Quanta, and theories, and quarks; Oh My!

These words might be the emphatic exclamations of an excited quantum physicist; they are not, however, the first words that one would necessarily use to describe the beauty of Linnéa Spransy’s work. But quantum physics and the many invisible processes of the cosmos are key to unlocking the aesthetic of her paintings.

"Ignition." Acrylic on canvas. 60.25” x 28.25".

Spransy, who received her MFA from Yale, is fascinated with the invisible structures and organizational forces of the cosmos with regard to both microcosm and macrocosm. She utilizes these structural principles in the creation of her work, applying a set of rules as a pattern that she follows from start to finish.

Like meter to the poet however, these self-mandated principles only heighten, rather than stifle, Spransy’s creativity. To Spransy the world offers chaotic, organic patterns; principles by which ferns unfurl, cells multiply and atoms hold together. These principles cannot allow one to predict how her paintings will form. By following the pattern back to its origin, however one can begin to see the underlying structure and intuitive logic of the artist. Spransy’s resulting paintings live not only in their brilliant hues and dynamic shapes but, more importantly, in their organically patterned constructs of pigment and form.

When I experience Spransy’s work, I am struck by the compelling beauty of her created systems. This is the true gift of any great artist: the ability to transport the viewer into a new existence. When I was an undergrad studying English literature, I can remember how the mere sound of Wallace Stevens’ poetry drew me in to the imagery of his work. To me, there is no cooler phrase ever constructed in the English language than, possibly, “concupiscent curds.”

I am similarly drawn into Spransy’s worlds through her organic shapes and bold color relationships, but the real heart and meat of her works cannot be appreciated from a distance. I had to get closer in to see the rich varieties, agglomerations and strata that had (from a distance) made up my initial impression of her work.

If viewing from a distance delighted my aesthetic sense, then viewing up close became nourishment to my soul. What appears up close is both foreign and yet intimately familiar. On one level the close-up view can be compared to a living coral reef or to various nebulae which are beamed to us from the lenses of the Hubble Telescope. At their edges, Spransy’s multi-layered forms flow and bob like the billowing tentacles of a jellyfish. Moving inward the lines and shapes combine into integrated structures like the plaited sinew of muscle.

"Halcyon Trace" (Germination Cycle III). Acrylic on canvas. 5 ' x 5'.

At the core of her work there exists a cosmic history; evidence of the endless cycles of matter and energy as they are dynamically stratified, obliterated and reformed. The scars of one catastrophe and the death of one system yield an organic adaptation of the initial pattern as the cosmos fights against entropy and cessation. Through the fractured microcosms of her patterned structures we are able to get an impression of some greater truth. We are not part of a decaying or failing system, though obviously there is decay and systemic failure. We are, instead, denizens of a world that continually presses toward some broken wholeness; a wholeness forged from the indomitable processes of adaptation.

The broken wholeness of her work transcends the abstract forms that live on her canvases. In many ways her works are true abstractions, drawing the essences of the cosmos into tangible and even beautiful formations. The grace of this world is captured by her paint, which contributes to a new understanding of our frail but tenaciously gifted existence. I would hope that any passing quantum physicist would surely take note of her work and in doing so, recognize some of the invisible forces that make up life, the universe and, well…everything!

Take a few moments to view Spransy’s work online or even, maybe, visit an actual exhibition. She will be exhibiting at Byron Cohen Gallery in Kansas City in June. The exhibition, Constructional Law, opens on the 1st.

I have included images of her work in this post, and her laborious painting process is captured in the video below. The piece depicted in the video is the namesake of this post, “Plancks Mechanical Gut.” It directly references the influence of quantum physics on her work. Also, it is just cool to watch.

Enjoy!

We’ve done a variety of fiction (including some classics and some experimental modern fiction), with some nonfiction thrown in (including last month’s downright mind-blowing Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, which you should immediately go get your hands on). This coming month, we’re breaking into the realm of fantasy with George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones.

And yet. In the months leading up to National Poetry Month (April), I tried in vain to convince our group to try a book of poetry. I felt confident that I could select a book of poetry that would be accessible enough for those who are timid in approaching it, yet intricate enough to satisfy, well, me. No dice. They’ve given a strong “maybe” to the idea of doing a graphic novel one month, but poetry was a pretty firm “I don’t think so.”

