Reviews Bellmore Life April, 2010

“A blade of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,” wrote Walt Whitman in his seminal “Leaves of Grass” over 100 years ago.

As one of America’s greatest poets – and certainly Long Island’s greatest – Whitman’s work is infused throughout with his bold sense of embracing the world around him, from the tiniest to the biggest.

Used free verse as a technique to help reflect his open, bold and feverish approach to observing Long Island life, he saw living on the Island as wondrous, something to be known and told about, to be shared.

He was also among the first to call Long Island Paumanok, a Long Island Indian term for, well, Long Island. Or, as East Meadow poet Robert Harrison suggested: “Paumanok was also a word Indians used to pay tribute to the people who lived on Long Island.”

Now comes a delightful new book written by Long Island poets that does justice to Whitman’s vision of Long Island called “Paumanok: Poems and Pictures of Long Island.” It also clarifies what Long Islanders have known -– and Whitman knew – all along about their unique and beloved island: ‘Tis a place of beauty indeed to be cherished.The several poets in the book, from past to contemporary, indeed show their abilities to continue the journey-work of Whitman.

Compiled and edited by Kathleen Donnelly, and published by Cross-Cultural Communications of Merrick, Stanley H. Barkan, publisher, this plush volume of 596 book-bound pages features a poem for each day of the year – along with a photo by a prominent Long Island photographer to match the poem, taking the reader on an intimate journey from early January through late December, showing the four seasons full of wonder, curiosity – and resolve.

Mr. Barkan said of the book that “ It is the most comprehensive, contemporary record of visual and verbal Long Island yet.”

Iconic Long Island poets are well represented, from Walt Whitman, the quintessential American poet in the lineage of Thoreau and Emerson; William Cullen Bryant; John Orville Terry; Julie Isham; Olivia Ward Bush-Banks and Mary Gardiner, up to contemporary poets such as Maxwell Corydon Wheat Jr., the late David Ignatow, George Wallace, Vince Clemente, Charles Adés Fishman, William Heyen, Philip Appleman, Grace Schulman, John Hall Wheelock, David Axelrod and Norbert Krapf.

Curiously missing from this book, however, is Donald Axinn, the only Long Island poet to once point out to this reviewer the subtler green shades of twilight.“

I initially wanted to publish a book about Long Island photographers,” remarked Ms. Donnelly, in describing development of the book. “But friends said it wouldn’t really work.”

When she was introduced to the poet Clare Nicolas White, granddaughter of famed architect Stanford White, on an unrelated matter, Ms. White learned of Ms. Donnelly’s interest in Long Island photographers and told Bellmore Life, “I invited George Wallace to come discuss a possible project” of matching some photos with poems, “which was Kathy’s idea.”

Mr. Wallace publishes a Long Island Quarterly review of poetry and had an impressive rolodex of Long Island poets, many of whom, it was thought, may be interested in the project of matching their poems to Long Island photographs.

From her meeting with Mr. Wallace, Ms. Donnelly became flush with the fragrance of knowledge that emanates from university book stacks and independent book stores, and began research on Long Island’s earliest poets first.

She found a caché that includes Ms. Gardiner (1791-1860, Sag Harbor); Ms. Isham (19th-early 20th Century, Shelter Island); Mr. Orville Terry (1976-1869, Orient); and Ms. Bush-Banks (1869-1944, Sag Harbor).

While Mr. Wallace would provide Ms. Donnelly with a sizable compilation of contemporary Long Island poets, Mr. Harrison and her publisher Mr. Barkan also added several leads for her research.

“Some of the poems were written for the pictures,” said Ms. Donnelly, while some of the pictures were taken to complement the poems. Ultimately, she was after a nature theme, one that extolled the natural world as Whitman experienced it on Long Island. Emotional markersThis reviewer looked for signposts along the journey through the seasons that could evince the raw feelings and evoke the memories one experiences among these precise days.

On a snowy winter’s night, for example, “..smoke signals from chimneys / of houses with windows laced with frost /...Winter has buried its secrets /...What other world could ever be / so filled with such solemnity?” asks Joan Higuchi in “Psalm for a Winter Night.”

The aura of early winter twilight reflects in David Napolin’s “Nightfall”: “The evening nods with easy grace / Lower and lower in the Western sky / Velvety blues lie along the sidewalk / Lean against the walls of buildings...”

Or the happenstance of sudden romance blooms at the thought of snow – as cover. “The moon rises in a rice paper sky / it is shining through a wedding veil / there will be snow tonight / she smiles / you reach for her hand.” (“It is Not Only the Botanical Garden” – George Wallace).

