End of year
I do a winter cleaning of the last poems about fall
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Today, December 21, is the solstice. Took awhile getting here.
Solstice
Today the shortest day, Tonight the longest night, The fulcrum of the year. Poised now to wind The long spiral into spring When all will be equal, Gray graduated to green. The sun rises late. The sun sets too early. Stars sparkle on the snow. Goodby to the last full moon. Winter sits like a hen On the nest of the season. Twelve days of Christmas Suddenly, it’s Epiphany. As the days trend longer, The hens roost early.
Last moon of the year
A few days ago, the moon, one day waning from full, appeared in the window above my desk. I live surrounded by buildings and seldom see the moon, so the moon’s unexpected appearance was a delightful surprise.
Big anniversary
Last Thursday, December 19, Robert and I celebrated our 20th anniversary. Both our mothers attended the brief ceremony in our living room on Main Street in 2004. They were such different women, Fran Jaffe effusive and engaging, my mother measured and reserved.
About writing
As the year ends—and as I anticipate my 75th birthday on January 1—I’ve gathered some ideas about writing.
Learning
I learn many things every day. Life continuously tosses me experiences—like balls of various sizes—and I try to catch them all. Many times, I fumble.
Regardless, learning happens. Sometimes it’s a response to stimuli. For instance, I learn to love or fear the dog that lunges against its leash, yearning to explore—what?—the way I smell?
What we learn might be gleaned from reading, or watching television, or conversing with a stranger at a bus stop.
Experience teaches us valuable lessons: Wear a warmer coat as the weather turns. Keep buying that delicious coffee from Kenya. Don’t linger on pavement that’s dotted with bird poop.
On our own
Some of the best lessons we learn from ourselves. Our interior lives change and grow continually, and each stimulus brings forth a unique response.
Words from others, kind or cutting, penetrate my psyche, puncture my ego. I can cower when I hear them, or they may inspire me to fight back. Or to accept, to enquire, to explore. This is learning.
Memory is a teacher and a reminder. I smell Elmer’s Glue-All and am transported back to second grade. I remember the peculiar smell of the mud flats of the Minnesota River, also from childhood.
We learn from everything that happens to us or around us. Our little antennae quiver with excitement. Learning is, after all, fun.
Creativity
My favorite way of describing the creative process is “oblique.” I celebrate the oblique idea that wings in at an angle, crashing into my work. It destroys the pattern, the grid. Then the shards reform, and the result is fresh and new.
Oblique ideas and theories are everywhere. Invite them in. Embrace chaos. Relax into creativity. Allow the paintbrush to wobble, the pen to make a blot. Sew the collar on backward. Try adding cardamom.
Goodbye to ideas
Creativity calls on imagination, but that is not enough. It also requires heart and integrity. Understanding. Compassion. Discernment.
Images and ideas appear, and we use them or we let them go.
I’m at the point in my life where I have to let ideas go. I have many notebooks full of ideas, many of them dutifully entered in the index at the front. And there they sit, unused, forgotten. Because I can’t get to everything.
When I read, books or email, newspapers or Substacks, I encounter a roiling cloud of ideas. They batter my defenses. Sometimes I’ll take a break and try to absorb them. I might even meditate. Or I keep reading, and the ideas fade away.
Ideas like little soldiers Ready to march into battle. Wartime is in the wings, Most of the time. I’ll muster the soldiers. But later.
Randomness
Sometimes, when I’m stuck for inspiration, I’ll try word association. I string together words, each one leading to the next, trying for fresh connections. Off the top of my head, like this sequence: Kind, kindness, kid, kid gloves, groves, genies, genuine, gamine, bambino. Don’t like those words? Try again. Eventually, some word will strike the singing bowl, and the vibrations will entrain, and the new idea will coalesce.
Creativity can be frightening, I don’t know where my thoughts come from. But I do know that the ones that make me uncomfortable are the most valuable.
