The Best American Poetry

Springtime with Alpacas (by Laura Orem)

What did you do last Wednesday? I helped to shear 69 alpacas.

Rick and I have been talking about getting a couple of alpacas for several years. Alpacas, in case you didn't know, are a "domesticated species of South American camelid" (from Wikipedia - so it must be true). In other words, they are smaller and less stroppy cousins of llamas. Originally from the Andes region of Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, they were domesticated thousands of years ago by the indigenous South American people for their fiber. In recent years, they have been imported to North America and are now bred throughout America and Canada.

 

Rick getting a smooch from Vader.

Alpacas are charming. On top of lovely silky fiber that makes great yarn, they have big dark eyes with long lashes, sinuous necks, and soft noses. They are inquisitive and friendly, and they also hum - an almost continuous, low, musical noise that, like a cat's purring, is soothing and sweet. (Fun fact - alpaca babies are called crias.) There are two breeds: huacayas, who have fluffy fiber sort of like a sheep; and suris, who have long silky dreadlocks and look like the Bob Marleys of the camelid world. We are in the process of adding two suris to our menagerie.

      

Huacaya alpaca                               Suri alpaca

We have been very fortunate in meeting Alan and Patti Anderson, owners of Wild Rose Suri Ranch in Havre de Grace, MD. They raise some of the finest alpacas in the country. Anything you want to know about alpacas, ask them. In our on-going quest to learn more, we helped out with shearing day at the ranch. Well, I helped out; Rick had to work and only showed up later in the afternoon. By then, I was Alpaca Woman, with the aching muscles to prove it.

Hanging out at Wild Rose Suri Ranch

Shearing alpacas is more complicated than shearing sheep, who basically get knocked down and sat on for the few minutes it takes to give them a haircut. Alpacas are not about to cooperate with this kind of nonsense; plus, they can kick and, as everyone knows, they can spit (although they mostly just spit at each other and will only spit at people when they are scared). They also can scream. Not bray, baa, neigh, or moo - shriek as if they are being stabbed with hot knives. Imagine a five-year-old throwing a tantrum combined with a cat getting its tail stepped on and toss in a little howler monkey, and you'll get the idea. So they need to be roped, tied, stretched out, and rolled. This doesn't hurt the alpaca, and it makes everything much easier on everyone. Here's the process below:

 

First, soft ropes are tied around all of the animal's legs.

 

Then, the ropes are pulled taut - this doesn't hurt the animal, and it keeps him from kicking.

Next, the alpaca is sheared with electric clippers.

All finished! (Note the sock on this guy's nose. Bad spitters had to wear an athletic sock for the duration.)

The head shearer this day was a man named Paul from New Zealand. When he wasn't singing at the top of his lungs to Rod Stewart and Creedence on the CD player, he was announcing to all and sundry how much he hated his job. But hate it or not, he and his assistant Tom were very very good at it. The fleece is collected in three bags: one holds the blanket, which is the finest fleece from the animal's back; another holds the neck fleece; and the rest goes into a "thirds" bag - still usable, but not the prime stuff that wins prizes. The whole process, from the time the animal is led into the shearing area until it walks out with a new hairdo, takes less than five minutes.

 

Patti Anderson collecting a blanket for show judging.

We worked from 9:00am until about 6:00pm, with about a hour break for lunch.Sixty-nine alpacas. No joke. I could hardly walk the next day, but it was worth it in the knowledge I gained and the amount of bragging I can do now.

Whaddya mean, "Only 40 more to go!"????

I'll let you know when our alpacas are in residence. Now that I've helped shear a herd of 'em, shearing two isn't even going to make me bat an eyelash.

 

Alpacas, post- and pre-haircut.

 

Crias, checking out the visitors.

Sequoia has dinner.

Lena did not appreciate her day at the salon.

Science Poet Jennifer L. Knox Teaches Us About . . .

Thanks, Jennifer

-- sdh

Like the Last Bear (by Laura Orem)

A poem by Gary Lawless:

Treat each bear as the last bear.

Each wolf the last, each caribou.

Each track the last track.

Gone spoor, gone scat.

There are no more deertrails,

no more flyways.

Treat each animal as sacred,

each minute our last.

