My back’s been painful all summer. Finally, after MRI and x-rays, the source has been identified, cortisone injected last Thursday, and I’m feeling much better. For now at least. But still, there’s likely going to mean some kind of surgery.
September rain, kayaks lying unused, water temp dropping by the day.
However, my theory is that not one brief and glorious Michigan summer is to be wasted. Here we are at the lake. I haven’t been able to walk on the road because it hurts. I haven’t been able to swim because it hurts. BUT I have been able to walk in the water up to my neck, using my arms in a breast stroke but keeping my feet on the sand. That’s what I’ve done. Now that summer is pretty much over and cortisone’s kind of working, I may be able to swim a little if the winter weather and water will hold off a while. We’re moving home soon.
Mushrooms! The variety is amazing this time of year. It’s what happens if the soil is left alone. These are Amanita. This variety has both delicious ones and deadly poisonous ones. Good to have my PictureThis app.
I keep writing little prose poems, but very slowly. I can’t say why one form attracts me at the moment. I realize there are lots of others who’ve turned in this direction, so it must be something in the air. The form makes me feel vaguely guilty. Too easy? Although actually I think maybe it’s a different kind of difficult. It’s harder to see what I’m doing. Furthermore, AI is nipping at my heels, wanting to tell me what I might mean. Wanting to get into my head.
I’m thinking of Robert Frost. Partly because my friend the brilliant Jennifer Steinorth just published a Substack post about Frost and University Presidents and AI. Frost’s poems seem so simple. That’s what gets them read at commencements (I’ve done it, too), to make the parents happy. The poems that don’t get read at commencement may be “too biased,” “too difficult for non-poetry readers.” If you study Frost’s poems, though, you see how entangled they are, how biased, how difficult, most of them.
The prose poems I’ve read range anywhere from shallow to rich, of course, as all poems do. It’s no big deal, just another turn on the wheel of poetic form, both to be loved and loathed. A poem has always been what the writer calls a poem. Who cares?
I asked the tree guy to leave the tall stump. And look at all the mushrooms that are enjoying it!
Back to university presidents. The object of a university is only partly to teach the truth as we seem to know it at the moment; the object is to dazzle the mind with wonder, the wonder of what’s here in the universe, what can be learned, what has been learned, to catch fire from impassioned teachers, to become iconoclasts without blowing up the world. Or if blowing up the world is necessary, at least have a human and humane replacement ready.
A tiny pencil icon doggedly follows me these days down my left margin, a reminder that AI is there to step in and help. All I have to do is say what I want it to do for me. But I have no idea, so I have to keep going on my own. That’s a difference between prose and a prose poem. Prose is generally pressing on toward the goal. A prose poem pauses in the middle of the thought and looks around, wondering how it got here, checking out the surroundings. It isn’t even sure there is a goal, but there’s a something that begins at some point to feel done.
My prize turkey tail mushroom’s been growing for years. It’s like a tough little spaceship that crashed into the side of the stump and decided to stay.
Furthermore, I’m writing fewer poems lately. It’s the surge and retreat, always there. Now that my back’s under control for now, I’m planning readings of my new book. This is the other end of things. It’s both a pain and a joy.
The P.S. . . .
You can pre-order The End of the Clockwork Universe from Carnegie Mellon U.P. right now. The pub date is Oct 7. Click on this link.