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| poet j.l. jacobs |
i overlapped with jaclyn (j.l.) jacobs at the university of oklahoma just briefly, just enough to exchange a lunch or two and a poem or two, but her stunning book of poems, the leaves in her shoes, has stayed with me for more than a decade, since we first met. so let me start by recommending her book to anyone who loves to read poetry.
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| carol muske rightly calls jacobs' book "haunting" |
you can also find five of her poems here, in ploughshares, her work in american letters, her poem "an error in geography" in octopus, and "the magnolia hotel" in the maple tree literary supplement. she has also been generous enough to share some of her newer work here.
when we reconnected about a year ago, i started noticing that she'd been through something life altering. when she told me how she had embraced her forced monasticism, i thought her tale the perfect narrative about finding looseness in a tight place, and i asked her to tell her inspiring and insight producing story here at GITP. she was generous enough to say yes to my request, though her keyboarding time is so limited.
On Spaces
“I’m exiled. You can’t convert me.” Bob Dylan
Her
disembarkment: less
than
theatrical.
No less
exiled.
Upon returning
from Florence with my best friend-girl at the time, I bought an airplane
bungalow house built in 1920, with two stories, hardwood floors, claw-footed
tub, original everything. It
reminded me of the flat in the PonteVecchio we’d stayed in with its shutter
windows on either side of the fireplace…and it was on Julia Avenue. I like the name of the street; it is a
street for a poet. A one-block
street that is a haven of bird life, with large shades of elm and oak.
My physical
limitations:
Drive 6 block
radius
Two hours hand
use.
No
bending, lifting,
or
twisting. Ever.
Car
rides are very painful.
I had danced
up to not walking. Truth is, I danced up to being paralyzed from the neck
down. Never sick. The one growing
up in the family-owned pharmacy who never caught anything.
It’s funny how
the brain arrives at what is most important. In my case, when it came to the wire, I put writing above
saving my life. I knew I was very
sick; I thought I was dying. Add to this story that I was living with
undiagnosed Crohn’s Disease for seven months. Weighed 107 to begin with. It melted away.
I fell backwards while trying to walk forward. Began taking the elevator years ago because I fell backwards
on the stairs. Mine was a case of
denial, par excellance. “I must
just be getting clumsy, I thought to myself.” I didn’t go to doctors. Ate my apple and kept them at away, at bay. Grew up organically green,
apothecary/nutritionist father and faith in the natural ways of healing. Herbs, spices, and time to make haste,
and time to be still. Harmony,
balance as the key.
Slowly losing
the use of my right hand, and arm.
How many glasses broken; whole sets of crystal gone. Difficult to make a meal without
breaking a dish. Wondered how long
she could keep on like this. The
English Department had given her all the aural assessment classes they could,
at the time all creative writing classes from 2006 to 2008. The use of the right hand was becoming
impossible and the pain unbearable.
Sleep was coveted, and elusive. The software for typing while you speak
could not consistently recognize her accent.
What mattered
most, selfish soul that I am, was finishing a poetry manuscript about my dying
experience…I mean, if that’s what you are up against, might as well record
it…or if you are a war-time correspondent, you report while trying to save your
hide. I was also working furiously to finish a novel…had 103 temperatures for
three weeks at a time…when I looked down it was if looking down from a great
height, everything was spinning.
I was
suffering from severe spinal cord compression at the cervical level (which
controls everything from the neck down) and had not a clue. Didn’t plan on seeing a doctor to find
out. But I was planning my wake.
On Holding On
Had learned to hold onto
whatever was most sturdy
in her own bathroom.
Now why would it be any different in a stranger’s bathroom?
Got any better balance there sister?
Hoped the towel bar held out
as the porcelain sink was too
slippery.
How many backward falls? How many glasses dropped? Head hit
the pointed corner of the bath cabinet.
************************************************************
It must not
have been my time because my psychologist (read talk-therapist, yes, I admit it
to the world)…he made the appointment for an MRI with a neurologist he
knew.
What they
found was collapse as in a crumbling building. The spinal cord required emergency surgery; donor bone,
metal plates, screws and fusion. I
would not have it. No. Not me. I
did not believe in surgery.
On
Speaking to Neurosurgeons: My Father’s Advice
“Don’t put on any airs..”
Cause they got
some good doctors
really make mess outta you.
Don’t put on your poet hat
in that Medical Establishment.
Don’t do Blanche Dubois either.
Or God forbid that Steel Magnolia accent.
Remember here
We are the auslanders,
dear.
*************************
On Bedtime Prayers
for my nephew Ryan
Kade
And if I die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul should wake
in you
that gift of keys and chords and colors
felt by sound and round.
Yeah baby some notes don’t have any color.
You play that harmonica anyway. Go ahead
and make those songs up as you go.
Some letters of the alphabet don’t have much color
either. It’s okay.