As fresh and unique as winter is, it is also difficult to endure: “Lifeless leaves rustle / their dry grief / With muted voices / gulls question the wind /...The world is still, / holding its hoary breath..” (“Symphony” – Lynn Kozma).

But we do endure, especially those who find solace along the water’s edge: “Close your eyes and the present will disappear / Let me surround you with my voice / sway you with my strength / bring you breath from foreign places / I will stay with you forever.” (“The Wind Off the Sea” – Donna Demian).Shedding our winter cloakAs March arrives do we not hurriedly shuffle off our winter cloak to enter into another state of mind? We take no prisoners; winter is over, or so we hope. “Wandering damp sand for unbroken shells / clams, mussels, other moluscs / foot impressions combed by incoming tide / March has just begun; no tourists yet.” (“Jones Beach” – JR. Turek).

Yet, while some still hold onto winter, “...winter’s when we learn to appreciate the survival / of the old against the odds. I’ll take my winters cold.” (“I’ll Take my Winters Cold” – George Wallace), William Cullen Bryant, in “March,” portrays cautious optimism, “The stormy March is come at last, / With wind, and cloud, and changing skies; / I hear the rushing of the blast / That through the snowy valley flies. / For thou, to northern lands, again / The glad and glorious sun dost bring, / And thou hast joined the gentle rain / And wear’st the gentle name of Spring.”

From it we can look forward to the return of the perennials: “I see the slips of crocus / tipping the snow / with green / and the stream / near my house / once bursting / with ice / is released and running.” (“However Today” – Gladys Henderson).“Forsythia...erupt like ten thousand suns, in bright profusion.”

Perhaps now infused with an intoxicating blush of April, “I suppose each of us somehow must believe / that our own miraculous response to spring / is beyond the comprehension of critics” Mr. Wallace claims in “Serious Spring.” And Mr. Bryant is again asking, in “May Evening,” “Where hast thou wandered, gentle gale, to find / The perfumes thou dost bring?”

But Norbert Krapf, former professor of English at Long Island University’s C.W. Post Campus and now poet laureate of Illinois, proceeds down a more thorny – if not wholly antithetical – slope, warning gardeners in “The Politics of Weeds”: “I vote for weeds / and I am of the party / of the wild onion /...for mine is the politics of weeds /...in their uncompromising devotion / to survival and rebirth / they indeed shall inherit the earth.”

“Politics of Green” Well, perhaps, Mr. Krapf. But make no mention of it to Ron Overton, for in “Beyond Words,” he elaborates instead on the “politics” of green: “Yes / there are some things / that elude words & / simply must be sung: how the color green defies definition / is simply what it is / cannot be described / beyond the naming / beyond the singing / of green things.

”Mindy Kronenberg is moved to nod in agreement. “What vibrant flavor coats the tongue / seeps into the skin, is vaporized / into breath by the air? /...the taste / of something green, a thirst echoing from a well, / the throated tone of a bird / who digs into the grass,” she says in “Green.”

And, “Green knows / when to stretch out her fingers / when to stroke the trees / when to coax into bloom / their bright hopeful leaves,” says Ginger Williams in “Green Knows,” finishing the argument once and for all. Indeed, “Every leaf is a miracle,” Mr. Whitman reminds us in “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed.”

Ms. Donnelly uses Whitman deftly from time to time to remind us that “These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me / If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing.” (“Song Of Myself # 17”).

The glare of summer returns. Yet, soon enough the scent of spring gives way to the glare of summer.

In “June 7th,” Graham Everett can’t forget that “Nights like these when the humidity lifts / and the fireflies proliferate, all summers return / our childhoods as real as we lived them.” The colors of daisies “are as winter as snowflakes / and as summer as lemons,” observes Linda Carnavale in “Daisies Grow on my Windowsill.”

It’s now summer, where the children will “kick off our Buster Browns / and ankle socks / to race across the lawn,” (“Going Barefoot” – Lynn Beck), while summer decidedly for Clare Nicolas White “Is an orgy that makes me nervous.” On July 4, “Fireworks burst in the night: / golden spidery chandeliers, / showers of copper filigree, / tan the faces in a crowd” (“July” – Dan Murray).

For many Long Islanders, summers are the perfect time to plan for company. But Anne Porter, widow of renowned Long Island painter Fairfield Porter, cautions us of the uncertainty of the task, in “House guests”: “ ‘All of us are coming’ / No, they are not coming / They may be coming / They may not be coming. / Four of them are coming, / That is, if they are coming! / Five will come on Friday / Three will leave on Sunday / Two will come back Tuesday / That is, if they are coming. / If they are coming / Two of them would be coming / But they are not coming... / Six of them are coming!”

