How Can I Keep from Singing?

This Is a Test

The next several posts in “All the Answers to Your Writing Questions” will be the prototype of an E-course I plan to offer. I would say that I am “beta-testing” the course, but I’m not quite sure what “beta-testing” is.

In any case, you are invited to participate. Jump in at any time. There is no charge. Just drop me an e-mail at mary@LifeIsPoetry.net with your name, and please put POETRY in the subject line.

The course and text are called How to Write Poetry and Live Poetically. I will define “living poetically” as we go along, though I would be interested in hearing what the phrase conveys to you. (Right now I’ll just say that “living poetically” is a good thing that involves serenity and well-being, achieved in part through the discipline of writing poetry as a form of meditation.)

Photo by Luc Viatour GFDL/CC

The first twenty pages or so consist of describing the goals and defining the terms used in this course. They will not bore you. I promise.

After the introductory sections, there will be regular assignments. These will be fun and revealing, and I hope you will complete them and send them to me for comments. You might as well: You’ll be getting a couple hundred dollars’ worth of instruction, free of charge.

Some of the assignments, later on, will (naturally) involve writing poetry. I will compile some of the poetry—not necessarily the best poems, but those that best represent the course objectives—into a book, which all participants may download for free.

Today’s installment is the first part of the preface. It describes a period in my life that was particularly poetic—not because of any conscious effort on my part, but because I had unknowingly slipped into a benign rhythm, like finding yourself on a riverboat and being carried by a current that happens to be going in the right direction.

How to Write Poetry and Live Poetically

Free E-Course Lesson 1. Preface (part 1)

How Can I Keep from Singing?

My life flows on in endless song;
Above earth’s lamentation
I hear the sweet though far-off hymn
That hails a new creation:
Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul—
How can I keep from singing?

—Robert Wadsworth Lowry, 1860, based on a traditional Quaker hymn

 

April 1990. The sky is a deep, unbroken blue from horizon to horizon. Even at noon, the desert sun is gentle, gathering strength for the brutal summer.

 

You are rattling gleefully down the freeway toward Mexico in the most marvelous vehicle you have ever owned. It is a 1983 Chinook: a teeny-tiny house on wheels. You’ve got your built-in icebox, got your sink, got your two-burner propane stove. There’s a little dining booth that unfolds into a double bed, and there’s another, smaller bed above the front seats; there are closets and cupboards and a Porta-Potty. You have upholstered the benches in brown-red-yellow calico and made cute little curtains to match. This is a traveling cottage for women and children. Grown men who are uneasy with calico and cute little curtains can drive their phallic Corvettes or their ATVs.

 

Though aerodynamically challenged — basically a fiberglass box on a Toyota chassis with a four-cylinder engine — the Chinook gets twenty miles to a gallon of gas in town, twenty-five on the highway.

 

You are bound for Puerto Peñasco, a five-hour drive to paradise, where you can lounge on the playa and comprar trinkets you don’t need, just to hear yourself hablar español badly: “¿Quantos dólares para esta dije, por favor?”

 

The windows of your little Chinook are wide open so that the Whole World can hear you and your two sons, ages nine and ten, lustily singing “Green Grow the Rushes, Ho,” although you are the only one not faking at least half the words, and the Whole World is making way too much noise anyway.

Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, Mexico

 You’re on the “Nine Bright Shiners” and suddenly you are soloing. Your chorus has gone silent, with the “Ten Commandments,” the “Eleven Who Went to Heaven,” and the “Twelve Apostles” still unsung.

 

“Mom?”

 

“…and eight for the April Rainers. Seven for the Seven Stars in the Sky and six for the Six Proud Walkers.* Five for the Symbols at Your Door and four for the—”

 

“Mom!”

 

“…Gospel Makers. Three, three, the Rivals, I’ll sing you two, two, the Lily-White Boys, clo-thed all—”

 

“MOM! What are the ‘Symbols at Your Door’?”

 

The back seat, obviously, has undergone a mood shift. Lusty Singing Mood has given way to Pensive Mood. Now there will be questions… familiar questions… deep, philosophical questions arranged around familiar themes:

The What-Would-You-Do-for-a-Million-Dollars Theme

“Mom, would you eat Clarence’s poop for a million dollars?” (If you could, you would, but you gag just thinking about it.)

(Clarence is a Weimaraner. Not that your answer would be different if Clarence were a French poodle or the Queen of Sheba. Maybe if Clarence were a parakeet, and maybe for two million dollars….)

 

“Mom, would you run naked through Disneyland for a million dollars?” (You bet. In a heartbeat.)

 

“Mom, if you knew that Jack and I would be happy and have wonderful parents who loved us and took good care of us, would you sell us for a million dollars?” (Nah.) “A billion dollars?” (Nope. Not for all the money in the world.)

The What’s-It-All-About Theme

“Mom, is it true that we’re not really real, we’re just part of somebody’s dream?” (You’re pretty real to me, Kiddo.)

 

“No, really, Mom, how do we know we’re real?”

 

Children are such a blessing. You get to hand off the great existential questions. The next generation is allowed to ponder the nature of reality, freeing you to ponder how Eli’s teacher, Mrs. Rodriguez, intends to “curb his spontaneity.” You wonder if electrodes will be involved.

 

Reality is macaroni and cheese with raisins. Reality is seeing a small boy in a small boat bobbing in the distance, in the Gulf of California, being carried by the wind and tide toward China; feeling your heart lurch when you realize that he is your small boy and he doesn’t know anyone in China; begging a man in a uniform for help when all the Spanish you know involves buying trinkets and “una cerveza, por favor” and something about volatil in an aeroplano to Los Estados Unidos to visitar your Tia Yolanda.

 

Reality is single parenting, reading aloud for hours before bed, the water bill, the gas bill, Mexican food and margaritas on the beach, a broken arm, a flat tire, a helpful friend, a new bike, tousled heads on damp pillows when the house is quiet and outside a lone nightingale mimics an entire tropical forest.

Reality is rhythmic, a poem punctuated by surprises, a dance, now whirling, now gliding, now stumbling, regaining one’s footing, getting a little dizzy, looking around, and being reassured that one is where one needs to be, for now.

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* For years I sang the wrong words here— “the Six Brown Walkers.” I had no curiosity about the origins of this ancient, mystical song until I realized I could look it up on the Internet. You’ll find a fascinating account in Wikipedia, which traces the lyrics to medieval Kabbalism (the earliest version of the song is in Hebrew), Celtic paganism, and Christianity. While you’re online, check out kissthisguy.com, “The Archive of Misheard Lyrics,” where you’ll discover you weren’t the only one who thought Jimi Hendrix was singing “’Scuse me while I kiss this guy” or that the oft-misinterpreted Creedence Clearwater Revival megahit was about “a bad moon on the rise,” not “a bathroom on the right” (“Bad Moon Rising,” in which songwriter John Fogerty was discussing, of all people, Richard Nixon).

Go to Lesson 2

© 2008 Mary Campbell and Zero Gravity, all rights reserved. Course participants (e-mail Mary@LifeIsPoetry.net to register) may make one copy of each installment in this series for individual use. Any other duplication or redistribution in any form is unlawful.