's reflect on what we do.

Keep reading and writing,

Maureen

Live from New Brunswick via Santo Domingo...

"The thing is, that particular bit of stupidity had been over for months. Me and Magda were on an upswing. We weren't as distant as we'd been the winter I was cheating. The freeze was over. She was coming over to my place and instead of us hanging with my knucklehead boys—me smoking, her bored out of her skull—we were seeing movies. Driving out to different places to eat. Even caught a play at the Crossroads and I took her picture with some bigwig black playwrights, pictures where she's smiling so much you'd think her wide-ass mouth was going to unhinge. We were a couple again. Visiting each other's family on the weekends. Eating breakfast at diners hours before anybody else was up, rummaging through the New Brunswick library together, the one Carnegie built with his guilt money. A nice rhythm we had going. But then the Letter hits like a Star Trek grenade and detonates everything, past, present, future. Suddenly her folks want to kill me. It don't matter that I helped them with their taxes two years running or that I mow their lawn. Her father, who used to treat me like his hijo, calls me an asshole on the phone, sounds like he's strangling himself with the cord. You no deserve I speak to you in Spanish, he says. I see one of Magda's girlfriends at the Woodbridge mall—Claribel, the ecuatoriana with the biology degree and the chinita eyes—and she treats me like I ate somebody's favorite kid."

   ...excerpt from This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz, New Brunswick

We are among the fortunate few in central New Jersey who have electricity, so we will not be done out of our annual viewing of It's the Great Pumpkin. Charlie Brown.  We have our own great, befanged  punkin in the window, displacing our own beagle and smiling down on the neighborhood.  Kids ar playing board games at "the big table," leftovers are languishing on the counter, and I am lurking here with you in cyberspace.  However, yet you think all is lost to the dark side, I finished a book today.  This was not an easy task, as it was preceded by a dozen glossy magazines about proper mascara application, recipes for chicken "sliders," and directions for managing stress.  Wanna know a bit about it?
This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz!  Hooray!  Central Jersey and Boston and "the island!"  What could be better?   Sad short stories written in Diaz's unique voice about the many ways to, well, lose her, whether you want to or not.  The best is the final tale The Cheater's Guide to Love, which I originally read in The New Yorker, about the one that got away, the one that meant something, the relationship you screwed up totally.
Diaz, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao ( which I have read three times) and the collection of short stories Drown,  sets his characters in Elizabeth, Sayreville, Union City, and Paterson, as well as the student haunts at Rutgers and Harvard.  They are, nonetheless, deeply rooted in the DR, in the Bani', the land of Trujillo and memory.  The characters move fluidly among the stories, some rising out of Oscar Wao.  However, not all "Mamis"are the same.  The one who survives the story Invierno is my favorite, reminding me of Janey in Bruce Springsteen's Spare Parts.
Get this one and go back to your immigrant mind, the one that is still conscious of race and just where you rate in society, no matter how many friends at Harvard you have.  Go back and examine just how you lost her or him or them or your opportunity.  Start reading and writing again.

Best to all down the shore and in the streets of New Jersey,

Maureen

Oh, Sandy... The tree lay down on the garage roof and stretched, You have your heaven, it said, go to it. ..."The Hurricane" by William Carlos Williams, Rutherford A sinister little poem about consciousness.  Tough times in New Jersey today. The sun just came out here briefly. You don't know what you've got till it's gone. Keep reading and writing, Maureen