Birdsong Under the Wisdom Tree: Collected Poems a book of hours in the life of a poet - Softcover

Chaskey, Megan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1504338626 ISBN 13: 9781504338622

Publisher: BalboaPress, 2015

Synopsis

In Birdsong Under the Wisdom Tree, Megan Chaskey follows the archetypal poet's journey, interweaving a lifetime of poems, journal entries, and memoir. Through her deep intimacy with both the inner landscape of imagination and the eloquent worlds of nature and relationship, Megan's musical voice evolves from her younger years in an artistic family through loss and renewal as a poet, woman, mother, and the beloved wife of fellow poet Scott Chaskey. Megan unites all the elements of her sensibility into a lyrical and profoundly spiritual mosaic. In a world that may try to draw us away from a heart-centered life, Birdsong Under the Wisdom Tree stands as a reminder to live our lives from a place of love.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Birdsong Under the Wisdom Tree

Collected Poems: A Book Of Hours In The Life Of A Poet

By Megan Chaskey

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2015 Megan Chaskey
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-3862-2

Contents

Preface Word seeds, ix, 
1 ~ BEGINNINGS, 
New Mexico 1956-1960, 3, 
Berkeley, California 1960–1968, 3, 
2 ~ THE WAY OPENS, 
Sewickley, Pennsylvania 1968–1971, 17, 
Denmark 1971–1972, 27, 
Sewickley 1972–1974, 36, 
3 ~ HEARTWOOD, 
Bennington College, Vermont 1974–1976, 41, 
London, England 1977–1978, 57, 
Oxford And Ireland, Summer 1978, 70, 
East Hampton, NY And Summer In France 1978–1979, 72, 
Bennington College 1979-1980, 79, 
4 ~ AS BREATH GATHERS TO DEEP WATER, 
Mousehole, Cornwall, England 1981–1989, 111, 
5 ~ POETRY: ART, 
Sag Harbor, New York 1990–1999, 185, 
6 ~ HOW LOVE LISTENS, 
Sag Harbor 2000–2009, 249, 
7 ~ COLUMNS OF LIGHT, 
Sag Harbor 2010–2013, 281, 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, 337, 
NOTES ON ILLUSTRATIONS, 339, 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR, 341, 

CHAPTER 1

BEGINNINGS

* * *

New Mexico 1956-1960

Berkeley, California 1960-1968 My beginnings in poetry Journal Blue Is the Color That Made the World

New Mexico 1956–1960

I WAS BORN AT THE HEIGHT of summer in New Mexico in 1956, so I love the heat of that season and the large expanse of sky and mountains in the clear light. At that time, my parents, Blair Boyd and Connie Fox (who kept her maiden name as her painting name), had a house in Tijeras in the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque. Following that, we moved to Corrales by the Rio grande, where my brother Brian was born.

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 1960–1968

My beginnings in poetry

For five years, starting when I was seven, we spent the school months in Berkeley, California, and took the train back and forth to New Mexico each summer until I was 12. That year, my parents separated, which marked a huge transition for me.

My father cared a great deal about words, about their exact use and meaning, and he gave them the same eye for detail he gave the statistics of a baseball game as he monitored its unfolding play by play. At my father's memorial service in the late fall of 2010, people who had worked for him at Landscape magazine spoke of his mastery as an editor. He had the ear of a musician when working with words. For him, editing wasn't merely about being grammatically correct but about being true to the meaning and to a code of authenticity that was strongly rooted in liberal philosophy. Books could be found in every room of his house — lining even the stairs in piles going up the steps — in groupings relating to their interior territories. His training was in geography, but he also had a great interest in people, in personal as well as social, political, and anthropological relationships; and his magazine focused on social geography: on people in relation to their surroundings, or the interplay between towns or cities and their people and how they intimately transformed each other.

