Tanka Prose

Clouds

I would build a cloudy House

For my thoughts to live in,

When for earth too fancy-loose,

And too low for Heaven. [1]

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

If I didn't know better, Elizabeth, I'd say you were haunting me. It all may have started just down the street from a school I attended—at the St. Marylebone Parish Church, where you and your dear Robert secretly married (though I was ignorant of that fact until only recently). I passed by a few hundred times as a youth, never stepping foot inside. Then five years later, and more than an ocean away, I came to live in a college dormitory building that to this day faces a world-renowned library dedicated to you and Robert. So close to you again, yet I continued to be deaf to your presence.

How the decades have turned to vapor. Now, I find myself back in London, roaming the streets as if lured from place to place by your hand, soft and warm. Yesterday, to the National Portrait Gallery and its famous likenesses of the two of you. And this afternoon to this church at Marylebone Road. As soon as I slip in, I notice the plain, dark door labeled "The Browning Room." Ah! It's locked, but I hope you'll give me credit for vigorously rattling the knob. At least I manage to snap a photograph of the heart of the church—from pews to pulpit and grand ceiling—generating stares from a handful of workers before I dash back out.

some have said

cameras steal souls . . .

with this one shot

all I wish to capture

is the splendor within

In search of another wispy trace of you, I next make my way down a section of the High Street and onto quiet blocks known for their opulent, historical residences and medical establishments. My silent gasp as I eventually come upon that famous address where you spent the last eight years of your life before you eloped. Etched quite simply, near ground level, into the building's stone facade: "Elizabeth Barrett Browning . . . Lived in a house on this site." I imagine you, fragile in constitution but your pen bold and strong, crafting your words in a way thought somewhat uncharacteristic for a woman of your time.

a sign 

at 50 Wimpole Street,

once the home 

of a beloved poet: 

The Heart Hospital

Finally, I wind my way through an overly crowded commercial district to Trafalgar Square and then to Westminster Abbey with its numerous pointed arches and sky-piercing Gothic spires. Here, your husband lies buried in the company of other notables, though far away from your own resting place at The English Cemetery in Florence, Italy. I bid adieu to you and yours, Elizabeth . . . but surely only for now.

evensong—

a hush of humanity 

as the sun 

slowly lowers itself

to a choral introit

_______________

Author's Notes:

[1] From "The House of Clouds," lines 1–4, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1841). The first-published version (in Athenaeum) is used here; in subsequently published versions, the punctuation is different.

The wording soft and warm is from "Sonnets from the Portuguese 24," line 3 ("In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm"), by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1850).

The St. Marylebone Parish Church, which has been associated with a great deal of history, was established "sometime after 1086" (per the church's website). The basic structure of the present-day parish church was completed in 1817. Various well-known individuals have attended the church, including Charles Dickens and his son. The Brownings were married there in 1846.

A round commemorative plaque (first installed in 1899), too small and located too high for the narrator to read in person, is affixed to the building at 50 Wimpole Street. Its interesting wording: "Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Poetess, Afterwards Wife of Robert Browning, Lived Here, 1838–1846."

The poet's Georgian Wimpole Street house, which she shared with Barrett family members, was likely torn down in 1935 (sources vary on the date). Curiously, the current structure at that location is associated with a major heart center.

Elizabeth was a semi-invalid for much of her life, apparently suffering from a collection of maladies (the exact set of illnesses is open to debate). Also, it is said she was prescribed opiates, to which she became addicted.

Coincidentally (unknown to the author until she had completed this story), a legend exists that the ghost of Elizabeth haunts the Armstrong Browning Library in Waco, Texas. Also refer to the tanka prose piece "All Things Browning," Haibun Today, 11:1.

_______________

Haibun Today, Vol. 11, No. 2, June 2017

Update: As if I didn't already have enough unexpected Browning and Barrett  "connections" (that I never before paid attention to) . . . A few weeks ago, I was cleaning out old purses and in one of them found a small flyer about a cruise line's shore excursion we went on roughly 20 years ago. It was for Greenwood Great House, a Barrett family residence in Jamaica. 

Tanka Prose

All Things Browning

God's in His heaven—All's right with the world! [1] 

—Robert Browning

"Would you also like to see the balcony on the third floor?" a library attendant asks me. "We keep the door locked, but I can open it for you. The view is lovely."