What is it about poetry that people find so intimidating? Is it the fear of not “getting it”? Of seeming foolish by missing some grand poetic insight that only those in the know can grasp? In my writing group, the fiction writers are sometimes reticent to share their thoughts on a poem since they themselves aren’t poets, yet the poets are usually filled with ideas for their short stories.

I find it interesting that poetry as a genre scares so many people, despite the strong poetic nature of some literary fiction, and the fact that some great works were written as poems (The Odyssey, for one). Through Knopf’s Poem-A-Day newsletter (which runs every April), I recently discovered James Merrill’s acclaimed The Changing Light at Sandover, a 560-page epic poem/memoir, which intrigues me in its genre-bending. The genre line blurs often with poetry. At a recent meeting of my writing group, we discussed what distinguishes a prose poem from prose or poetry (there’s no easy answer to this since everyone’s idea of what constitutes poetry varies greatly, line breaks being the one major feature). And of course, there’s been much publicity in recent years about the fuzzy line between the areas of nonfiction and fiction (most notably with A Million Little Pieces).

At a reading by Neil Gaiman—who has written teen books, adult books, graphic novels, children’s books, and television and movie scripts—the author was asked how he decides on his audience. He replied that he doesn’t. He simply writes and later lets his publisher decide who it is for. I think this is also an interesting way to approach genre—more as a marketing tool than as a strict framework. Certainly some genres have strong distinguishing characteristics, but it’s a shame that those guidelines become rigid boundaries outside of which some readers are wary to stray.

My husband has recently resurrected his love of comic books and graphic novels and has been amassing them as quickly as he can devour them. Breaking into this genre has not only revealed to him a new slew of reading material, it has also opened up a community of people (from the comic shop owner with whom he’s now on a first-name basis to the message board geeks and reviewers), as well as myriad new media (“best of” lists, podcasts, conventions, and reading devices). And yet, with all that is insular in this genre, it is inextricably linked to other genres. Numerous novels have been rendered in graphic form, and some graphic novels are downright poetic (including the gruesome passages by Rorschach in The Watchmen: “Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach.”).

National Poetry Month has come to a close, and yet I’d love to follow up on its aim “to increase the visibility and availability of poetry in popular culture while acknowledging and celebrating poetry’s ability to sustain itself in the many places where it is practiced and appreciated.” I’d encourage readers to use this season of rebirth to branch out from their usual reading habits and try a new genre. It doesn’t have to be poetry, but if you choose to jump in, let me make some recommendations. For smart, funny poetry, Donkey Gospel by Tony Hoagland. For narrative poetry filled with strong imagery, Native Guard, by Natasha Trethewey and Luck is Luck by Lucia Perillo. For poetry filled with pop culture references that is heart-breaking at times and always amazing, Notes for my Body Double by Paul Guest. And of course, for lovely lyrical ruminations, look no further than the judge of our 2012 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Contest, Li-Young Lee (check out Book of My Nights). (Leave a comment with your own suggestions, or if you’d like me to send you some more.)

So don’t be timid in dipping your toes into the pools of another genre. Come on in—the water’s fine.

He came in a rush—my wife and I at a Cinco de Mayo party despite her two days of sporadic, not-too-intense contractions. She ate tacos. Everyone looked at her belly and cooed. She retreated every ten minutes to contract, then returned for juice and chips.
We got home, took a bath, and then the water broke. The contractions quickened and she hurt. We rushed from the room to the car to the hospital, and although we’d been preparing for months, it all felt desperate.
But the boy arrived! A healthy heart, still hiccupping.

Then I imagined that green radar arm swinging from a center point over our block, our half-gentrified square of mismatched people, picking up all the blips of our neighbors and friends and their heartbeats.

I perfected the football hold and took the boy on a walk resting on my forearm.
And Margaret from across the street saw me and yelled, “Is that a real baby?” I said, “Yes mam, the real deal and only five days old.” I saw her face ignite. I walked over to her, our seldom seen neighbor who was dying from leukemia. She looked over the boy, pulled at his blanket, and said, “I was just saved by a baby’s umbilical cord. From the cells.”
“A new beginning!” I said.
“That’s what’s on my license plate!” she said. “New Beginning!”
I left her beaming and rounded the corner, where I saw Yolanda on her porch. Yolanda’s father had ceased to speak and was preparing to die. I gave her the baby so she could hold him and feel him against her chest. She wept.
“I needed this today,” she said. “Gracias. Life is so . . .”
“Cyclical?”
“Yes, cyclical,” she said.