My father's love of travel and of exploring new places infused my younger years with a great sense of adventure and a love of natural landscapes. When I was 13, he took my brother and me with his new family for a week of river rafting down the Rogue River in Oregon. I remember the majesty of the natural world on this journey and how I delighted in being on the river, feeling its power and mystery as we made our way down, camping alongside it each night. This archetypal imagery of water has worked its way into my poems throughout my life.

My parents both had a love of all things cultural, literary, and musical as well as of the arts in general, and it must have been a vibrant time for them to be involved with the University of New Mexico and later UC Berkeley. It's fascinating to reflect on which part of my artistic sensibility I inherited from my father and which from my mother and, through her, from my grandmother Eva Fox, whose birthday — August 19 — I share. My ongoing relationship with words as an expression of thought comes from my father, while my deeper intimacy with the poetic imagination comes from my mother, who throughout her life has had a love of poetry as well as close friendships with poets and writers. I am grateful I inherited this love of words along with a love of the artistic process I grew up with as part of my environment.

The way I "work" on my poems is similar to the way my mother has always immersed herself in her painting: intuitively — part wrestling, part dance. No matter where we lived or what form our family situation took, my mother's painting was always her lodestar as she navigated her life, and this gave me an unwavering sense of the artistic process as the way to tap into the underlying life force throughout life's inevitable changes.

I have also been deeply influenced by visual imagery through witnessing my mother's painting process as it evolved into abstract expressionism from her earlier imaginational landscapes. Landscape in abstract form has played a strong role in my mother's art all through her life, whether we lived in California, New Mexico, Denmark, or on Long Island, and it has helped us both build a sense of place. She has titled several of her paintings with lines from my poems, such as "your lamp far back between the trees," "I grow wings where no one can see," and "this room is wrinkled with light."

When I started writing poetry at the age of ten, and throughout the next few years, I would bring each poem I finished to my mother to read it to her. To me, it was like a wonderful treasure I had just discovered, and I wanted to share it with her immediately. She would listen intently and then say, "Read it again ..." It was her responsiveness and delight that planted the seed of inspiration in me to pay attention to those moments when the desire to write a poem would rise up within me, and that would lead to another and then another.

The world of the poem first opened to me through the transformational teaching of Marvin Moss at John Muir Elementary School — an unusual public school, but the time and place was Berkeley in the '60s! Mr. Moss took our fifth-grade class on walks through different neighborhoods where he would teach us about wild edible plants, tell us about reincarnation, and give us lessons in problem solving through intuition rather than logic, even introducing us to Zen koans. On our walks, Mr. Moss would draw our attention to the contrast between nature and civilization, providing me with the inspiration for many of my poems back then. We memorized and recited poems by Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, so that the sound of the poems became a part of us. By writing free-form haiku (ignoring the syllable counts), we experienced the power of the image in all its simplicity and presence. This sense of the image as the core impulse of the poem has remained at the root of my process ever since.

JOURNAL

Assignments from Mr. Moss

November 8, 1966

What a prayer should be:

A prayer should be what you really feel inside, and not memorized. It should ask forgiveness, but not often. It should have simple words and stay off politics or greed. It should thank god, not ask god to thank one of your own kind when you can walk right over to them and say it.

November 17, 1966

Analysis of prayer:

I didn't remember the words or the meaning. I just felt the relationship between god and me.

January 6, 1967

Beliefs of mine:

I believe that the book The I Ching, or Book of Changes is true in the sense that you try for what you want best to happen, not try towards the book, for if you do, it may change your whole life.

January 10, 1967

Joan (our friend):

She is a new being in our house, and she brings new ideas and inspirations with her. She is different, and so, changes our house.

January 13, 1967

The poem "Boxes and Bags" by Carl Sandburg:

This poem is hard to memorize but its imagination goes far, maybe even though your puzzle piece doesn't work.