For two years as a college student, I lived across the street from this lavish Italian Renaissance-style building. Yet until now, decades later, I'd never actually explored inside these walls, nor outside them either. I'd only attended a ceremony or two—in then out, no time for more. Today, Pippa, the bronze statue surrounded by greenery at the front of the long, manicured lawn, comes to life for me . . . drawing me in.

As I step gently through a network of grand rooms in the Armstrong Browning Library (which is both research center and museum), I have trouble deciding where to fix my gaze. Greeting me first: rich-wood paneling, towering marble columns, ornate ceilings, a polished tile floor with a brass-inlaid border. The tranquil countenance of a young man seated at the front desk. Then book after antique book lining shelf after shelf. A multitude of stained-glass windows, sunlit and vivid, almost all of them illustrating poems by Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Personal furniture. Busts and other sculptures, miscellaneous works of era-appropriate art. And several Browning portraits, with faces that seem to stare pensively at me.

can an artist

capture on canvas

the essence

of a master of words?

this son they called Pen

Many delicate pieces of memorabilia gracefully rest in glass cases. (Not to mention that the library also maintains a vast-and-growing collection of letters and manuscripts.) I realize I could study every trinket and silver spoon, every brooch and snippet of lace, for more time than I have—as well as lose myself in the notes that accompany them. A small traveling tea set, with basket, particularly captures my attention. The story goes that the set belonged to a Mrs. Jean Sherwood, an American art critic, who used it to share tea with a stranger one day while on a train journey in Italy. During their conversation, Mrs. Sherwood remarked that in America Elizabeth Barrett Browning was considered to be the greatest woman poet. The stranger responded, "She was my wife."

this wisp of hair

held tight in the embrace

of a locket . . .

how certain small things

don't harden with age

her inkstand

made of fine porcelain . . .

a chorus

of syllables

spilling onto paper

even leaves

from the laurel wreath

on his casket

saved, arranged in a frame . . .

still a cascade of life

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways [. . .]

I shall but love thee better after death. [2]          

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning 

_______________________

Author's Notes:

[1] From "Pippa's Song," lines 7-8, in Pippa Passes, a dramatic poem/play by Robert Browning (1841).

[2] From "Sonnets from the Portuguese 43," first and last lines, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1850).

Inspiration and information for "All Things Browning" came primarily from an in-person visit to The Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University, Waco, Texas; the library's website and the librarian/curator of books and printed materials also served as resources. The facility, which opened in 1951, "houses the world's largest collection of Browning material and other fine collections of rare 19th-century books, manuscripts, and works of art" (as stated on the website).

The life-size statue of Pippa, presented to the library in 1957, was sculpted by Waldine Tauch.

Sculptor/painter Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning, or "Pen," was the Browning poets' only child. Several portraits he painted of his parents are displayed at the library.

Elizabeth (1806-1861) is buried at the English Cemetery, Florence, Italy, while Robert (1812-1889) is buried in Poets' Corner in London's Westminster Abbey.

On a personal note, the author was surprised to discover, not long ago, an additional Browning "connection." Not only did she live as a student across the street from the Armstrong Browning Library, but she also attended a middle school barely more than steps from London's St. Marylebone Parish Church, where the Brownings married in 1846.

_______________________

—Haibun Today, Vol. 11, No. 1, March 2017

All my life

all my life

a yen for small

unnoticed

or discarded things 

... a poem's seed

—Skylark, summer 2017

As a child

as a child

I dreamed of writing books …

my feet small

in these sidewalk prints

cast by Thomas Wolfe

—Frameless Sky, issue 3

Asheville, North Carolina

Announcement: Skylark and "Sculpting a Face"

The Winter 2016 issue of Skylark, an English-language tanka journal edited by poet Claire Everett, is available for purchase. I'm happy to say that reviews and features editor Jenny Ward Angyal interviewed me for that issue. Several of my tanka, many of them previously posted here at twigs&stones, including "silhouettes," are featured. Check it out.

silhouettes

we made of ourselves

in grade school …

how many know me

only by my profile

Tanka Prose

Fishing for words

Found after decades! Packed away with other favorites of mine, their spines barely affixed, A Child's Garden of Verses (a condensed pop-up edition) and The Golden Book of Poetry … coming back to life. 