And that night the Azalea Festival. I heard the booming of fireworks from inside. I went out to the street and looked behind me and there was Miss Geneslee, our neighbor, who had lived in that southern city her whole almost-a-hundred years, who had survived in that place, and the fireworks boomed and flashed and she said, “Whoeee, they sure did start earlier this year than last.” And then she said, “I can’t see them as good now. Looks like the trees have grown.”
The rain started to come down. It was cold. The trees were so tall.
She said, “Whoeee, I’m gonna go up on the porch and watch from there,” and then lightning came and shot through all the fireworks.

A hundred years ago innocent black people in Wilmington, North Carolina were mowed down with a Gatlin gun. Bang bang bang. The only successful coup—led by trigger-happy white supremacists trying to make a national point—in the history of the American experiment.
The gun was the only narrative Miss Genelsee grew up with. The white folks? Most didn’t like to talk about it.
Our son was born there. I used to feel his hiccups against my skin through his mom’s skin in the middle of the night.

“I just don’t remember those trees being so tall,” she yelled, and I said yes ma’am.
And then there was a finale. It boomed through our neighborhood. Miss Genelsee said, “That one was pretty,” and the fireworks flashed green in the rain, bang bang bang.

Rationally, I know this understanding of God is messed up, but I also know this thrum of terror defining my relationship to the Divine is not unusual to me.

For this reason alone, I found Doug Frank’s A Gentler God to be a transformative reading experience. Frank, a faculty member at the Oregon Extension (located near Ashland, Oregon), sets out to reclaim God’s image from evangelicals who, over the last century especially, constructed the character of an angry father God, bent on making His naughty children obey.

The first part of Frank’s book traces the history of this image’s creation. Frank explores the “defining story” in evangelicalism: that is, our sins are so grave, God cannot forgive us unless someone else dies from them. This petulant God demands blood, the payment for our horrible sins only possible by killing someone. “The story achieves its power, in part, by sheer repetition,” Frank writes, and retains its power because we don’t take the time to really hear what the story says, about the character of God, of Jesus, of our selves.

A Gentler God sets out to deconstruct this defining story, and does so successfully. Frank examines the historical contexts in which the salvation story gained prominence, showing how twentieth-century evangelicals used the image of an angry father God to advance their own mission—and were used by the image as a reflection of their own troubled relationships with distant fathers. Frank also dismantles the defining story, revealing its inconsistencies, as well as the ways this constructed image of God and Jesus contradicts the character of Jesus found in the Bible.

From there, Frank sets about to tell a different story about God, one founded not on God’s desire to “create, control, and destroy,” but on a God whose essence is love and who wants to be in relationship with us, rather than judging us from a detached Almighty throne. Frank uses the life and ministry of Jesus in the gospels as his guide, convincingly arguing that Jesus was not crucified to bear God’s punishment, but to share in our own human brokenness. A Gentler God also shows what might happen to our selves when we choose to believe this biblical narrative, rather than embracing the drumbeat of evangelicalism’s defining story and its grumpy Father.

Reading Frank’s book, I realize how entrenched that defining story is—so entrenched, in fact, that accepting Frank’s alternative message might be difficult. Frank’s own life narrative, a significant part of his book, suggests it is possible to reject the defining story for something else, an image of God that provides freedom and joy, rather than fear and self-loathing.

Frank’s personal stories are an essential part of his work, and are far more compelling than the many footnotes that pull away from his narrative’s trajectory. I must admit I finally gave up reading the footnotes; while interesting and informative, they seemed a distraction to Frank’s main argument.

It’s clear, though—from the footnotes, the personal stories, the inclusion of literary examples, the book itself—that Frank has an appreciation for story, and for the power of story to shape our understanding of the world. Hopefully, the story Frank values, the story of A Gentler God, will find traction in faith communities, where an angry God has reigned for far too long.

