Blog Posts

Rayz Reviewz Volume 1 Number 4

4/23/2020

Tune in to virtual gallery tours
https://www.avarts.org/virtual-exhibitionr
from the Association for Visual Artists and for on line classes and events.
https://www.facebook.com/events/2316201058676827/

The Creative Arts Guild of Dalton Georgia http://www.creativeartsguild.org/ also offers online classes and events.

Special promotional assistance for new Authors from the Virtual Book Channel.
https://lithub.com/this-week-on-the-virtual-book-channel/

The Hatchie Bird Fest has gone virtual http://www.hatchiebirdfest.com/ The physical festival is cancelled, but several programs will be available online.

The Porch Writer’s Collective will hold their awards ceremony online this year via zoom. Further information on their web page. http://www.porchtn.org/

Response to Wendell Berry’s Poem, To Know the Dark”
The poem is short and elegant. In one line, he advises the reader to “go dark, go without a light.” I have done so on many occasions. On one such occasion I was convinced I saw a ghost until the flying phantom resolved itself into a barn owl. I have found little to fear, and wonders to discover in the world of night.

If you go out on a warm spring night, listen to the trilled call of the chorus frogs filling the night air with their romance. Do not confuse this with the repeated peep of the spring peeper.

One night long ago, I stood on a tall tower above eco pond and listed to love call bellows of alligators. Under a half moon, a giant bull ’gator slapped the water with his lower jaw.

I have sat on soft pine needles in the depths of a forest so thick it would be dark even in a full moon. In a cypress swamp I have imitated the hooting call of a barred owl and got an answer that could fill all of Okefenokee.

If you would explore the dark, pick a trail well in advance. Make sure you know the route and hike it once or twice in daylight as your preparation. Carry a flashlight in case of emergency. You may learn, like Wendell Berry, that “…the dark too blooms and sings.”

The poem is short and elegant. In one line, he advises the reader to “go dark, go without a light.” I have done so on many occasions. On one such occasion I was convinced I saw a ghost until the flying phantom resolved itself into a barn owl. I have found little to fear, and wonders to discover in the world of night.

If you go out on a warm spring night, listen to the trilled call of the chorus frogs filling the night air with their romance. Do not confuse this with the repeated peep of the spring peeper.
One night long ago, I stood on a tall tower above eco pond and listed to love call bellows of alligators. Under a half moon, a giant bull ’gator slapped the water with his lower jaw.

I have sat on soft pine needles in the depths of a forest so thick it would be dark even in a full moon. In a cypress swamp I have imitated the hooting call of a barred owl and got an answer that could fill all of Okefenokee.

If you would explore the dark, pick a trail well in advance. Make sure you know the route and hike it once or twice in daylight as your preparation. Carry a flashlight in case of emergency. You may learn, like Wendell Berry, that “…the dark too blooms and sings.”

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Rayz Reviewz Volume 1 Number 3

4/20/2020

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Announcements
Billy Collins recently gave a reading at the Nashville Public Library. Access the program, with several of his popular poems, here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq9Az9AUNXo

Barking Legs Theater has moved their regular shows online, including “Wednesday Jazz Online,” and “The Floor is Yours,” a virtual open mic. Access the programs here:
https://barkinglegs.org/events/

The Tivoli Theater is now presenting a virtual cinema. Information on available films here:
https://www.tivolichattanooga.com/events/bobby-stone-film-series/virtual-cinema

I have been taking a class for birdwatchers from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. Courses range from beginning to advanced. If a whole class seems like a big commitment, just check out their live Bird Cams
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/cams/

The Chattery offers online workshops, including Birdwatching from your couch porch with Laura Marsh.
https://www.facebook.com/events/244625910247551/

The Chattanooga Zoo offers some online programs via their Facebook page.

The Chattanooga Public Library is offering programs through their YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8wQB1amgvxPX5JWJtywRQg and on their
Facebook page.

The Tennessee Aquarium has numerous programs online, including three webcams where you can watch the animals, Penguins, and Otters and Sharks, Oh my! The Tennessee Aquarium at Home page also includes educational videos, a link to view IMAX films, and, my favorite, Mr. Bills Blog.
https://www.tnaqua.org/aquarium-at-home/

Send your announcements to znaturalist (at) gmail.com

Reviews
“Ozymandias” A poem for all seasons
Politicians on both sides seem to be more interested in empire building than in serving the electorate. This was also true in the days when Percy Bysshe Shelly wrote the poem Ozymandius. He posits a traveler who discovered an ancient statue, gone but for the stumps of legs and the pedestal. Nearby, the head lay on the sand. The inscription was still legible. Here are the last five lines of the poem.