Ghost hooves. Ghost skulls.

Death rattles and

dry bones.

Each bear walking alone

in warm night air

From GRRRRR, a Collection of Poems About Bears (Arctos Press, 2009), available from the publisher and on Amazon.

For the past two months, I've been spending a lot of time with a couple of black bears. Lily (left) and her cub Hope are part of a study by the North American Bear Center. A webcam and microphone were placed at the entrance to Lily's den so she could be observed giving birth to and raising her baby. And observed she has been, with over 90,000 fans on Facebook and more tuning in on the NABC website and on Wildearth TV.

The study is being conducted by biologists Dr. Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield and is part of a larger, years-long study of black bears in general. It is one of the only truly scientific studies ever done on black bears, and Dr. Rogers' explicit goal is to replace much of our misconceptions about bears with scientific facts and data.

Newborn Hope, center of the picture

"The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct" [by David Wagoner]

The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct
(Alexander Wilson, Wilmington, N.C., 1809)

When he walked through town, the wing-shot bird he'd hidden
Inside his coat began to cry like a baby,
High and plaintive and loud as the calls he'd heard
While hunting it in the woods, and goodwives stared
And scurried indoors to guard their own from harm.

And the inkeeper and the goodmen in the tavern
Asked him whether his child was sick, then laughed.
Slapped knees, and laughed as he unswaddled his prize,
His pride and burden: an ivory-billed woodpecker
As big as a crow, still wailing and squealing.

Upstairs, when he let it go in his workroom,
it fell silent at last. He told at dinner
How devoted masters of birds drawn from the life
Must gather their flocks around them with a rifle
And make them live forever inside books.

Later, he found his bedspread covered with plaster
And the bird clinging beside a hole in the wall
Clear through to already-splintered weatherboards
And the sky beyond. While he tied one of its legs
To a table leg, it started wailing again.

And went on wailing as if toward cypress groves
While the artist dew and tinted on fine vellum
Its red cockade, gray claws, and sepia eyes
From which a white edge flowed to the lame wing
Like light flying and ended there in blackness.

He drew and studied for days, eating and dreaming
Fitfully through the dancing and loud drumming
Of an ivory bill that refused pecans and beetles,
Chestnuts and sweet-sour fruit of magnolias,
Riddling his table, slashing his fingers, wailing.

He watched it die, he said, with great regret.

-- David Wagoner

Back to Reality and Hard Good-byes (by Laura Orem)

I just got back from ten days at a writing retreat in New Hampshire, so I'm a little gaga from culture shock. Ten days of peace, quiet, beautiful surroundings, and a gourmet chef placing wonderful concoctions in front of me every time I sat down, is bumping up against laundry, barn-mucking, and a heartbreaking loss.

Toad Hall is a private, non-profit writer and artist retreat about an hour north of Dartmouth. It is run by poet and publisher Maria van Beuren, and it is a marvel. A rambling New England house in the middle of 100 wooded acres, it provides space, comfort, and good company for groups of invited guests during the summer. Maria makes sure everyone is happy, extremely well-fed, and comfortable.

I thought I was going to get a lot of writing done, but I spent most of my time wandering through the woods and sketching, and that's okay, too. There was a lot to sketch: birch groves, a pond, carpets of fern, Maria's gorgeous gardens. It was a visual feast, and I discovered that artist and sculptor Ken Flynn, another guest, was right: there aren't enough kinds of colored pencils to capture the many varieties of green you see if you really look.

There were real feasts, too. Each evening, we gathered for a gourmet vegetarian dinner cooked by Rebecca, a local chef and magic-maker. I could definitely get used to this. And anyone who thinks vegetarian means boring or tasteless needs a forkful of Rebecca's fabulous ratatouille - a miracle of tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, mushrooms, and - swear to God - poached eggs. It's a concoction to dream about.

Needless to say, it was hard to leave, although I was starting to miss everyone back home. Sadly, my culture shock at having to actually do chores was nothing compared to discovering when I got back on Sunday that our sweet old German shepherd, Moses, had passed away the day before.