A Gentler God: Breaking Free of the Almighty in the Company of a Human Jesus, by Doug Frank
(Menangle, Australia: Albatross Books, 2010).

RM: Tell us a little bit about your story, your writing, and your new project, Antler.

DH: First, let me say thanks to Ruminate for their interest in my little project, but most of all for making a much-needed space where seekers can come to ‘chew on faith, life and art’—I’m glad to have such pleasant ties with what I think is one of the best darn lit mags out there. Ruminate is sleek, readable, and challenging in all the right ways!

In my own life, I’ve been writing seriously for almost a decade, been teaching a little longer, and have always been attracted to poetry, prose, and practices that traverse the strange territory between faith and imagination—I’m interested in how people of faith use their language to open the door to the divine. But I think there’s a little more to that ancient practice than entering into the presence of the divinity, and the Christian faith has its own unique revelation for this.

For me, I’m trying to be still long enough for the opposite to happen. Daily contemplation and writing practice, prayer, and peace-making—all things that underscore our humble place in God’s world—invite us to that space where the divine’s presence already is in this world; I want to awaken to the reality that God’s language has come into the very moments in which we’re all being.

It’s very elusive, but worthwhile—it’s these practices I want to teach my children and students to engage, and ones that I’m hoping to engage when I sit down to write each morning. Sometimes I come close to something like it, I think, but mostly I just try to.

RM: So, then, where did you first see a real need for imagination and creativity in the religious communities you participated in?

DH: My perception in all this was and is something not so much seen acutely but perceived—invisible forces setting a compass needle spinning. But I’m also operating under the assumption that my needle is close to calibrated, and that’s iffy. To preface: I don’t have the answers, but am in a seeking posture, which means I’m working toward them. Though it pragmatically means I often turn out more questions than answers—tough break for me and a few others that might look to me for them, like students.

I see many contemporary-mainstream churches utilizing art that might be communal in scope but can’t be easily practiced alone, or even wholeheartedly as a group. Many—maybe most?—people can’t sing, paint, or play an instrument. It’s good to participate in these things as best you can, but that’s almost always felt passive to me. I don’t think I’m alone in this.

But language is the most common thread we share, and I think the task of a seeking believer is to be attentive to that language: our words are the best tools we have for writing the narratives or reciting the poems of our lives. You’re the only one with your voice, and I’d like to hear the timbre and pitch of that unique song directly, not just as a sound along with other sounds. And I’m less concerned with quality than honesty, though I know not everyone is.

The other issue—which I think is more serious—is that, often in the Church, art is only valuable as a tool for evangelism or expressing the power and grace of God, which is sad to me. Not the power and grace bit, but the only valuable bit. This kind of uncomplicatedness frightens me a bit because it lacks honesty and exploration.

It seems to me that collective, contemporary worship practices often leave out some important things that are strewn over the passages of the Bible, like asking tough questions, communal lament, direct address, or earnest doubt—all things a faithful seeker needs. In this way, art is being used by the Church rather than in the Church, or even as the Church.

Enter the idea and experiment of Antler (and sacred collisions!)—a teaching and resource platform aiming to help people interested in this intersection of faith and imagination find it, cultivate it, and allow it to change their lives and communities.

The organization offers web content I hope will become a resource for people of faith with a creative bent and I facilitate on-site workshops or private consultation to communities and individuals interested in using creative writing as a devotional practice for spiritual growth or formation. I love teaching people to dive into their natural talents with language and asking questions about our spiritual nature—giving them permission to allow their faith and imagination to collide.

RM: Along those same lines what was your “sacred collision between faith and imagination”? Why place creative writing at the center of your new organization?

DH: Thinking about, writing about, and trying to understand the Incarnation has been a sacred collision for me. I wonder what the implications of such a provocative claim should be to me on a daily basis—somehow ‘sin less’ seems crass and vague. I don’t think the Incarnation is ever about resisting, but about adding to, making new. I also don’t think it’s tough to see that Incarnation is ultimately an act of divine creativity—God revised in a concrete way.

I wonder how seriously I can take the Incarnation if I’m not willing to allow creative practice to shape my own life. So I go about the activities of my day after I’ve spent a bit of the morning in focused time of writing—making my words onto the flesh of paper. The more I practice, the more I see the world alive. And that vision gives me a joyful shiver. Because I’m in the world, I can make things come into the world out of the fragments of me I’m trying to understand. We can add to the world by creating—make it more rich, bring together all the pieces. We can all do it.

