Arts Announcements ~ A Service Of Your Arts Council



WE MEET
OUR NEW
POET
LAUREATE

MARY McMILLAN
Fisherwoman

by Mary McMillan

I live here. I have
A boat, of sorts, made of
Odd planks, borrowed nails, toxic
Glue. I made a sail from old
Clothes, clothes I wore when I lived

Elsewhere, when I worked
In the city, downtown. Silk,
Pima cotton, microfiber, lace. I sewed
With thread I made from the rough twine

My father handed down, unknowingly.
I unraveled that twine, strand by strand, until
It was simple enough to understand,

And real enough to use. I use
This sail for days when wind
Is, not wild, but forceful, and I need

holes, some give and surrender,
To stay my course. Because

Staying my course is what I do,
When things go right. Staying my course
In wind, in currents, in waves and tides, in the wake

Of boats that are big and have motors. In the still
Of calmness. When my sail is utterly
Useless. When there is

Silence. And birds dive in to feed,
And shadows threaten from deep below. And it grows
Dark. And the wind is withheld. And the air
Grows cold. And my thumbs and knees ache. And I am out
In the open, alone. And I want,

More than anything, to go home.

And above me birds are warm in their feathers.
Below, fish are feeding off each other.
After a while, I lie down. I am
a small thing among stars and creatures,

and we are home.
Statement of belief:

I like this quote from W. S. Merwin:  "Any work of art makes one very simple demand on anyone who genuinely wants to get in touch with it.  And that is to stop.  You've got to stop what you're doing, what you're thinking, and what you're expecting and just be there for the poem no matter how long it takes."

I also like this quote from Durs Grundheim (from an essay in Poetry called "The Poem and Its Secret"), about the first poets:  "Their secret comfort was that, on the silent wings of words, their souls maintained a connection to worlds before and after ours.  Well hidden in the hideouts of their writings, they knew, like the members of a secret society, that their verses were what would outlast even brass, the walls of Troy, and Rome's palaces."

And this quote from that same essay:  "It could be called the primary quality of all true poetry and literature, its cardinal virtue.  It is what keeps it alive across the ages:  its vividness."

He also writes:  "Personally, I believe that what comes out in poems is the human devotion to the transcendental--with a simultaneous fidelity to this world's prodigious wealth of details."
Poets rarely know where a poem comes from.  Poems are like butterflies that appear, and then are gone, unless the poet captures them.  Those of us who try to capture a poem that comes to us, and then manifest its presence on the page, struggle to "be there for the poem, no matter how long it takes."
For some reason, the art of poetry is rarely included in the lexicon of great artistic and intellectual achievements in modern history. It is, as Grundheim says, a "blind spot in the cultural memory of modern man." So poets tend to work alone with their butterflies, creating work that could, as he goes on to say, "change the world, if it were only noticed one day."

Assembled by Xian for the LCAC
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