Rick had waited until I got in to tell me because he didn't want me to drive upset and grieving, a good move, I think. Moses, who was 12 1/2 (ancient for a shepherd), had been fine on Friday - spent the evening outside with the other dogs playing, then snoozing on the grass. On Saturday morning, though, Rick could see he was ailing - he was not interested in getting up or eating, although he did not seem to be in pain and drank some water. Rick had to go out for a little while, and when he got back, Moses was gone. We spent Sunday digging his grave under the pine trees near our greyhound Holly, and we buried him with his favorite yellow ball and dog blanket.

Moses was something of an insider in the literary world, although he was terribly discreet and never gossiped about the writers he'd known. He had belonged to Priscilla Hodgkins, the former associate director of the Bennington Writing Seminars, and many of Bennington's MFA alums remember him fondly. When Cilla moved two years ago, she was unable to take Moses with her, and he came to live with Rick and me on our farm.

Moses, left, with Monty and Valo in the snow last winter

He was a joy. An enormous joy, literally - he weighed over 100 pounds, and had paws the size of tennis racquets and a tail that could sweep off a coffee table with one wag. One of my friends called him "courtly and gentle," and that really captures him - sweet, dignified, and kind. He got deafer and more arthritic over the two years he lived with us, but he never lost his dignity or his lovely, loving nature.

Certainly it is a mercy that he went so peacefully and quickly and didn't suffer, but we will miss him. And anyone who thinks dogs don't have souls never met Moses.

Moses Hodgkins Orem, 1997-2009.

Lions of Chicago [by Emma Trelles]

  This is me, not seen, sitting on the front steps of the Art Institute of Chicago in June and listening to Lisel Mueller's poem.

Here's a beautiful bit of it.                                                                

Monet Refuses the Operation

Doctor, you say there are no halos

around the streetlights in Paris

and what I see is an aberration

caused by old age, an affliction.

I tell you it has taken me all my life

to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,

to soften and blur and finally banish

the edges you regret I don't see,

to learn that the line I called the horizon

does not exist and sky and water,

so long apart, are the same state of being.

                                                                        

   The Art Institute is the third stop of The Poetry Foundation's  Chicago Poetry tour, a walk (and a free podcast) through the city's architecture, history, and of course, the poems it has inspired. Since I was staying at the Palmer House, I was able to hit six stops of the downtown leg, with the voices of Gwendolyn Brooks and Albert Goldbarth in my head. Also Wilco and Coltrane, but they were already in my ipod. Take the tour online or download it here. It's pretty stellar, especially when you're wandering along South Michigan Ave.

 

    I love Chicago. Regal and humble, it's such a grand American city, and I mean that in all the right ways. I zipped in for a Wednesday to Thursday stay, thanks to the Guild Literary Complex and the Palabra Pura reading series, which pairs Latino poets from the area with those of us who live elsewhere.

   I read with Jacob Saenz (left), among other writers, and it was fortifying to meet and dine with artists and publishers who were spreading the good word from the enclave of Pilsen. With its murals of heroes and saints, and its tiny bodegas, the area reminded me of my own nearby nabes of Little Havana and Hialeah. Somos hermanos, todos.

  

   Tonight is Palabra Pura's July installment, featuring Maria Melendez (Momotombo Press) and Luis Humberto Valadez. Drop in early at Decima Musa and order the cheese enchiladas. They go quite well with poems. Reading details are here.  

More About Wool, or What Your Socks Never Told You (by Laura Orem)

Last week, I shared with you the pictures from shearing day. Today, I'd like to show you what happens to the wool after it's off the sheep.

First, the fleece is "skirted." This means it is laid out flat, and all the nasty, dirty bits are removed. Sheep live in barns, and they get a lot of VM (vegetable matter), poop, and other gross things in their fleeces. The nicest wool comes from across their shoulder and backs; anything from the belly usually gets tossed.

Fleece laid out for skirting.

After that, the wool needs to be "scoured." This just means washed in soapy water. Depending on the type of fleece, this can be a straightforward process or something a bit more tricky. Some kinds of wool are very prone to felting - this is what happens when you accidentally put your cashmere sweater in the wash, and it comes out looking like it would fit your three-year-old nephew. Fine wools, like Rambouillet, Corriedale, and Merino, have to be washed very carefully, with a minimum of agitation, to prevent felting. My sheep are Babydoll Southdowns, and they have a "down" -type wool, which is springy and resilient (it has a lot of "loft," to use a woolly term) and can take a lot of abuse. Also, some wools have a lot of lanolin so need a longer wash time; my guys produce an average amount of lanolin, so it's fairly easy to wash out.