January 26, 1967

Thoughts on writing after reading Carl Sandburg:

Essential:

Imagination, Wonder, Thought, Not much, Impression, Poetry in head and sincere heart, Children write too, Experiment with Poetry, Don't be satisfied, Roses, Sunset, Faces, Stays with us, What can be explained is not poetry, Leave them lingering, What does it do to me when I look at it, Poetry for Poets, Doesn't matter what age, Feel it, Experiment, Symbolism, Mystery

Non-essential:

To have a long poem, FACTS, Has to rhyme, Rhyme sometimes

    There-Waking
    by Megan Boyd

    Sooner or later
    we must come to the end
    of striving

    to re-establish
    the image, the image of
    the rose

    but not yet
    you say extending the
    time indefinitely

    by your love
    until a whole
    spring

    rekindles
    the violet to the very
    lady's-slipper

    and so
    by your love
    the very sun itself
    is revived

Analysis of my own poem, "The Re-Waking"

Stanza 1: That we eventually grow old

Stanza 2: And to bring out your sense of beauty.

Stanzas 3 & 4: But you delay it by your feeling of love,

Stanzas 5 & last part of 4: And your love is so much that it reveals life.

Stanza 6: It seems like the sun within the person was in a storeroom. Bringing it out, that love of yours, restores it.

May 3, 1967

"I Had No Time to Hate," by Emily Dickinson:

She is saying that in her short life she had no time to hate because death would stop it, and she thought she had no time to love, either, but it was worthwhile and good enough for her.

June 10, 1967

(Mr. Moss gave our fifth-grade class the assignment to figure out what we would do to survive if we were in a group like the Donner party, who tried to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains during the winter of 1847. Mr. Moss asked each one in the class to write his or her ideas on a piece of paper and then line up at his desk to show them to him. If he deemed your methods viable, which meant that you would live through the ordeal, your paper would go on his desk. If your ideas weren't viable, it meant you would not survive, and you would see your paper waft through the air into the wastebasket. Years later I met up with someone from that class who remembered that the only paper that didn't end up in the wastebasket was mine.)

Donner Party Survival – Me in Their Place:

Only one that lived (me)

1. They don't take experienced advice because they think the experienced will cheat them or steal their honor.

2. They start hatred, rumors, and weakness when the group cannot decide on a leader.

3. I could dig in the snow around the lake and eat the plants there. Or I could break the ice and find frogs, moss, and fish. To sleep, I could dig a hole in the snow or ground and sleep (maybe also go through the pass). I could eat something out of or off the cabin or its logs, like sawdust or bugs.

June 13, 1967

Writing Philosophy of Life (in poem form):

    See your intentions
    Of life at its greatest
    Discover abilities
    Not known before

    Discover love
    Of your abilities
    Sense your loved
    Creatures

    Crawl along the grass
    And find the bug of strength
    grow in abilities
    grow in freedom

    Freedom is the end
    Of life in the present
    But wait
    You might become
       more
         free!

June 15, 1967

Koans – Buddhist riddles with philosophical meaning:

Koan Number 2. If Doken was foolish, he would tell Sogen that Doken would get all the food. Sogen could say that he (Sogen) needed something in return, and food and shelter was that something.

But then Doken could say that Sogen could teach more if he knew more and (maybe) could learn more without food or drink. But then Sogen could say that maybe he shouldn't even accompany him with that attitude!

* * *

Blue Is the Color That Made the World

At this time, Peter Boiger, a sculptor friend of my mother's, printed some of my poems in a chapbook titled Blue Is the Color That Made the World. Peter ran an army base art supply store to fulfill his duty as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. It was equipped with a letterpress printing press, and it was on this press that Peter, having set the type letter by letter, printed this chapbook for me when I was 11.