I wanted to create a platform that marries my interests, skills, and potential with the same qualities I believe all people have within. I’ve taught in a variety of settings and have had students of all walks of life and age. And I’ve noticed a trend: the practice of writing changes people. Engaging in creating something—even something very simple or small—marks a shift and ushers in something new.

RM: How do these creative endeavors deepen contemplative efforts and “flesh out” faith?

DH: Perspectives evolve. I started to see a real need for a fleshing out of faith as I had children, I think. So many things about your world change when kids enter it. I started to see how much my kids—who are just 11 months apart—desired intentionality, not just attention. Maybe that’s a good definition of what poetry is to me in some ways.

In my daily writing—often while the kiddos are sitting at the table with me doodling in their journals—I started to see that there was a time in my life (when I was a child) where there were no accidents, or maybe better said, where every accident opened to something new; where every accident made something very real and very beautiful, only by the fact that it existed and I had made it. My kids have shown me that business of being a child-like is making the loveliest mess you can make. And I think that same principle applies to creating.

In my own faith, I think I’m starting to see that God doesn’t come to do something as simple as fix the little messes we’ve made—God comes to shepherd that mess into something complete, which is different than perfection, or even wholeness. And there’s more to the Christ story than just “getting saved,” though redemption is a huge part of the narrative. But if we leave it at that, we’re utilitarian to a fault, childishly self-centered, and blindly simplistic. For me, the get-saved scenario allows too much room for neglect of the world that “God so loves” and often lacks the compassionate intention I feel I’m called to cultivate from the everyday.

RM: What does that say about creative practice as a whole for you?

DH: God coming into the world has implications of revision that move beyond our individualized experience and affect our lives together in community—people should ‘get saved’ so the human community might be affected by faith, hope, and charity, not so that they can simply join Christianity and enjoy some perks. God is in the serious business of revision by helping us to re-vision the world toward something complete. To paraphrase a Saint—God won’t change the world without us.

For me, poetry is the best way to awaken to the divinity that’s both inside and around us and to prepare my spirit to bring God’s Word into the world—not in an imperialistic or combative fashion, but by way of seeking peace.

I guess—and I know there’s been lots of clamor about this lately—the upshot is that I’m just not certain that we have to wait for Heaven, that it can’t be quietly trumpeted into this world, into this moment, beginning with our everyday actions. I want a faith that isn’t just about the future, or the after-life, but also about the present, and the now-life. And even if Heaven can’t be brought here and is in the future, I feel called to make the most of what God has made in this world, not the ever-distant next one. “The Kingdom of God is at hand” might just be a reference to holding a pen…

RM: “Today outside your prison I stand / and rattle my walking stick: Prisoners, listen; / you have relatives outside. And there are / thousands of ways to escape.” are the opening lines from William Stafford’s “A Message from the Wanderer,” which inspired the name ‘Antler’. These lines bring the promise of expanded horizons alive.  What is your challenge to those communities who have not yet started exploring the intersection of faith and imagination?  How do you encourage people for whom this is unfamiliar ground?

DH: William Stafford—my favorite poet, the poet who first opened my eyes to the potential of my own words—was a practitioner of writing every day. All people should do that, I think—how much more interesting the world would be, and peaceful?

I’ve adopted the same practice. I write about anything and everything—nothing gets left out, no matter how strange it seems. Geez, if you could see my journals… Almost every one of my little entries is 98% ephemeral crap and 2% interesting or remotely usable—not great percentages. Yours will be the same—it doesn’t matter; do it any way. And do it every day. And do it for about 20-30 minutes.

Often I hear people will say that they’re unsure of their abilities or don’t know where to begin. Stafford was also known for saying “lower your standards”—and that’s some of the most freeing advice you’ll ever hear. What you write each day doesn’t have to look or be “good,” it just has to be you—true to who and what you’re trying to be.

