NOVEMBER/DECEMBER

Dawn and dusk define
my days at this time of year;
moments of beauty
framing hours indoors in one
meeting after another.

The Nature of Nature Poetry

Okay, it's time to come clean and admit that my recent post, titled "The Poet Attempts to Write a Poem Completely From the Viewpoint of Nature," was a bit of a joke.  The poem was nothing but empty space surrounded by two brackets.  It was also a bit of a philosophical statement.  The whole thing started as many nature poems do:  I had been out for a walk on a beautiful November day.  (My family and I, parents, and sister were at Deep Creek Lake, in western Maryland for the Thanksgiving holiday.)  The air was cool and crisp; there was a slight breeze; the sun was shining; it was quiet.  Perfect morning for an introspective walk and gazing at the landscape.  I returned to the house we were renting, got my coffee, and sat in the sun on the porch determined to write a poem extolling nature, the beautiful day, etc., etc.  Words came to mind:  "the rising sun...;" "the sun rising over the mountains...;" "wind rattles through the trees..."  The more I thought and wrote, the less pleased I was-- this wasn't a nature poem, it was a poem about me describing a scene in nature.  All of the things I experienced on my walk, or sitting on the porch; all of the things I saw, felt, sensed, were really about me and my perceptions of nature-- they weren't nature itself.  Could I write a poem about nature completely from the viewpoint of nature?  What would that look like?  My sister joined me, and I posed the question to her.  I couldn't write that the sun rose, because it doesn't really rise-- it only appears to rise from the standpoint of us humans.  Could I write that the wind blew?  Not really.  Since wind is caused by changes in air pressure and cooler or warmer air moving in to fill a void, nothing is blown.  Wind is a sensation experienced by humans and other animals that can notice the change in pressure.  We couldn't write that a leaf moved because, well, a leaf is incapable of movement on its own.  The best I could do would be to write that the leaf was pushed or was moved by the wind or something else.

My sister and I tried to think of different verbs that could be used in a poem, and quickly reached the conclusion that nearly any verb we would want to use comes with human interpretation, emotion, baggage attached.  Maybe a poem completely from the viewpoint of nature would have to be a series of nouns.  Sun. Wind. Trees.  But, then, these are all human descriptions for things we see.  The sun doesn't know that it's a sun or a star.  "Wind" is our word for the sensation we feel and see when air pressure changes.  Trees are just another type of plant, unaware (we assume) of the way in which they differ from flowers or grass.

We concluded that nature just is.  It is all a human construct, including what we consider to be beautiful about nature.  So, a poem about nature completely from the viewpoint of nature would have to be wordless; a blank page (I included the brackets only because I was unable to create a blank page in the blogger format).  So, the poem became a something of a philosophical statement, more artistic than poetic, and led to another poem which makes the statement a bit more clearly (posted just prior to the blank poem).

Let me know what you think.    

WALKING ALONG THE RIVER FUJI, THE POET BASHO FINDS A CHILD ABANDONED BY ITS PARENTS

[Published in Symmetry Pebbles, issue #4]


WALKING ALONG THE RIVER FUJI, THE POET BASHO FINDS A CHILD ABANDONED BY ITS PARENTS


A child by the road,
crying in the autumn wind--
great Basho leaves food
and takes away an image
from which he forms a poem.

If he had taken
the child with him, would he have
mastered poetry?
Or, would he be known only
as a man who saved a child?

Three More Poems in the Copperfield Review!

The Copperfield Review has published three more of my poems:  Cypress Boards, Skimino, and There Is No Life For Us Here (formerly John and Harriett, 1837).  That's six poems now in The Copperfield Review.

See:  http://www.copperfieldreview.com/poetry/Michael%20Ratcliffe%202.htm

Reading the Skimino Cycle

I've tried to write each of the poems in "The Skimino Cycle" in such a way that each can stand alone and is not dependent on the context of the whole for meaning and value.  But, each is also part of a larger story, particularly those that revolve around the lives of John and Mary Ratcliffe.  I also have not attempted to write in a linear, chronological fashion, with each new poem written and posted following the previous poem in time.  As a result, I jump around in time as my creative juices flow and the words come to mind.  For instance, I recently wrote and posted "John and Mary, 1873."  This poem, which is set just prior to their separation and divorce, came along years after I wrote poems set in the years after their divorce.

So, for those who want to read these poems in a chronological manner, here's the order, from furthest back in time to most contemporary (the year in which the poem is set is in parentheses).  The bulk of the poems-- those set in the 1850s-1882, including "Separated in Death, Even As In Life," focus on John and Mary Ratcliffe.

Cypress Boards (1805)
John and Harriett, 1837 (1837)
This Prairie is Life (1855)
The Mountains Were My Meetinghouse (1855)
On This Cold Southern Field (1862)
John and Mary, 1873 (1873)
The Glass (1876)
They Rode on Borrowed Horses (1876)
John's Lament (post-1876)
The Wheatfield (1876)
She Will Not Thirst Again (1882)
Separated in Death, Even as in Life (no particular time, but post-1882.  I was at the cemetery in 2005.)
Skimino (2001/2002)
Grass (2000s)
Spring Soil (2000s)
The Homestead (2005)
The Homestead, Part 2 (2005)
Moel Siabod (2009)

Another poem in Three Line Poetry

Just had another poem published in Three Line Poetry.  This makes five poems.  Here's the latest:


She turned and kissed me softly.
I could not force my mind
to remain within the dream.

