Two Poems by Lucien Stryk

For the December Red Eft video, our first guest writer is Dan’s own father, poet Lucien Stryk, who became a spiritual father to me.

I have a special feeling for “Memo to the Builder,” the first poem in this video. When I was still a teen, my mother snipped it out of 
the Chicago Tribune for me — she knew I’d love it.  And I still do.  In it, Lucien metaphorically imagines an architectural space with 
no enclosures to shut out the living world.  In the second poem, “You Must Change Your Life,” nature becomes the protagonist in 
the parable of a backyard squirrel (undistracted while fulfilling its vital needs). I find it remarkable that Lucien is able to say so much, 
so powerfully — yet in so few words — about the essence of the natural world, which, if grasped, might truly change the way 
we see it  . . .  

                                                                                                                                                                               — Suzanne

[For more about Lucien Stryk, see the bio and links below.]

"Memo to the Builder" and "You Must Change Your Life"

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

    Memo to the Builder

. . . and then

After the roof goes up

Remember to lay the eave trough

Wide and deep.  A run

For squirrels and a river

For my birds.  You know, I’d rather

You made the trough

So, than have the rooftop

Tarred and shingled.  Keep

It in mind, the trough.

Also I’m not so sure of glass

In every window.  But let that pass.

Still—and there are

Reasons enough, believe me—

It would please no end to be

In and out together.

And how it would thrill me should a bird,

Learning our secret, make a whir-

ring thoroughfare

Of a room or two.

Forget the weather.  To

Have the wild, the rare

Not only happen, mind, but

Be the normal is exactly what

I’m after.  Now

You know.  Perhaps you

Think I’ve made your job too

Light?  Good.  Throw

Caution to the beams.  Build me a home

The living day can enter, not a tomb.

   You Must Change Your Life

Of all things one might be:
a squirrel lopes by

busy at being himself

in a tough nutless world,

cats at his young, rain

slanting in his nest,

night falling, winter

not provided for—

no question to ask

of himself or anyone.

  

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

  “Memo to the Builder” and “You Must Change Your Life” were published in And Still Birds Sing: New and Collected Poems by Lucien Stryk (Swallow/Ohio University  Press, 1998).

Lucien Stryk (1924-2013) published more than thirty books over his career, both of original poetry and Far Eastern translations, including Collected Poems (Swallow / Ohio University Press), The Penguin Book of Zen Poetry (Penguin Books, London), and Of Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho (Penguin).  He also won numerous awards and honors, such as a Ford Foundation Fellowship, Illinois Author of the Year, and a Rockefeller Foundation award.  In 2009, the American Literary Translators Association announced the inaugural Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize, in honor of his admired collections of Zen Buddhist literature. 

For more about the Lucien Stryk, visit Dan’s article about his father at: http://www.connotationpress.com/featured-artist/november-2010/628-emeritus-artist-lucien-stryk

A Shuffling of Layers

The longer I live, the more I realize that I’ve merely glimpsed into the layers of the natural world around me.  For this reason 

I was drawn to create a visual response to Dan's own thoughts about this concept in his poem "Layers."

                                                                                                                                                                     — Suzanne

"Layers"
 


_________________________________________________________________________________

Layers

              In the spirit

             of E. O. Wilson  

A buried secret that I’ve

stumbled on below life’s

muzzy noisiness and

haste, distracted hours

of too-often-blustery

day:  there’s something

lurking silent under

every mundane layer,

waiting to arrest

the jaded eye . . .

                      I  watch

the thrasher picking

through the gravel

near our shed, wonder

what’s beneath the

thrasher’s layer?  I

        probe into its puffed

cream belly underneath

brown quills.  Find

one large beetle,

gleaming.  But now

I wonder

        what’s beneath

the beetle’s chitin

layer?  I’ve poked

beneath that layer

once before . . .

                         to light

upon the milk pearl

of a maggot!

                    I’ve

come to call life’s

  MYSTERY

“a shuffling of 

     layers.”