I don't know exactly when, or why, my writerly muse first emerged—or where it came from. (But perhaps it was fed by the lines within these very books?) Nor can I explain my inability to hold onto my muse for very long at any given time. Yet even after I've convinced myself it's sailed off for good, I will probably half expect to find it again, waiting for me in some invisible box or misty sea.

Wynken, 

Blynken, and Nod, 

poets three 

in the same wooden shoe 

without their nets of gold

______________

Author's Notes:

— The above tanka is a reference to "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod," Eugene Field, 1889; "misty sea" is from the same poem.        

— The Golden Book of Poetry, various poets (including Field), 1947.

— A Child's Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885.

—Haibun Today, vol. 10, no. 2, June 2016 

I wrote the above tanka, a take on the familiar children's poem, in response to three of us lamenting the then-current loss of our muses. They must have sailed away, on vacation together. Not long before that, I came across the above-mentioned books, so voila, a tanka+prose piece!

A jumbled heap

a jumbled heap 

of lantana clippings

left to dry—

line by crooked line

I untangle my words

—cattails, May 2015

Not sharing

not sharing

my passion for poetry

he buys me

Pablo Neruda’s 

Odes to Opposites

—Fire Pearls 2 (anthology by Keibooks), 2013

Each time I wake

each time I wake
during this long night
of painkillers
a half-composed tanka
fading in and out 

—kernels ("featured poet"), July 2013 

Now, more than two years later, I'm doing a variety of physical therapy exercises to strengthen my "core." Had a good workout today.

Haiga: spill your tanka

artwork courtesy of Karen A. Smith; dedicated to Sanford Goldstein

—Prune Juice, #10, July 2013

This is known as a haiga, sort of; haiga typically refers to a marriage between illustration and haiku, though mine contains a tanka (or kyoka) instead. I call this one, not surprisingly, a "cartoon haiga." 

Most poets in the tanka community probably are very familiar with the concept of "spilling." The expression above is attributed to Sanford Goldstein, scholar/professor, translator, and tanka master of the past few decades—also candid mentor and kind friend to many of us. I'm not a terribly prolific writer; Sanford told me several times to get myself to a cafe (as he himself would do) and then "spill" (without "thinking")! Maybe someday I'll better heed his advice, though I suspect I'll always prefer my own home, where my words tend to come out in the form of occasional sputters instead of flowing out.

For those in the U.S.: H A P P Y  T H A N K S G I V I N G!

A cutting chill

a cutting chill

till the last rose is placed ...

through the ether

he breathes words into me

for his death poem

—Ribbons (Tanka Cafe, "The Afterlife"), Spring/Summer 2013
Posted recently at Haiku-doodle, the blog of poet Margaret Dournaus, as part of her All Souls Day/Day of the Dead series

This tanka refers to a longer poem I wrote several years ago about "his" (my grandfather's) death. Or maybe I should say, "we wrote," because I felt I may have gotten a little help. 

How to prune a poet

I'm not prolific.
To get more lines from me
you'd have to prune me first—
grab your hand shears,
cut my creaking, errant excess out.

But do it right, at the right times,
never in winter,
during my hibernation.
Trim me with a cultivator's touch,
after lavishing me with water,
nourishing me, tending my petals
as if you were in love.

Don't hack, how brutal.
You could leave wounds
that would never heal.
I could become infected;
then I'd lower my limbs
in a defeated poet's stupor.
And at the most, I'd write of throbs,
an egregious injury
the likes of which you,
grimy gloved, would never feel.

—Megaera, Vol.8, Issue 3, No. 26, Summer 2006

sharing with Poets United 7/14

A year of poetry blogging

A while back, I read a post at Book of Kells by poet-writer-editor Kelli Russell Agodon, where she posed the question: "Do you still have a blog?" Recently, she followed up with another post: ".... To  Blog or Not to Blog?"

Do I still have a blog? Several years ago, when blogging was hipper than it is now, I was a contributing member of a group poetry blog created, managed, and owned by someone else (and that blog later morphed into a print literary journal). But I only started my own blog a year ago this month.

I'm often slow to follow trends, quite slow. I could give various examples of how late to the party I tend to be in my life, but maybe I'll save them for a future post. I suppose I eventually could get into tweeting—compressed, quick communication—though probably only after it has become passé.