While some folks prefer to wash a whole fleece all at once in the bathtub, I like to wash a little at a time. I use very hot water and lots of soap; I prefer Dawn hypoallergenic dishwashing soap because it's good at getting rid of the grease. The fleece goes through two washes (the first sinkful of water gets very dirty very fast), then two rinses, then it's laid out to dry on either the laundry rack or outside on an old bedsheet.

After the wool dries, it needs to be picked and teased. "Picking" means separating the locks and removing any straw, hay, and other undesirables; "Teasing" means the picked locks are separated further and fluffed up. This is a very tedious process; it helps to have something good on television while you're doing it. Usually, about one third of the wool is weeded out at this point; what you are left with is a fluffy pile that reminds me of spindrift on the beach after a storm.

Picked and teased wool

Now the wool is ready to be carded  - this means combed and straightened. This is done one of three ways: by a drum carder, which is mechanical and can card a lot of wool fairly quickly; by hand carders, which are big, flat, square combs with short metal teeth and long handles; or by wool combs, which have long, sharp teeth and are used primarily with long, fine wools like English Leicester. Because my wool is considered a "short" wool (the locks, or "staples" are about 2-3 inches long and have a nice crimp), I use hand carders.

First, one carder is "dressed" - that is, I put a clump of wool on it (the metal teeth grab it). Then the other carder is pulled across the wool several times, straightening out the locks and untangling any tangles. This is done as many times as it takes to get the wool looking like the person carding it wants it to.

Dressed carder                                  Carding in process

Once the wool is satisfactorily combed and fluffy, it is then removed from the carder and rolled. Rolled longways, it is a rolag; rolled along the short side, it is a batt. Technically, roving is a batt that has been elongated by hand-pulling in order to facilitate spinning, but the term tends to be used for all carded, rolled wool.

 
A basket of carded, rolled wool

The wool is now ready for dyeing, needle-felting, or spinning. It is a labor-intensive process, which is why artisan fibers are so expensive. My wool, as I said, is very light and springy; the wool in the basket above only weighs one ounce combined (this would fit into a quart-sized ziploc bag). Other wools are heavier, but the process remains the same.

A good book about different types of wool and how they are used is In Sheep's Clothing: A Handspinner's Guide by Nola Fournier and Jane Fournier (Interweave Press, 1995).

"Shearing Day" (by Laura Orem)

Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?
Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full.
One for the master, one for the dame,
And one for the little boy who lives down the lane.

Seems like a lot of wool for one sheep, but you'd be surprised. This week, Nathan, our shearer, came to give Ike and Izzy their annual haircuts. It's amazing to watch him - he flips them onto their butts, pulls out the electric clippers, and in about fifteen minutes releases a very relieved sheep with about half the volume of when he started. There's a specific technique to shearing: the idea is that the fleece should come off essentially in one piece. Then, the wool is gently washed to remove the lanolin, carded (this means combing the tangles out), and spun. Washed but uncarded wool is called "locks"; carded but unspun wool is "roving"; and spun roving is "yarn."  At the York County Fair each summer, there is a contest called "From Sheep to Shawl," in which teams of four or five members shear, wash, card, spin, and knit wool into shawls in a given time frame, usually about four hours. It's one of the most popular events at the fair.

Shearing day is fun. Everyone has a good time, and the sheep, although a bit astonished, feel much better afterward. Ike and Izzy are Babydoll Southdowns, which is considered a small breed (they weigh about 175-200lbs), and their fleeces fill up a king-sized bed sheet each. So "three bags full" isn't an exaggeration. I thought I'd share some before and after shots with you.

The "before" shot - Dinner before Nathan arrives


Once on their butts, the sheep freeze
and let Nathan go to work.




Almost done - the fleece is coming off in one piece


Voila! A complete fleece and a relieved sheep.


The "after" shot - until next June

Okay, I Got Nothing (by Laura Orem)

It's Tuesday, the semester's almost over, I have a cold, it's been raining a lot, and I am topic-less for this week's blog. So, what's up with you?

