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Editor’s Note: The arts are a significant thread in the fabric of Rockland County. They inspire, enrich, and chronicle our lives. They also play a role in our economic well-being; theater, writing, dance, crafts draw us to spaces. They invite strangers to share in our bounty. They are an indelible contribution. Welcome again, Christine Potter, a poet, to RCBJ.
By Christine Potter
Another New Year. The campaign signs from November are nearly all gone, mercifully blown away by the holidays. My poet’s canary-in-the-coal-mine senses still wake me up some nights, but I put a lot of stock in the goodness of most people, the Hudson River’s serene beauty, and the power of this county, the soul-nourishing place where we get to live. That said, I’m nervous.
I’ve been thinking more about the ghosts of Lotte Lenya, Maxwell Anderson, and Kurt Weill. Maybe I need a drive to South Mountain Road, their woodsy old neighborhood. I’m dreaming of a time machine and an invitation to cocktails! (Hey, I have to pick up a few things from Conklin’s farm store anyway…maybe some of that good bread with black olives and cheese in it…pure poetry, that stuff!)
I’m glad there’s no time machine needed to stick my head into Big Red Books in Nyack. I reached out to them when I started this column, and they put me in touch with Alison Stone and William Huhn, both local poets with fine new books. We’ll get more into William’s work next time, but Alison’s Informed has been out since last spring, and if it hasn’t grabbed your attention yet, now’s the time. It’s her ninth full-length collection.
Alison Stone is a psychotherapist and artist as well as a poet, so her writing is both colorful and wise. She has even created a Tarot deck. Alison writes in both formal structures and free verse. Here’s a poem from Informed based on a line by Mojave poet Natalie Diaz. Alison’s poem is a pantoum, a form in which each stanza has four lines with some lines repeating throughout. This gives a satisfying, woven effect. The first and last line of Alison’s poem borrow and play with Diaz’s line: “I obey what I don’t understand, then I become it.”
Poem Inspired by a Line by Natalie Diaz
I submit to mystery, then I become it.
A half-heard phrase compels more than a clear command.
Who’s fool enough to refuse when the forest calls,
all darkness and moon-made shadows.
A half-heard phrase compels more than a clear command.
We follow, as our blood dictates.
All darkness and moon-made shadows
offer us, we want, at least once.
We follow as our blood dictates.
Ecstasy and oblivion tease with the same release,
offer us what we want. At least once,
every timid heart craves more.
Ecstasy and oblivion tease with the same release.
Each lover longs for boundaries to dissolve.
Every timid heart craves more.
There’s no joy without surrender.
Each lover longs for boundaries to dissolve,
a break from the dusty self.
There’s no joy without surrender,
no thrill without the slap of the new.
A break from the dusty self
leaves me wanting more —
more thrill with the slap of the new,
more midnight and strange rustlings.
Left wanting more,
I’m Fool enough to go when the forest calls
at midnight. Strange rustlings.
I submit to mystery, then I become it.
What polished and lovely work! The tension between self and other, desire and surrender, the old and the new! I’m struck by the reference to the Tarot deck: The Fool, often pictured dreamily stepping off a cliff into the unknown, perhaps not so much of a Fool after all. It’s a good poem for any new year— this one especially. “Strange rustlings” indeed! And I also admire the sound and image of “moon-made shadows.”
Alison Stone’s poetry heroes are Sylvia Plath, Louise Gluck, and Rainer Maria Rilke. She says she takes inspiration from our local landscape, but her dog has been dragging her toward Nyack instead of Hook Mountain State Park recently. No mystery to submit to there; all the good eats are downtown! Dogs know. Come to think of it, there’s usually a little dog pictured on The Fool in the Tarot deck, too. Alison’s website is at www.alisonstone.info And Nyack’s aforementioned Big Red Bookstore stocks Informed.
Here’s an old nonce sonnet from me. A nonce sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines that is (sort of, kind of) in the shape of a sonnet. It doesn’t need to have a regular rhyme scheme or meter. That’s as formal as I usually get. My poem’s about coming back to The County after a holiday weekend. See you on the other side of the TZ!
Sunday Night, Holiday Weekend
Maybe it’s too warm to snow but the air’s
dense with longing. Dusk before four and
a sense of something turning. Who knows
what that is? On shiny, black-wet Route 9,
traffic picks up, heading for the bridge
across the Hudson. I think of the sweetness
inside cars going home after a long weekend,
after the hug goodbye, the last wave, the
seat belts fastened: Oh my God, your father!
Free speech at last. The leftovers doled out
or used up clean. The things families say to
each other! Long lines of turn signals on the
Thruway, ready to merge—mirrors, chrome,
and… escape achieved! Sigh. Heading home.