Need ideas? Here are some things you could do during writing time with low standards and nearly nothing to lose—pick a new one every morning: “journal”; describe what’s directly in front of you or out the window; describe anything near you using all five senses; make and tinker with a poem; rewrite something you wrote the day before, add and subtract; write down a memory from childhood, a family story, or a dream you’ve had; account for your experience over the past 24 hours; write down and answer questions you’ve been thinking about; write in the voice of someone else you know or have known and give yourself advice; go outside and sit in the same place several days in a row and write down the things you see—how does the world look different?; reflect and pray, be specific; write reflections on what you’re reading; write down something you overheard said and give it a back-story; rewrite poems, quotes, or anything that strikes, irritates, or astonishes you. That should give you a good head start. Email me directly if you want more to do or have questions!

Next, get with others in your faith community on Sunday morning and try something different. Instead of the traditional Sunday School lesson, come together for a workshop—read aloud and discuss what you’ve written in the previous week. How are you starting to see a small change in your spiritual life from these intentional creative practices? Heck, get together after your church service and use the verses from the service as a springboard for creative and reflective writing. Sit down and write for 20 minutes then share what you’ve written on the spot—no vacillating. Do creative writing exercises together. Make together. Nothing binds a community together like making something and sharing it. Again, if you want specific ideas, don’t hesitate to email me.

Most of all, remember that writing is quiet, intentional, and patient work. But it’s work where nothing is ever wasted. Everything you put down has some value, something to offer—everything gives some small redemption. Even if it just proclaims a way into the next moment of realization.

Dave Harrity is an author and teacher living in Kentucky. His next book, due out this fall from Seedbed, is Making Manifest: Everyday Incarnation, a book of devotional meditations and writing exercises for personal and communal creative writing practice. He’s also the author of the chapbook Morning and What Has Come Since which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, a Kentucky Literary Award, and the Conference on Christianity and Literature’s Book-of-the-Year Citation in 2007. The founder of Antler, a teaching and resource platform devoted to instructing people in religious communities how to use creative writing as a devotional practice for spiritual growth and formation, he travels the country conducting workshops about the intersection of faith and imagination. He lives in Louisville with his wife Amanda, and their children Emmalynne and Elias. Connect with him directly at thisisantler.com, on Twitter, or via email.

“Mohawk comes / like blackbirds at dawn” begins “Poem for the Undead,” first in Daniel Bowman, Jr.’s A Plum Tree in Leatherstocking Country. “Weaves itself / into itself / like twisted weeping willow,” the poem continues, “face delicate / curled as ivy.”

If in the silken eeriness of the poem’s heavily enjambed lines you sense something of American myth and folklore, then you are not far from the source of the poems and the poet: the Mohawk River Valley, Upstate New York.

The way the presence “Mohawk” enters the poems bears traces of Hawthorne’s ghost tales and legends of the Catskill Mountains, like “some small creature hit / and left for dead / gray eyes fixed.” Evocative of a folkloric presence rather than a specific geographic site, Mohawk “bites the hills / like a river” (emphasis mine)—and lastly

smokes like your kin
at the diner in the gorge,
hunched over ham and potatoes,
hidden like shadows
on back roads,
Mohawk comes.

A Plum Tree is filled with the appearance and disappearance of mist, comfort foods, bridges and canals, the fall and winter months, cities (Cincinnati, Chicago, Manhattan)—but it is also visited by an intangible ghostliness and poems that defy a simple materialism, poems like “Walking Through the Dream of a Stranger” and “Your Room,” “The Kings of the Valley” and “The Girl and the Hill.” These poems walk through reality and back out again—on the other side of the diner is a dreamy world with unfolding potential, dimensions.

Part of the excitement of Bowman’s collection is the sheer homeyness of the poetry’s more concrete aspects paired with lines investigating spiritual realities, as in the poem “December in Middle America,” where the narrator explains

Just before Christmas
in blue and red
there’s a moment
when my soul knows perfectly
its own emptiness.
That the last shall be the first
and the first, last is no matter:
I smell hot rolls and coffee,
and do not long for the shore.

That the soul’s “own emptiness” can be known “perfectly” in December, in Middle America! Such is the capacity of Bowman’s poetry. Neither do you feel, as the poem’s reader, that the hot rolls and coffee are a compensation for the shore, but rather an extension of that shore—the roll called not only up yonder, but here. As in the poem “Monkey Bars” that concludes: “I’m here. / You can tell by / the breadcrumbs on the cutting board,” the speaker’s being is confirmed by attention paid to “the things of the world” (to quote Augustine and Richard Wilbur).