All I can offer you today is a poem, and I'm so out of sorts, I was having trouble finding one. Finally I came across this one by Jane Kenyon (I can't tell how many times my ass has been saved by a Jane Kenyon poem). Today I feel like the turtle in it - grumpy, unmoved, ancient and reptilian. Next week, I'll be my usual sunny and charming self. Until then, here's the poem:

"April Walk"

Evening came, and work was done.
We went for a walk to see
what winter had exacted
from our swimming place on the pond.

The moss was immoderately green,
and spongy underfoot; stepping on it seemed
a breach of etiquette.
We found our picnic table
sitting squarely in the bog -- only
a minor prank. The slender birches watched us
leaning from the bank.

And where the river launches forth
from the south end of the pond
the water coursed high and clear
under the little bridge.
Huge, suspended by the surge, grand-
father turtle moved sporadically
one flat, prehistoric, clawed arm
at a time, keeping his head downstream.

Years ago, he made a vow
not to be agitated by the runnels
of spring, the abundance of light,
warm wind smelling of rain,
or the peepers' throstling...

We watched till he was out of sight
and seemed illusory, then turned
toward home -- the windows
brazen in the setting sun....

Jane Kenyon, Collected Poems

 

"Twice as Many Stars" by Laura Orem

Today I'd like to tell you a story. This happened many years ago, at a workshop led by the poet Roland Flint. Roland was one of those people who carried an entire library inside of him; he could (and did) recite poems at the drop of a hat. It was a wonderful thing. He would have been a terrific companion if you were stranded on a desert island (although I don't know how helpful he would have been at things like fishing and building rafts).

At this workshop, Roland made an interesting distinction - that there is a difference between poems that you memorize and poems that you get by heart. He likened memorizing poems to cramming for a test - you can jam the words into your head for a specific purpose, but they aren't likely to stay there very long unless you feel some connection to them. Poems you get by heart, in contrast, go in (sometimes in one whole gulp) and stay there. They become a resource, a nourishing place to return to over and over again. Everyone of us has poems like this: poems that, for whatever reason, we keep and hold close and use to fill us up when we feel empty. (On the other side of the coin, I specifically remember reading Billy Budd the night before a test in 11th grade. I know I read it; I passed the test; but to this day, the only part of the book that sticks with me is the end when they hang him.)

Roland then said he was going to teach us a poem. But we weren't going to read it - he was going to take us through it, word by word, line by line, until we had the thing entire. Some of us, he said, would just have it memorized, and eventually it would go away. But others, he hoped, would get it by heart -the way he had it. He started by giving us the title, then the first two words of the first line, then asked, "What do you think comes next?" This was a roomful of poets, remember, so there were lots of suggestions. Then he gave us the next few words, and so on, until we came to the end of the line, when he had us say the line aloud several times. Then, we moved on to the next line. And so on, until we got to the end of the poem, when he had the entire room (there were about a hundred of us - it was a big workshop) say the poem together twice.

Why we love a particular poem is completely personal and often deeply private. The poem Roland taught me was indeed one I got "by heart;" it touched and continues to touch something within me, and I have often gone back to it when I need filling up. Interestingly, it was years before I saw the poem on paper. Here it is:

"The Two-Headed Calf"
by Laura Gilpin

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass.
And as he stares into the sky, he sees
twice as many stars as usual.

from The Weight of a Soul, 2008

Laura Gilpin (1950-2007) achieved recognition early for her poetry. In 1976, William Stafford chose her first book, The Hocus-Pocus of the Universe (where this poem first appeared), for the Walt Whitman Prize. She taught writing for a few years, then shifted gears into nursing, where she became involved with Planetree, an organization dedicated to compassionate, patient-centered medical care. She worked there for the rest of her life, but never stopped writing poetry. Gilpin died of brain cancer in 2007; she was, however, able to collect her poems into a final book, The Weight of a Soul, which also includes some of the poems from her first collection. All of the profits from The Weight of a Soul go to Planetree.

Here is Garrison Keillor reading "The Two-Headed Calf" on The Writer's Almanac. The poem starts at 4:00 minutes.

The Writer's Almanac, April 30, 2004