My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye mighty and Despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
From Ozymandius – Percy Bysshe Shelly

Pandemic Panic

Poet Paul Richmond teamed up with some musicians to create a statement about the current situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKrE-hs39YY&feature=

Fred Johnston presented the “Poem of the Day” in the Irish publication RTE
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/0407/1129114-poem-of-the-day-1941-by-fred-johnston/

I originally encountered these works on the Facebook page of the Ashville Poetry Review.

Response to “The Revenant” by Billy Collins

I found this poem serious and amusing in the way it presents the Human/Dog relationship from the dog’s perspective. It became one of my favorites on my first reading. Though Collins presents the dog’s opinion as not caring for humans at all, I have known dogs who gave demonstrative love to many humans, including me.

In these days of Pandemic Panic, with its accompanying isolation and fear of contagion, I wish I had a dog. On walks through my neighborhood, I sometimes see my neighbor’s dog, an animal which has come under my care when the neighbor went out of town. He seems to remember this, and when I visit, he comes to me, sits beside me, and leans against my shin.

I have been told that he seems to think he is my dog, recognizing the sound of my car and running to the door to watch it pass. Lately, when I take walks down the street, my neighbor mysteriously knows, and leaves the dog out on his lead. He comes to its full length, just short of the road, and we visit for a while before I proceed with bird watching or photographing roadside flowers.

I have come to a new appreciation of Collins, an esteemed Poet Laureate, and his appreciation of dogs. He has written several poems about them. Hear Collins read this poem and another, “A Dog on his Master.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOvbl3ZPPV4

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Rayz Reviews volume 1 number 2

4/16/2020

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Announcements

The Chattanooga Audubon Society is offering a photography contest. Find full information here:
https://www.chattanoogaaudubon.org/contest.html

Christian Collier has released the third episode in his docuseries, The Plug Poetry Project. The third episode of The Plug Poetry Project includes readings and discussion by the poet known as Moll King, and by me, Ray Zimmerman. Here are links to the three episodes released thus far:

Episode 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYTVbKrxv-o
Episode 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixfSMBMB-Wg
Episode 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32hfN7o4zBE&t=130s

The Chattanooga Writers Guild has announced their 2020 Annual Spring Writing Contest
Information is available on their web page. http://www.chattanoogawritersguild.org/2019-spring-writing-contest.html

They live streamed their April meeting, a conversation about poetry with John Mannone. The video is still available on their Facebook page.

The Porch Writer’s Collective up in Nashville presents a weekly set of writing prompts via email. They are also offering several online workshops this spring. To sign up for the free writing prompts or learn more about the fee based workshops, visit http://www.porchtn.org

Pandemic Panic

Not happy to be merely living in a Pandemic Panic, I have begun reading about them. I completed The Andromeda Strain, a well-researched science fiction suspense book with a surprise twist at the end.

I simultaneously read The Hot Zone (Preston). which is classed as a nonfiction novel. The author based his writing on interviews with several researchers, so the events are factual, but the book is written in the style of a novel. The surprise ending to part three caused me to lose interest in finishing the book.

I then picked up David Quammen’s nonfiction book Spillover which includes true stories of the people in the fight against infections diseases. Somehow knowing the science of what is going on is comforting to me.

Meanwhile, I am still working on this blog, so send me your announcements.

Reviews

The Spring of my Life
Kobayashi Issa
Translation by Sam Hamill
Reviewed by Ray Zimmerman

The poet Issa is beloved throughout his homeland and Japanese schoolchildren commit his poignant nature poems to memory. Adults appreciate his humor, and scholars decry the self-pity which shows through his work.

The winter fly
I caught and finally freed
The cat quickly ate

For this reviewer, the poetry of Issa represents a triumph of the human spirit. The events of his life transcend sadness to reach the heights of pathos and tragedy. His mother died when he was but two years old, and his grandmother took over the responsibility of child rearing. She sent him to study poetry with a local scholar at an early age. When he reached age eight; his grandmother died, and his father remarried. His stepmother abused him.

Mother I weep
For you as I watch the sea
Each time I watch the sea

He left home for Edo (now Tokyo) at age twelve to study poetry and Zen. He became a homeless scholar on the streets. After many years as an itinerant poet, he returned home to nurse his dying father. In his fifties he married a much younger woman, but all their children died at an early age. The final child died due to care by an incompetent nurse, shortly after the death of the mother. He married again in his sixties, but he and his pregnant wife moved into a shed after their house burned. He died there, and shortly after his death the wife gave birth to a daughter who lived to continue his line.