                                        

_________________________________________________________________________________

                                        

An early version of  “Layers” was published in The Mississippi Review (University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg).  

Homage to Appalachia

This new video attempts to express our wistful homage to Appalachia.  Dan and I have lived here among the Blue Ridge Mountains 

longer than in any other place — so long now that we no longer feel like outlanders from the flatlands of the Midwest!

But to create this film, I needed some authentic barn imagery.  So I asked Bristol artist Val Lyle — admired for her own exhibits paying 

homage to the tobacco barns of Appalachia — for permission to use two of her paintings that appear in the second segment of the video, 

after my own mountain and cicada images.    

                                                                                                                                                                                          --Suzanne

[To learn more about Val, visit  www.vglyle.com]

"Appalachian Spirit"

          

_________________________________________________________________________________

   Appalachian Spirit

   Strolling parched hills
    in late August

        I come upon husks

                           of cicadas . . .

                    Past molting

       they cling hollow to the scaly

            bark of pines;

      shaped like

empty alms bowls,

            those bowed & brittle

ghost-spoors

      that once bore

      the secret of  

      flight.

                  

Life’s fragile pulse

allures me

          all the time.

                         It beckons

             like abandoned shacks

of lost tobacco-farms

passed on the

                        Interstate,

     slumped by their rust-

     crowned barns . . .

                   so tranquil now

            & timeless,

like the rest of the world

unfolding

            before it falls

                              away.

                                    Southwest Virginia

 _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Appalachian Spirit” was first published (under the title “Fading Spirits”) in the Appalachian Journal [ASU], Boone, NC.  

The present version is forthcoming in Back to the Source: Selected Poems & Parables (San Francisco Bay Press, 2015).

Monkeys and a Millipede

Monkeys and a millipede — these are the chattering and quiet characters in Dan’s suggestive poem, “Earthworks.”
(Chattering or quiet . . . reminiscent of another species?)  When creating the video, I chose also to contrast
our pristine planet, as seen from space, with the scrambling life upon it.  And, yes, if you sense a resemblance,
my painting of the millipede in the transparent sphere was inspired by the haunting globe image in Bosch’s
Garden of Earthly Delights.
                                                                                                                                                  -- Suzanne

"Earthworks"      



_________________________________________________________________________________
   

  Earthworks

Staring from the moon

in dream,

                I watched

small monkeys hopping

from close

         cavities: faster,

slower, dragging

         their thick brooms

         over dry

sands . . .

              but

in late evening

light,

        beyond their hunched

        & bickering                                                           

return

in one great

swarm, the planet

              now grown

         calm —

                     I saw

a single giant

millipede,

         shell vibrant

mustard/black,

              crawl out

from the moist

hollow

of its hidden

rock

              to sweep

        with silent feet

along the

moss

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

                          “Earthworks” was published in the Winter 2009 issue of the Notre Dame Review.

Lions and Doves

Our first video in this post arose from the poem “Sketching the Assyrian Reliefs, with My Wife, at the British Museum.”  Let me just say that
each time Dan and I stand before those ancient lion-hunt friezes, we wonder: How could an artist have sculpted these exquisitely sensitive images
of such a brutal ritual of slaughter? This paradox says so much about that haunting dichotomy of human nature.

I chose the second poem for our companion video before fully realizing how much it balanced the violent mood of Assyrian Lions. In his
“Moore’s Doves” piece Dan sees some local birds in a fresh light after contemplating Henry Moore’s sculptures — bringing to mind Oscar Wilde’s
quip that “nature imitates art.” And isn't it true that what we perceive in art museums so often influences our vision of the natural world?
Another paradox in our human experience . . .                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    — Suzanne
                                                                                                                                               


"Sketching the Assyrian Reliefs, with My Wife, at the British Museum"
                                                                                                                           

"Moore's Doves"
                                                                                           

_________________________________________________________________________________




                                Sketching the Assyrian Reliefs, with

                                   My Wife, at the British Museum

                                         

