Already at Swarthmore for the Fellows Conference!

Despite my flight delay, I still managed to be the first fellow to arrive! I'm going over my poems, making last minute adjustments and trying to prepare for my presentation this weekend. How do you fit one year of travel stories into ten minutes?!

Looking forward to meeting all the other fellows! Right now I'm sitting in the otherwise empty dorm reading through the brand new Watson baseball cards! I'll post pictures of my card soon, but the caption on the back of my card is hilarious and reads:

"He [Nobel Prize-winner, Derek Walcott] invited me to browse his bookshelves. He said I could read or borrow any of his books at any time, but if I didn't bring them back, he would kill me."

Lovely!

365 days

Today is July 18th, meaning that exactly a year ago I set out on my Watson. My Watson is officially over, but I still have two days left in France before I leave for Hawaii. It'll take me around two days to actually get home since I have two overnight layovers along the way.

I'm excited to go home and see my family and friends, but I'm dreading leaving behind beautiful and peaceful Carpentras.

The next time I blog I'll be back in Honolulu!


Frédéric Mistral's writing desk (I visited his house/now museum yesterday in the town of Maillane near St. Remy de Provence).

"How do you know you'll actually write poems?"

I found a copy of Elizabeth Bishop's collection Poems, Prose, and Letters this afternoon and have been reading through her letters. I found one to my thesis advisor, professor Frank Bidart from July 27, 1971 regarding his reaction to the poem "In the Waiting Room." Bidart really liked the poem (it had just been published in The New Yorker), so Bishop was relieved to hear this first bit of positive feedback. The New Yorker had kept the poem for "over a year" so when it was published Bishop said she felt "only fatigue & impatience" when she looked at it (p. 881).

Reading greats like Bishop can be inspiring but also tend to get me bogged down in reflecting about my own work. (I start to feel fatigued and impatient just like her!) How can I make my poems more ambitious? How can I take up difficult forms but still make them look effortlessly easy? And then I start thinking about what Bishop had already accomplished by the time she was my age, etc and the anxiety starts to creep in and it can be hard to sit down and write anything.

When I had the opportunity to show Derek Walcott my work several months ago, he told me to push past my comfort zone and to shy away from writing poems that were "too domestic." (Although he liked the poem Linnaean Rain.) I've been thinking about this a lot and he's right. In looking at my thesis manuscript there are a lot of poems that only concern landscape and the daily happenings of my fairly conventional life. However, I'm hoping that this past year has/will "shake up" my poetry.

During my last conversation with Bidart right before I graduated, he told me that the Watson sounded like an amazing chance to write, but asked: "How do you know that you'll actually write poems?" The question caught me off-guard and I told him that all of the new settings, people, languages, and flavors would inspire me to write something. I have written poems (some that I have now lost), but I didn't write as many as I had anticipated when I set off on my travels 11 months ago. I certainly wrote notes in my journal and have fragments galore stored as miscellaneous observations and beginnings of poems. However, I think actually living everyday life turned out to be immensely absorbing. I've always said that it's easier to write about a place once you've left and have some distance from it. This year is certainly unique in that I've been catapulted from one place to another with no punctuation in between.

Bidart then followed up his final question with the reassurance that even if I didn't write the huge volume of poems I had initially set out to write, that my year would slowly resurface in my poems for years to come. I think he was right. I hope he was right.






Final thoughts:
"Still dark.
The unknown bird sits on his usual branch.
The little dog next door barks in his sleep
inquiringly, just once.
Perhaps in his sleep, too, the bird inquires
once or twice, quavering.
Questions--if that is what they are--
answered directly, simply,
by day itself."

--E. Bishop, "Five Flights Up"

Provencal pace of life

After visiting Paris, it's good to be back in Carpentras. The slow, leisurely way of Provencal life is much more my pace!