Those are the keepers.
Fun with lyrics
A correspondent tried to tell me in an email last year that the proper term for the words of a single song is “lyric,” not “lyrics.” The dictionary says go either way, with “lyrics” the more common usage.
A popular lyric(s) this time of year is “The Twelve Days* of Christmas.” You know, the one that starts: “The first day of Christmas,* my true love gave to me. . . .” and continues to pile on the presents for the next 12 days.
*Just a reminder that Christmas Day is not the twelfth day of Christmas. It’s the first. The twelfth day is January 6, the feast of the Epiphany, celebrating the arrival of the three wise men.
I wrote a new set of verses to this song that highlight some of my favorite things. Rather than bore you with repetition, here’s the final verse:
Fran’s Christmas song
On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Twelve new song lyrics, Eleven prefect paperbacks Ten simple recipes Nine new beginnings Eight harpsichordists Seven single ladies Six cappuccinos Five hum bao Four suits of cards Three flying fish Two chopsticks . . . And a partridge in a pear tree. I couldn't improve on that last line.
Now, you’re up
Coming up with fresh words was easy and fun. Maybe you’d like to try. Just remember that Day Five has the different rhythm: five go-old rings (not “golden” rings. Golden rings are gold-colored, not made of pure metal).
The bells tell
Another favorite Christmas song is “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” The words are from a poem, “Christmas Bells,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
With January 20 looming, the third verse (of the song; the sixth stanza of Longfellow’s poem) resonates:
And in despair I bowed my head; “There is no peace on earth,” I said; “For hate is strong, And mocks the song Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
There are two tunes for this song, one of them made popular by Bing Crosby in the 1950s. I like the earlier version, “Waltham,” written by John Baptiste Calkin in the mid-19th century. A sweet version of it played on a ukulele on YouTube. Sorry I couldn’t embed it here.
Writing in rhythm
I wrote a autumnal poem about elm branches. It was in dactyls, my usual rhythm. So, to shake things up a bit, I wrote another in trochee, a form I neglected when I wrote several poems for “Lovely Meters and Meter” on October 19, 2024.
Here’s the poem in dactyls (long short short)
Elm branches
They are the last to be barren. Clutching their leaves to the end. Yellow now, drained of all chlorophyll Ready to die—but not yet. Street sweepers erase all the fallen Leaves that have fluttered to earth. Stubbornly struck to the branches, Those left fight the wind, fight the cold. Every day shorter now, rushing Toward winter solstice, the day Earth shudders into a new season. Fresh light for soon-budding leaves.
And here’s the one in trochee (long short)
New meter
Never will I ever write a poem In a foot as foreign as this one. Speech does not fall easy in this rhythm One more line and then I think I’m done. That was kind of fun, writing in trochee Let’s see if I can write another verse. Stanza, no. That word would turn to iambs This poem’s fit only for the trochee-verse.
Here’s an excerpt from a better poem written in trochaic rhythm:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. . . . I have to stop now. There may be a raven outside my door.
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Smells of the season
Lists like this have been done, of course, but here are the ones I notice most:
Cinnamon and other spices
The snappy scent of cold snow
Wet wool
Wet dog
Pine resin
Roasting holiday meats
Women wearing too much perfume at holiday concerts
What did I miss?
Form and pattern
My friend Bill MacKenzie has noticed how important photos are to me, and he says my work inspired him to share this image. I hope you will take a moment to appreciate the loveliness of the mushroom. Leaves, trunk, lichen, gills—so many patterns to explore.
—30—
Until next week
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Thank you for looking at things the way you do. Insofar as the tune Waltham goes, I can well imagine that you know another text married to it: "Fling out the banner." There have been more random mentions of Longfellow's verse this year than I can ever recall, which is indicative of the times we live in. Mom was a fan of Longfellow. And, as my mother would said, Happy Christmas.
Loved this post, especially your notes on creativity. Thank you!