Dominant colors just take over. Just let go.
Feel it in the wind, baby.
I’ll be in the wind and dust as you get off the bus, baby.
*********************
On Plath
Anna never thought she’d write her own
cadre of Ariel Poems
before
humbling herself to the blade.
Razor sharp scalpel cut
her pretty white skin. Peel it back.
“Concentrate on healing. Magnolia-up now.”
“I said my convalescence bed, didn’t I?”
When I
got over, what my Grandmother would call my “mad spell,” I started thanking G-d
I had lived as long as I had, and got ready for the surgery that would set me
free.
It is true
that I can “only” drive 6 blocks or maybe 10 if I’m feeling really good…my
spine is stenotic all the way down and the residual damage from my neck will
remain…I try to move in such a way as to “save” my lumbar spine from having to
be plated and fused as well. I’ve
gotten used to the limitations, and when I awoke from surgery…hyperventilating
while still in the operating room…hearing “breathe, baby, breathe, you’re
hyperventilating, we’re on our way to recovery”…I tried moving my toes; they
moved. I had feeling, and if I
walked out of there, I’d promised myself I’d pirouette again, though dancing,
riding a bike, jumping and running, and were all prohibited, and, alas, the
shapes of intimacy had to evolve radically, or be eliminated.
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| fritz |
Each day is a day
at an artist colony for me. Moving
from room to room, reconciled with my fate and in deep acceptance of my space,
place and how I am to move in this world.
I walk my Bichon, Fritz Olivier, up to 16 blocks, when it is not 100
degrees or more. It is like the
monastic life I was enchanted by at 17; I wanted to be a Nun. I would have been a bad nun, but
nonetheless. So, here we are, the
Nun of Julia Avenue…the most important lessons I’ve learned are how to be
still, to listen, to really listen, and to accept with grace the lily-light
I’ve been given. I can walk; I can
type; I can write poetry, I can cook—even difficult dishes, if I save my hands
for that purpose. This limitation
of mine makes everything I do a very decided choice; and those choices are
sacred. Do I make shortbread for
my 96 year old neighbor today, or do I use my hands to work on an article about
synaesthesia (a neurological condition I thought everyone had)?
Music was a
crucial part of my healing too.
And, in the days when I was braced and unable to move about, I listened
to classical music 24/7. One of my
musical friends noticed that I could name the key a piece of music was in…it
was, alas, a skill associated with the healing spinal cord, and did not last,
but it resulted in my friend buying me a lovely second-hand baby grande.
I tell people
I’m recovering from Crohn’s. I
believe I am. Think it so, and it
will be. That’s been my experience
so far in life. I walk away when
people tell me there is no cure.
I, who am considered a shut-in by my Parish, have been kindly
cared for by those who bring Holy Communion, Altar flowers to brighten my days,
and those who plant lilies in my flower beds. The Priest asked me to write six different Poem / Prayers
for Lent which was a most enriching, exciting learning experience and a secret
dream of writing liturgies come true.
Most recently the Priest has me writing new hymns for old music. My first was the ancient Latin hymn
“Ubi Caritas”. What I’ve written,
is a poet’s transliteration of listening, listening and listening to the
Latin. Even while sleeping, I keep
the music playing softly. Absorb,
then write. Same with music as it
is with poetry. I’m realizing how
closely kin those two are.
Never am I
without something meaningful to do, including spending quality time with the
many good friends who visit and take care of my out-side world needs. I have been liberated to live a life
devoted to art. It does not feel
like a tight place; it is rather a large place and space of all the time there
is.
On Neurosurgery
just coming back from the dead
trying to figure
what kind of language was used
the silver doors
swing
"breathe, baby."
knives mirrored
outsized
in sterile stainless
she did not see
the bowl
for collecting her blood
she did not see
the donor bone
soaked
dipped host
now
holds
her head up
What do you want GITP readers to know about you?
I don’t watch TV; I believe poetry and art, more generally, have the power to heal us, and the broken world about us.
What do you want GITP readers to know about you?
I don’t watch TV; I believe poetry and art, more generally, have the power to heal us, and the broken world about us.
What do you hope to accomplish this year?
I want to learn more about writing
songs, or poems for music. See my
second book published.
Are you in a tight place, and if so, what, if anything, are you doing to get out of it?
Are you in a tight place, and if so, what, if anything, are you doing to get out of it?
My physical limitations
are the new status quo; I accept where I am, and go about daily trying to exist
in a place of calm, deep peace & joy.
What inspires you?
What inspires you?
. . . . almost everything, if I am living mindfully, alive and
awake...I find inspiration in the natural world of birds, butterflies,
rainstorms, overheard conversations, the midsummer stall, the midwinter
hub-bu
What is your favorite legwear?
What is your favorite legwear?
Tights, if I wear any. Something that will go in my boots of
Italian, not Spanish, leather. ;-)