As some of you know, I unfortunately got pickpocketed on the Eiffel Tower and lost my iphone. It wasn't so much the phone itself, but everything stored on it that I really regret losing. I had recorded students reading their poems from my poetry workshops in Dhaka and Trinidad and also had video and interviews of various poets I had met throughout the year. I'm still pretty disappointed, but I have to remind myself that even without the files I still have the experiences recounted in my journal, photos (backed up on this blog and on my computer), and in memory (cliche, but true). Also, the invasion of privacy was something that really got to me since I had my hand over my bag (holding down the zipper!) when this group of people all of sudden started bombarding me from both sides. I had been warned that when any sudden commotion occurs, it's probably someone trying to distract you while they pickpocket you, but in the moment you forget everything and just try to escape from the crowd. I also learned that some pickpocketers make their entire fortune just by going up to the Eiffel Tower everyday to target tourists. Sad, but true and to that I say: karma.

Anyway, Provence is absolutely beautiful. Like Prague, I would move here in a heartbeat. The days are hot, the nights are also warm. But, there's a vibrancy to everything about Provence from the produce to the people and in all the colors that I see throughout the day. I especially love Friday market days. I'm reading this book about Provencal markets and the author compares the excitement you experience the night before market day to a child eagerly awaiting Christmas morning. Haha, I think it's pretty true! It's funny to visit market day and realize that Friday is actually a work day (even though no one's working)! Another thing that has taken some getting used to is the store schedules. The stores in town are all closed between 12-3 pm everyday for their three hour lunch break! While their productivity level is low, the French know how to relax and their quality of life seems to be much higher.

I now have less than one month left of my Watson. I was putting together an album of my favorite pictures from the year and it's crazy to think that several months ago I was in Trinidad, St. Lucia, Bangladesh, and India.. all very, very different places from Carpentras. Last July, a year seemed like an infinite time period, but now it's closing in on me. I need to revise poems, start thinking about my final presentation for the fellows conference, and get ready to say goodbyes for the last time.










End note: "A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof." -René Char

Carpentras, France

Finally in Provence to end the year! I'll be here for the last two months of my Watson studying Frédéric Mistral, René Char, and other Provencal poets. I completely lucked out and found an amazing flat to sublet via Craigslist. I was nervous about subletting through Craigslist at first, but the owner of the apartment ended up being a well-known poet! It fits my project perfectly: studying sense of place and living in a poet's abode for my last few months. I believe in serendipity, especially after this past year.







Mount Ventoux in the distance still has some snow lingering on the top!






My own writing studio! Finally! My first real desk of the year.








France=amazing pastries. The first of (what are sure to be) many, many more.
Tomorrow is the famous Carpentras Friday market, so while I'm looking forward to taking pictures and buying fresh fruit and veggies I need to head to sleep since the stalls open at the crack of dawn. à bientôt!

Grasmere: the land of Wordsworth and sheep

I'm currently in Grasmere, the town where Wordsworth's Dove Cottage is located. Grasmere is in the heart of the Lake District and surrounded on all sides by sweeping fells and fields of grazing sheep and cattle. Spring is everywhere, although I arrived a little too late for daffodils. There are still batches of them here and there, but some of them are already starting to wilt. Dove Cottage and the nearby Wordsworth Trust museum have Wordsworth's "I wandered Lonely as a Cloud" or what's more commonly known as his "Daffodils" poem posted everywhere. It's one of his most famous and it's a poem that's well known and become a standard in many English classes:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee:
A Poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
--W. Wordsworth

Some of you may know that the poem was inspired after William and his sister Dorothy took a walk (as they often did) and encountered a huge expanse of daffodils next to Ullswater Lake. Dorothy actually recorded her observations in what are now known as "The Grasmere Journals"--preserved at the Wordsworth Museum. It was interesting to see all the manuscripts (Dorothy's handwriting is very difficult to read), but it's clear that she had a keen eye for observation and was meticulous in her recordings of daily life. Here's an excerpt from April 15, 1802--the day she encountered the daffodils with Wordsworth:

The wind was furious... the Lake was rough... When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park we saw a few daffodils close to the water side, we fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore & that the little colony had so sprung up -- But as we went along there were more & yet more & at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about & about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness & the rest tossed & reeled & danced & seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the Lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here & there a little knot & a few stragglers a few yards higher up but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity & unity & life of that one busy highway... -- Rain came on, we were wet.

William didn't write the poem until two years after their actual encounter, but the echoes between Dorothy's written account of their walk and the eventual poem are hard to miss.