                                    Were it not mere alabaster, hewn

                                      the better portion of 3000

                                        civilizing years, the Dying Lioness

                                         of Nimrud, writhing in the grey

                                          spew of an archer’s flank-sprung

                                           shaft, would continue,

                                             year on year, to writhe

                                              on the black friezes

                                                of tossed sleep, to nudge

                                                 with her bruised snout

                                                   and dark closed eyes

                                                    into our dreams, like

                                                      painful words

                                                       that sputter eons to rekindle

                                                        in the corners of

                                                         the mind, like hunters’ fires

                                                          verging on our harmless

                                                           seekers’ lives — stalking

                                                            the beautiful, found rarely,

                                                             never uncombined

                                                              with pain.

                   Moore’s Doves

                                   IN MEM. Henry Moore (1898-1986)

         Soft sculpture of the morning.  Sunlight rose on their swollen breasts,

                  where they roost on the hard blackness of the power

                        lines.  Coo gently as we pace upon our 

          early walk, beneath.  Who says an artist's vision, true enough,

                 can't change the living world — the way, forever after,

                        that we see: merging craft with blood's

          warm living pulse?  Round soft breasts, like Moore’s globed forms,

                 against the rising light.  Or like Cycladic women, small

                       heads & rounded bosoms — tiny fecund

          sculpture, in glass cases, that he surely saw, as we had, in the British

                 Museum halls.  And thought, as we, how they’d reminded

                       him — beyond their ancient lore — of sun-tinged

          hills / or the soft breasts of cooing doves / before the rush of day.


_________________________________________________________________________

*“Sketching the Assyrian Reliefs, with / My Wife, at the British Museum” first appeared in the literary journal, Epoch (Cornell University Press), and later in Dan’s
first full-length volume of poems, The Artist and the Crow (Purdue University Press)  //  “Moore’s Doves” first appeared in the final issue of the Massachusetts journal 
Diner, and was later reprinted in the International Poetry Review (UNC, Greensboro) in its original form.  This revised version will appear, alongside “Assyrian Reliefs,”
 in Back to the Source: Selected Poems & Parables [San Francisco Bay Press, 2018]. 

We Find a Spotted Salamander . . .

Welcome to Red Eft Editions!  We've chosen this logo for our venture in mixed-media collaboration because the Red Eft (or Eastern Newt) has long intrigued us with its ability to pursue a uniquely “double-life” on land and beneath the water.  So in our own pursuit of artistic adaptation in the digital age, we’re here presenting our personal blend of naturalistic poetry and painting in the contemporary “habitat” of the internet.

Here, then, is our first video-collaboration inspired by the visual wonder and moving fate of another member of the salamander world, the Spotted — a local
species we've ritually walked to witness mating in our flashlight beam, on those first warm nights of February rain, in a neighbor’s temporary pond.   

We Find a Spotted Salamander, Drowned . . .

                               Before you praise Spring’s advent note

                               What capers the mad wind may cut:

                               To cast the flowers to the waves

                               And overturn the fishing boat.

                                                                      — Tu Fu

We find a spotted salamander

                                           drowned

in violent storm the night before,

                                   tail stiffly poking

from its matted bier of risen silt

          and weed.

                              Odd surprise to spot

her rubbery coldness—there:   

                          in the vernal pool

we walk to on spring evenings

       to observe new life.

                                         Now rake

       its bloated corpse to pondside

with a fallen branch

               through sable sheets

       of floating scum — in the twilit

glimmer of the stirred-up pond —

                              to probe its fate

       more closely.  Amazed

by the luminous stream of eggs

                                 still oozing 

       from her birth canal

              and clustered round her limp

back legs and slate-blue tail,

                                     like perseids

      bejeweling the numbed heavens

after chaos.

*An earlier version appeared in Dimming Radiance: Poems and Prose Parables

[Wind Publications, 2008]  //  The present version is forthcoming in Back to the Source: 

Selected Poems & Parables (1980-2013)  [San Francisco Bay Press, 2015]