I like Ms. Agodon's term "online shy," which is how I sometimes feel. (Actually, for most of my lifetime, I've been just plain shy in general.) So at times I wonder what I'm doing here. 

I obviously don't have a large blog readership: I have a tiny handful of visible members and, I gather, another small handful of e-mail and other invisible subscribers. Based on the patterns of my stats, I may have an additional handful of onlookers from around the world—primarily, North America, Europe, and Asia. And, from time to time, I also have many spammers, though not nearly as many as when I started out. 

I think it must take quite a bit of work to attract a sizable following (unless, maybe, you're pretty well-known), particularly these days with the apparently waning popularity of blogging and the great migration of poets and poetry lovers, along with half of humanity, to Tweeterland—though a gazillion miscellaneous blogs do still exist. 

I don't know who all of my visitors are, or exactly how many of you there are, but I'm grateful for you! Sincerely. I'm not sure how long I'll keep this blog, but for now, I do plan to continue.

Now, why I "still blog":
- I hope it's not because I like to "hear myself speak," though hearing ourselves speak can be revealing. And I know it's not because I like to be the center of attention.
- Maintaining a blog is another creative outlet for me; in my opinion, we all need ways to express ourselves creatively. 
- Blogs, to me, can be warmer places than certain other social media outlets, and a person also can say more. "...blogs offer us the opportunity to expand our thought," says Ms. Agodon.
- Since I can be a ridiculously practical person, I feel I must do something with my barely used poetry—e.g., work that has been published a time or two and then otherwise would disappear into the ether—so I don't "waste it." I suppose this blog is my "book."
- I'm a bit afraid to blog: am blog shy. At this stage in my life, it's time to not be quite so afraid. Yes, maybe that's the most important reason why I have this blog—to plod on despite my inclination to withdraw, if that makes any sense.

What about you? Do you still have a blog? Why do you blog? Or have you never had a blog of your own? Even if you're not up to posting an answer, I congratulate you for making it clear through to the bottom of this post! And, again, I thank you for the support: for commenting to me or just quietly checking out twigs&stones. 

I'll keep the deadbolt unlocked and the porch light on for you (unless, of course, the bulb burns out and I forget to replace it—smile).

*******

Don't fuss at me

don't fuss at me
for my inattention:
birdsong thick
and a new poem
forming in my craw

—Mariposa, #28, Spring/Summer 2013

Eighty-one; homemade books

In honor of my father's birthday:

eighty-one,
my father building 
new closet shelves,
once more rearranging
the deepening layers

—Simply Haiku, Spring 2008; Take Five, Vol. 1

homemade books—
You can be a writer
my dad once said
though hoping, I suspect,
I'd do something sensible

—Simply Haiku, Spring 2008

Over the past couple of years, he's spoken again of building shelves. I don't get it. And this time, I can't see him getting around to it.

Typos

Another one for today:

typos

in my posted prose. . .

my fingers

red from stringing

sentences together

—June 2012

Whoever thought composing a few lines of text for a blog could be so big a task? I write, I condense, I tweak, I tweak the tweaks. And then there are the typos—and then more typos after retyping an entire post because something screwy happened to the formatting. To think I used to write and edit reams of my own work for a living. But now, having trouble with just a handful of sentences? Crimson-faced, I'll try to due better nest thyme.

Smooth stones

smooth stones

so sensual
we must not only
touch them softly
but write about them also

—Simply Haiku, Autumn 2005

twigs&stones: A title I've had in my head for a long time, though it's not necessarily as unique as I'd hoped. E.g., when I Google, I find there's a similarly named viral video, a catchy folk-rock song (see link below), a gemstone hairpin company, etc. Ah, well. . .

We writers seem to love stones and mention them not infrequently in our poems and blogs. Is that how we think of our short poems, our realized moments, as stones both sturdy and delicate, anchoring us, delivering us from a tenuous world? Packed with an intensity of feeling we ourselves cannot easily contain?

The above entry was one of the first two tanka, or "tanka-like poems," I ever wrote. Admittedly, it's a little different (odd?); surely it violates a few "rules" and might not pass muster with some critics. Yet I had no problem getting it published originally, and someone else (a haiku editor at the time) once wrote me a very nice message about it. Above all, it said what it needed to say for me, and still does, so I guess I still kinda like it. ;)

*Check out the Twigs and Stones video by Canadian band Siskiyou.*