The Spring of My Life is haiban, a book of narrative prose with haiku, in the same tradition as Narrow Road to the Interior (Basho). The following passage from chapter fourteen illustrates this point. “Visiting my daughter’s grave on July 25th, one month after her death”

The red flower
You always wanted to pick --
Now this autumn wind”

The death was due to smallpox, and it is noteworthy that the number fourteen holds a place in Japanese culture much like the number thirteen in our own culture. The placement of this story in chapter fourteen is no accident.

Among the sad verses are many hopeful ones, beautiful, like the following:

The distant mountains
Are reflected in the eye
Of the dragonfly

Issa is rated among the three great masters of haiku, along with Basho and Buson. The book, The Spring of my Life is a classic. Translator Sam Hamill included not only the full text the book, but also 250 haiku selected from the many thousands attributed to Issa. It is well worth the read.

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Desert Notes a Discussion

4/12/2020

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Desert Notes and River Notes

In Desert Notes, Barry Lopez shows us a strange and magical place. I have perhaps visited such a place once in my lifetime, but that is another story, and I am not prepared to reveal the location.
When I first read the book Desert Notes, originally published as a separate volume from River Notes, I saw it as mere fantasy. I have since concluded that it is a fine example of magical realism. The final story, “Directions,” gives us a key to the book’s meaning. Here, the reader encounters an enigmatic guide named Leon. One must encounter him as though meeting by chance and he will draw an excellent map on a napkin. There is more to Leon than his map, but I leave other readers to discover what that more may be for themselves.

Maps have a prominent place in other works by Lopez. His nonfiction book, Arctic Dreams, includes an appendix with numerous maps of the terrain. His short story collection, Light Action in the Caribbean includes a story about a mapmaker, one who uses older techniques and writes books about cities under a pen name.

The mapmaker uses older techniques and is thorough. He describes cities in layers beginning with the terrain, followed by infrastructure, pipes, culverts, electrical lines, streets, and buildings. He proceeds to the human description including government, the arts, etc. Modern mapmakers say he takes too long to complete a project. His results are much like GIS the modern Geographic Information System used by contemporary ecologists and geographers.

So, maps are important to Lopez, perhaps in the way that mirrors are to Jorge Louis Borges. So are directions. One story tells the perimeter of the desert with mythic symbols included. In the story, “Twilight,” the narrator lays out a Navajo blanket aligned to east and west. Only from the height of sitting on the blanket can he truly see the desert.

Another key appears in the introduction, which I once took as a metaphor for the writing process. Here, Lopez presents a struggle with no map, - Reach a roadblock. Rest. Try again. Leave. Come back. Take a different approach. It could describe any human endeavor.

Between the struggle of the introduction and the map at the end the reader encounters several people who come to terms, in one way or another, with the desert landscape. For me, the most intriguing were the Blue Mound People who lived a life of plenty with various foods and a rich material culture. No one can determine how they acquired these things. It is explained that hunting a small antelope, their favorite food, was not practical given their resources.

The Blue Mound People lived in caves carved out of the walls of cliffs. They remind me of contemporary American urbanites who live with plenty. Few of them could explain the means of production by which that plenty arrives at their door. Wendell Berry used a similar analogy in his book Think Little, in which he said that a contemporary preteenager knows how to make a baby but by the age of 30 still will not know how to make a potato. Isaac Asimov drew an analogy of future dwellers in sky scrappers to cave dwellers in his first robot novel, The Caves of Steel,

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Shelter in Poems

4/9/2020

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During the Pandemic, The Academy of American Poets has asked readers to take Shelter in Poems. Read one of the poems on their web site and make a response. Tell us why the poem is meaningful to you.
Learn more about Shelter in Poetry here https://poets.org/shelter-poems

Response to “In April” by Maria Rainer Rilke

“Again the woods are odorous,” just as in the beginning of his poem, but they seem far away in the time of plague and quarantine. Somewhere the bloodroot blooms and somewhere the Lady’s Slipper Orchids grace a landscape in a geography of rebirth. I miss the deeper reaches of the woods, but here in my community, I discover the simplest of pleasures with everyday plants. The garlic and rosemary, potted on my porch, release odors of spring growth good enough to grace the plate of a well-prepared meal. Baby spiderworts cling to flowering stems sent out by tropical parents. The lawns are carpeted with violets and open areas sport columbine in bloom, enough for a hummingbird to gather a snack. Neighbors’ irises, azaleas and rose bushes reach skyward in a rainbow of beauty. The dandelions, wild mustard, and buttercups have always been here, but Rilke’s poem reminded me to look about, As I do my morning stretches on the deck my spirit lifts with sunrise, bird song and colorful wildflowers.

Read Rilke’s poem here https://poets.org/poem/april-4

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