This is also a book of poetry for lovers of walking, and Bowman’s poems repeatedly discover themselves and their surrounding either by foot (or car, or train) or by dreams (or both at once), which may provide one answer for the appearance of the four haiku (by Basho, Bakusui, Onitsua, and Issa) at the beginning of each divide in A Plum Tree. The dreamy, snapshot quality of the haiku provides a complementary tone for the walking, dreaming poet—the poet who, in “Till Spring Comes,” urges the reader to “Stay by the window,” looking out at the world. The landscape is both outward and inward: what can be physically seen beyond the window, and what the speaker sees without the aid of sight: “Our eyes must close / like church doors / so the fractious sun / can drink us.”

But A Plum Tree is true and fair, and looks around at the entire world at hand, not only the sunlight and November as it “straddles the plum-black fields” (“The Wait”). As in “Somewhere in Chicago, Sometime in the Fall,” where the poem’s subject, drunk and abandoned by his cheating girlfriend,

…kicks a garbage can
in an empty street
but it’s plastic and the sound
doesn’t satisfy.
He vomits hot dogs
into a storm drain;
he rips a poster
off a telephone pole and wipes his face,
caring nothing for advertisement.

By the rich recognition of a pitiful situation, and the real weight of the descriptions—the hollowness of the garbage can, the last meal of hotdogs—Bowman earns the heavier lyric of the poem “Night Walking, Seattle” that opens with the speaker’s observation “Church bells / drunk with grace / cut the spring moon.”  There is both the everyday drunk and the spiritual drunk in A Plum Tree, the hot rolls and coffee beside the recognition of “the shore.” However grounded in Tuesday pot roasts and baseball the poems at moments may be, they are equally involved with mystical presence, from grace, to ghosts, to the Mohawk. And such an awareness moves the poems in A Plum Tree away from artificial categorizations and into a poetics that can admit “This place is a longing” (from “Late September, Rochester”), the poems and poet open to relationship with physical space as well as with something else entirely.

A Plum Tree in Leatherstocking Country.
By Daniel Bowman, Jr.
VAC Press, 2012

Ruminate has always been a labor of love for everyone involved. However, our talented contributors are responsible for the meaningful content in our magazine, and we want to support them for their work! In the fall of 2011, we began paying our contributors $5 per page. That was a start, but it is certainly not what the work is worth, and we are committed to growing that payment.

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Ten days (I kid you not) after my first child was born, I received a phone call from a press to whom, several months prior, I’d submitted my second poetry manuscript.

We’d like to publish your book!

I remember exactly where I sat, outside on the back porch, eating dinner provided by a family from church. It felt pleasant, even dreamy, garnered no less by the small boy I held, his head in my elbow and his lips puckering even in sleep, the salad someone else’s hands had tossed, kindness beside the cucumbers and cherry tomatoes in a bowl, and, of course, early summer’s dusk in Michigan.

I’d sent this manuscript out for three years, been a finalist 22 times, been rejected a good hundred, spent at least a thousand dollars in contest fees and postage; as it goes in poetry, a prize-winning first book had not helped procure a publisher for the second. How grateful I was, then, for this press to give me a chance, to put their good name behind my book, to print the pages and pages of my poetry. Someone, somewhere believed in my work: what a hardy shot in the arm.

Yet the joy I felt most deeply had little to do with getting my foot in the great, dark door of the literary market. I was a mama. I had a baby. By far, he was my best “publication” to date. [Gratuitous side note: I find the baby-book-birthing comparison frustrating in its inaccuracy. Truly, not much makes them analogous, given that the real work of writing a book happens before it is published and the real work of having a baby happens after she is born; too, their labor and delivery processes are separate planets altogether. Ask a woman, any woman, who has done both.] Perhaps part of what brought me such quiet satisfaction was sensing I had entered a new season. I did not know then how thoroughgoing, that my writing regime might not ever look the same again, that my priorities would, like a commercial airliner, never lift off without this new passenger aboard to alter and shimmy the destination(s). I did not dread this, but my spirit understood without fully understanding: it was, indeed, a different season.