Dorothy also wrote a lot about drinking tea, which was a sign of privilege and luxury in their day. In fact, they even had a locked box where they stored their tea since it was so valuable! Dorothy therefore took great pride in serving tea to guests. Once, she paid around what would today be equivalent to 60 GB Pounds for 1 pound of tea. As a result, she often reused tea bags multiple times, dried them and then passed them along to friends! (I wonder if they knew or just thought she was really generous...) The tour of Dove Cottage was actually really insightful. The house itself is pretty small, but the garden is beautiful with rows of bluebells everywhere, which is supposedly just how Wordsworth and Dorothy originally landscaped the plot. Did you know that Wordsworth said that if he wasn't a poet, he would've been a landscape designer? After seeing the garden, I believe it. The house was originally a pub called the "Dove and Olive" and the dim atmosphere reflects its initial purpose resulting in Dorothy's idea to place the sitting room on the second floor where there's more light.

The Wordsworths loved to walk and would often go on lengthy excursions (upwards of 8 miles) on foot, which Dorothy would later recount in her journals saying: "Tonight we went for a pleasant walk" as if 8 miles was just a leisurely stroll. I guess it was their way of getting out and experiencing Grasmere, which William deemed: "The loveliest spot man hath ever found"! Yesterday I hiked a trail called Easedale Tarn, which was a path that the Wordsworths often took and greatly enjoyed. I didn't have proper hiking gear and probably looked like a fool wearing my nike running shoes up the steep incline, but it was worth the views from the top. I actually didn't make it all the way to the tarn (which is a 6 mile hike, I'm told) and only to a waterfall called Sour Milk Gill. Could they have picked a more unappealing name for a waterfall?! What's funny is that the hike takes you through fields where cattle and sheep are grazing right beside you. At one point in the hike, I was the only person for miles around and I came across a single sheep standing in the middle of the path. He was just munching on grass and looking straight at me as if he could care less that I was trying to pass. He didn't want to budge and I was too amused to walk around. Aren't sheep supposed to be sheepish? This one wasn't and even let me get close to take pictures. All the photos in this post were taken with my phone since I didn't bring my cord to upload the pictures I took on my actual camera. I'll have to post them later.








Anyway, today I decided to continue with my hiking adventures and walked around Grasmere Lake and Rydal Lake in order to reach Wordsworth's other estate, Rydal Mount. It took me over 3 hours to reach there (I got lost in the process) and when I finally arrived, the kind lady at reception informed me that the Mount was closed as someone had rented it out for a luncheon! So, sadly I'll have to make the trek back out there on Saturday. At least I got some exercise.

The Wordsworth Trust puts together a season of poetry readings and events. Starting this month, they've organized weekly poetry readings for every Tuesday night. I was lucky enough to be able to drop in on one and discover several really good poets I hadn't previously heard of: Chase Twichell, Emma Jones, and Andrew Forster. Chase Twichell is actually an American poet and her environmentally conscious poems as well as poems about her father who had dementia were extremely moving. I was also surprised to discover that she is co-translator of Tagore (the poet I studied in India and Bangladesh) along with Tony Stewart (one of my contacts from Bangladesh). What a small world! Emma Jones, an Australian poet and the current Wordsworth Trust Poet in Residence, introduced the two other poets but didn't read herself. I wish she had, since I started reading her work online afterward. You can read more about Emma here. I'll leave you with one of her poems published in Slate last year:

Paradise

What you wanted was simple:
a house with a fence and a kind of gulled
light arching up from it to shake in the poplars
or some other brand of European tree
(or was it American?) you'd plant
just for the birds to nest in and so
the crows who'd settle there
could settle like pilgrims.

Darling, all day I've watched the garden make its way
down the road. It stops at the houses
where the lights are on and the hose reel is tidy
and climbs to the windows to look inside
like a child with its eyes of flared rhododendrons
and sunflowers that shutter the wind like bombs
so buttered and brave the sweet peas gallop
and the undergrowths fizz through the fences
and pause at some to shake into asters and weep.

The garden is a mythical beast and a pilgrim.
And when the houses stroll out it eats up
their papers and screens their evangelical dogs.

Barbeque eater,
yankee doodle,
if the garden should leave
where would we age
and park our poodle?

"This is paradise," you said,
a young expansive American saint.
And widened your arms to take it in,
that suburb, spread, with seas in it.

--Emma Jones, The Striped World

Happy Easter!