While Mrs. Porter hurries to prepare for a final head count don’t invite the sun warns Diane Chang, who, in “Without Notice,” politely reminds us of a more existential requirement: “The sun has moved / and leaves no wake /...it remembers never to promise / itself to anyone.”

Simple observations The simple pedestrian gaze on a lazy summer’s day is never far from the eyes of Adam Fisher. In “Suburban Street” he notes that “A kite string hangs from a telephone wire, / chalk marks the foul line for hoops, / a bike, its blue paint chipped, / lies / in a driveway, a lawnmower / drones, cicadas throb, / a retiree edges his / lawn for the third / time this week.”

For other Long Islanders summer spells time for water recreation. In “Riding the Dory” Gladys Henderson writes “We surrender to the currents / and steer our way towards / the green and red buoys that mark the way. / This is my brother’s first boat, / dressed in new paint, spotlessly clean. / A gull sees us, changes direction and follows. / He cries behind our boat / for the favors of old bait, and the bellies / of cleaned fish to be thrown to him.”

Meanwhile, safe in her backyard Arlene Eager can observe the birds more leisurely. In “I Sit Very Still,” she conveys that “If you sit very still, they said, / with a bit of food in the palm of your hand / If you sit long enough, day after day... / A restless misfit in this cool still life, / they see that too. / I will tell them that each time / one ate from my hand, / it felt like a kiss.”

Summers are also the time for obligatory trips upstate to camp, to the children’s college, or maybe down south. “As we turn off the expressway / and head cross island, he notices that the place / looks like he’s never been away. / We’re both another summer older,” muses Graham Everett in “August 20th.”

Fog of autumn

But soon enough the fog of autumn appears, and the gaiety of summer freedom gives way to the uncertainty of another moody season of change. In “Fog,” Weslea Sidon says, “This morning / I cannot see / the garden from the porch / I am not sure / I can remember your face / What I see is a picture / you, standing in the roadway / waving / looking elsewhere / I am not sure / I can find what is knowable / by way of what is known /.”

We needn’t worry, however, as Indian summer will erase all doubt – for a wee spell longer. But is there a rub? “September is a month of déja vu. / We look for a classroom in the past. / Summer hovers on the clean gone sky / In dappled richly leaning greens. / A giant orange moon hanging on the sky. / We head toward the core of winter / And stirrings of the summer still to be,” says Kay Kidde in “September.”

Whatever summer is left from the false promise of Indian summer, autumn is still in the fog, and “The ocean / is pouring fog / into the trees / In three months’ time / We will have snow / In three months’ time / The saviour will be born,” reminds Anne Porter in “In Storm-Watch Season.”

Fuad Attal’s “Autumn” is for him a season of resurrection: “Autumn, a season I love very much / I whisper in its ear, it whispers in mine. / I wait for it impatiently. / It comes at a certain time – / not before, not after, not more, not less.”

Mr. Barkan regales the outcome of autumn, too. In “October” he says, “Summer still winks / through the changing leaves / Winds rush about / the high tops of trees / whispering, ‘It’s over! / It’s over!’ / The eve of fruits transforms / to cider charms.”

In Gregory Rabassa’s “Indian Summer” “The sea winds blow a message / Up the bay of daffodils / That bloom in Southern springs,” in which “This languid, airy tropicale.../...Keeps the summer’s fortune / Frolicking about the trees.”

But, alas, the false promise does not hold, as “The maple leaves turn strawberry / every cold new day; this air / gaudies the trees /...and the brightest buckthorn berries / frost the cheeks of school kids.”

By now “The sky is milky / like an eye half lost in sleep. / Already it is dreaming about snow,” remarks Susan Astor in “A Gift of Birds,” and “Gray clouds / hover overhead / in a sky of / remembered dreams,” remembers Ms. Donnelly in “Lost in Autumn.By now “Autumn woods” lay “in gorgeous ruin,” says Juliet Isham, while Mr. Bryant asks for one smile more of the sun, “...one rich smile, and we will try to bear / The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkening air.”

For the birds, there too will be no respite from the coming winter, as they face certain struggle. Yolanda Coulaz observes on the grey beaches of Long Island in “Gull in Grey Waters” that seagulls stand alone, “Silent, stoic / in the stillness that is now, announcing his place in the world, / scavenger wading, waiting for whatever will fill his belly. / Atlantic oceans / have made their pact / with the wind. / I remain rooted in sand, pondering my place / in the order of things. / I will wait for what will fillme, / wait for what is next to come / learning to love this moment.”

We, on the other hand, can go home – and try again tomorrow.