Lives Imagined and Re-Imagined

The larger portion of poems in the collection that I've called "The Skimino Cycle" focus on the lives of John G. and Mary Townsend Ratcliffe.  These poems take the core of what I know about them from a variety of historical documents and combine those facts with what I can assume about them based on the milieu in which they lived.  There's also quite a bit of imagining based in these facts and assumptions, as well as bits and pieces of information passed along through the family.  In essence, I've created characters and lives, based on real people who lived at some time in the past-- I suppose what I've created should be called "pseudo-biographies."  I began writing imagining and writing the series of poems based on their pseudo-biographies nearly ten years ago.   And, athough I knew that new facts and details would always come to light, I thought I knew the core details of their lives.  In recent weeks, however, I have come across new information that has changed what I and others thought we knew about their relationship.  These new facts create a dilemma regarding the poems that have been written (and some published) already, raising critical questions.  When imagining lives, and building a story based around historical characters, how closely must the author stick to the facts?  And, when new information is found, is there a need to revise previous work?

I knew all the basic facts about their lives-- dates of birth, death, marriage, births of their children; what towns and counties they lived in over the course of their lives together; John's occupation, when they moved to Kansas and under what circumstances; John's Civil War record; and the general timing of their separation and presumed divorce.  What I didn't know was why they married in West Alexander, PA rather than in Wheeeling or eastern Ohio, where their families lived; specifically why they were living with Mary's uncle, Dr. Thomas Townsend, in Wheeling in 1850; and whether they actually divorced, and the specific reason for their separation and divorce.  I knew that they were both buried in the Ratcliffe family plot in the Gaylord, KS cemetary; that Mary had originally been buried on the farm, but was moved to the cemetary; and that she was buried at the opposite end of the plot from John.  I built a series of poems and imagined their lives and personalities based on these events and what I fact-based assumptions I could form. 

A few months ago, I decided to read every item in John's Civil War pension file (which a neighbor who researches and writes books on the Civil War graciously photographed for me).  Most of the file contains his petitions for increases in his monthly pension, as well as affidavits from doctors, neighbors, and friends supporting his claims.  Those items and their contents were familiar to me.  Several of the affidavits from long-time friends and former neighbors, however, contained shocking revelations about his personal life and events that led directly to his and Mary's separation and divorce.  All noted that he had been intimate with the young woman that he and Mary had hired to help out on the farm, and several noted that John had gotten her "in the family way."  In addition, one person noted that John had had a tendency to "chase after women."  After reading these, I decided I had to obtain documents relating to their divorce, if indeed they were officially divorced.  I wrote to the clerk of the District Court for Marshall County, KS, and received copies of Mary's petition for divorce.  It was true-- in October 1873, John committed adultery with the hired girl.  Mary was divorcing him for that reason, as well as the fact that he had not been present in the home for a year. 

The family story had always been that John had been depressed and moody after the Civil War, and had basically become difficult to live with.  Given the nature and extent of his wounds, and the amount of time between his return from the war in 1863 to their separation and divorce in the early 1870s, that made sense.  In my poems, I had him sinking into depression and essentially driving people away from him.  There was something in one family history record of him having a wife in Jewell County, but this would have been after the divorce, and there was no other corroborating evidence of that-- just a seemingly random note jotted down by a grandson long after the fact.  But, adultery-- that seemed change everything.  Were the family stories of depression correct?  Or, were they just the stories told to the younger sons to protect them from the truth?  My great-grandfather and his brothers got enough basic facts about their father wrong in his obituary and other documents to make it plausible that they had not been told all the truth.  They were all young (15 years and under) at the time of the divorce, and they reached manhood largely without him.  If the stories of depression and anger are false, then the emotional underpinnings of the poems, particularly those exploring Mary's feelings, are false.  And, in that case, must I revise?

On the other hand, perhaps the stories of depression and anger are true, and help to explain the adultery.  In the decade between John's return from war and the separation, three sons were born.  The marriage could not have been terribly bad.  Perhaps there was a slow decline in their relationship, brought on by depression, moodiness, and a change in roles and relationships.  John could not perform manual labor, which meant he could not do the hard work on the farm.  The same individuals who mention his "chasing after women" also not that he spent a lot of time hunting, fishing, and trapping after the war.  This would have kept him away from the farm-- perhaps for days at a time?

So, a deeper, richer imagining of their lives is beginning to form.  Mary, taking on the role of managing and running the farm, and perhaps even doing some of the work that John once did.  Perhaps this helped her realize she could successfully take out her own homestead and farm on her own after the divorce.  John, increasingly despondent about his inability to do the work he once did, immerses himself in hunting, fishing, and trapping-- the things he can still do to bring in money and to support his large family.  They begin drifting apart; Mary tries to keep them together, and to spend more time together on the farm; John reacts to what he sees as nagging by finding solace with the hired girl (or girls), eventually getting caught in the act of adultery-- or admitting to it.  Does this require revision to existing poems?  Perhaps not.  But, it helps chart the direction in which new poems must go, and helps fill in some gaps in knowledge, providing new emotional depths to plumb.