Add this to the mix: months earlier I’d made a pact that if I could get this second book of poetry published, I’d allow myself some good and unhurried time to write short fiction, which I’d abandoned during graduate school and the few years after, as, respectively, my progress through the program and “establishing” myself was reliant on (rather feverishly) writing and publishing poetry. In the small ways my situation as a first-time mother (and adjunct professor—we’ll get to that in a bit) allowed me time, I was giddy to pursue another genre.

I perused O. Henry Prize anthologies and collections of linked stories; in literary journals, I turned first to the featured shorts; I began to see plot lines where I’d seen end-rhymes, character development instead of lyric moments. Refreshing, confounding, surreal—it took me forever to get into the groove of writing fiction. In fact, it wasn’t until this spring (two years post-“pact”), when I’ve had the chance again to teach a fiction workshop that maybe I have, as they say, hit my stride.

The relationship between writing and teaching can be wonderfully symbiotic; it can also be paralyzing and parasitic (especially if one is loaded up with, say, freshman composition). It’s often true when I have a few “free” hours I lament that I must spend it prepping for class or grading instead of writing. It’s hard to stop myself from complaining, “I could be working on ______ right now!”

When I’m honest, though, I can see that teaching creative writing has powerfully affected my own work: I read the pieces I assign ever so much more hungrily than when I leisure read, looking to suck from each a secret of strong writing I can pass on to my students; I’m compelled to create or find both interesting and worthwhile writing exercises because I, too, need to complete them, see what they’ll yield for me, push myself past or through what I could (or could not) do by my lonesome.

I’ve taught several fiction workshops, but this swoop through the pass has brought me breakthroughs in my own writing: finally, I’ve been able to see the structural flaws in a short story I’ve been working on, albeit sporadically, since 2003. Nine flogging years.

One last element here: a little tuneage. During the long months that my husband and I dated and were engaged, separated by a distance of half the United States, we would find ourselves so stymied with communicating by phone that sometimes he would take a scarf, tie the receiver to his ear and, instead of conversing, play his guitar (remember the pre-earbud-era?). We wound up writing songs together. Intermittently, he would surprise me by putting my poems or stories to music. [Second gratuitous side note: PEOPLE, should you ever want to woo someone, just take a thing she’s made and add, exponentially, to its potential, its beauty, its power, by making something of it yourself. If all other factors are aligned, for the remainder of your earthly days you will find her heart at the end of your kite’s string.]

Now that we live in the same place, nay house, our evenings full of filing taxes, gardening, and dust bunnies, we write songs together less often, but we’ve amassed enough music to play out a bit and to slowly record a full-length album. We were honored to be included in the Festival of Faith and Music’s 2011 Bandspotting. These days, my husband is working desperately to finish the Ordinary Neighbors CD before our second child arrives, which has meant some late nights recording and re-recording my vocals (did I mention that, between the two of us, he’s the only musician?)

Okay, Susanna, okay. This is swell, you say. But what’s it add up to? Why share the motley details of your journey, of this particular path?

Here’s why: there are days when the panic to “succeed” in the poetry world washes over me like some scalding waterfall. It snatches my breath out from inside me. It rakes and burns. I’m terrified I’ll never write poetry again. But that admission ought to be followed with another, what disciplined Sabbath-keepers espouse, what the farmers of a different generation could tub-thump all the year round: fields must lie fallow, and for good reason; the soil needs to replenish and be replenished. Sure, perhaps it’s one of those writerly excuses to be lazy, be scared off, be fooling myself by distraction. But, as we know, seasons give way to seasons, and what I’m striving to sow, little by little, unfaithful but also undaunted, may not be the same crop, or—dare we go here—even a crop at all. If we understand the significance of such entities, how crude or pejorative could it really be to see fiction, tunes, teaching, and parenting as the castings of worms in this field, the dung of cows or the droppings of chickens, rabbits, pigs? The mineral-richness, the revitalizing nutrients. Part and parcel of what a farmer like Joel Salatin calls “perennial prairie polycultures.”

And each of these, in their own right, of course, so much more.

Have you had a fallow field yield goodness in time? What feeds your art, your craft, your creative spirit, while you’re pressing into a seasonal Sabbath? How do you know when those seasons, fulfilling and fruitful as they may or may not be, draw to a close?