I had, as a child, a special sense of numbers, discerning them through the colors I associated with them. Four was blue, a clear-sky blue — not too light, not too dark — that invited you into its mystery. It was like the starting place from which everything else radiated outward. From four backwards, we come to three, which is red — a rich, deep, nourishing red that supports and opens up possibility. Then downwards to two, a pale yellow or cream like the light of the moon. And from there, to number one, which is either the darkest ink-black of space and in that way pure possibility, pure knowing; or it is pure white, like light before it is split by a prism into the spectrum of colors. At the time, this sense was a visceral feeling, a kind of knowing. Now I understand how everything comes from one, and I see how we feel the pull to find our way back to one from all the variety, just as we started the journey into the world of form from one, when we were still so close to it that we could not distinguish ourselves as separate.

After four comes five, which is pure yellow, and when I was young, yellow was not a color I liked very much. Whatever the reason, I have since come to love yellow, especially a deep, vibrant, golden yellow like the color of sunflowers. Six, then, is green, and seven is purple — a dark purple or indigo — while eight is orange. And nine is black again, perhaps because it is the point of turning back towards one, but at a new level. Understanding this aspect of how I related to the world will be helpful as you read the poem "Blue Is the Color That Made the World."

BLUE IS THE COLOR THAT MADE THE WORLD

Skies hold stars of dreams and goals. Seas hold the wishes many hope for and carry happiness far. Beautiful eyes of blue call the future and praise the present. Love pulls two together with blue threads. Blooming flowers reach for the magnificent sky. Mothers' eyes sparkle with a blue glow when their young smile. All find happiness and peace with the color blue.

    nature gives wings
    to a bird
    in return she flies

    see the sunset
    ruuning to its health
    out of your reach

    walk out
    you may
    there is room

CHAPTER 2

THE WAY OPENS

* * *

Sewickley, Pennsylvania 1968-1971
The story of the "bird ladies"

Denmark 1971-1972
Sophomore year of high school
Journal

Sewickley 1972-1974
Junior and senior
years Poems

Sewickley, Pennsylvania 1968–1971

GROWING UP IN the western part of the country did not prepare me for what would be a major change halfway through my sixth-grade year, when my mother remarried and moved with my brother and me to Pennsylvania. The move involved a change not only from California weather to the Eastern seasons but also in culture and mindset on several levels.

At this time, writing poetry sustained me as a means of being in touch with my deepest sense of self. Looking back over my poems from those days, I hear a different voice emerging once I reached the age of 13 — a natural progression, of course, but interesting to witness now. I also kept journals throughout this period, something I had started with Mr. Moss, but they became more and more important for my expressive process as time went on.

The story of the "bird ladies"

During this time, I made a personal connection that crossed continents and generations by means of a poem — and it all started with a book. At that time, I loved to read about people who worked with wildlife. I can remember the very moment I stood between the bookshelves in my middle school library as my eyes were drawn to The Cry of a Bird by Dorothy Yglesias. And I remember feeling a kind of thrill as I pulled it off the shelf and opened it.

I felt I knew Dorothy deeply from reading her story and from the photos of her, with her deep-set eyes — like those of a seabird but softer; and of her sister Pog, with her amazing head of hair that came from the family's Basque origin and gave her a wild, unusual look. The photos fascinated me: Dorothy in her apron and knitted cap and Pog in her Cornish fisherman's smock, both holding birds brought to them for healing. I loved the photo of the two of them with a basket, kneeling on the rocks by the edge of the sea. They had just taken a seabird out of it and were holding it up to the wind to let it take to the sky and fly free after its healing time with the "bird ladies." This image embodied for me the very essence of how they gave the birds time and space to heal, the ultimate goal being to release them back into the wild without any of the standard banding or tracking.

Deeply personal and unusual, Dorothy's story drew me right in, starting from the seemingly chance moment that first planted the seed for their Wild Bird Hospital and Sanctuary, when Mary — Pog and Dorothy's younger sister — brought them a jackdaw with a shattered wing. The jackdaw is a wonderful, cheeky, coal-black bird common in Britain, between a crow and a blackbird in size. This particular bird had fallen down a drainpipe, and Dorothy and Pog created a space for it to live in Pog's studio hut. Not realizing the bird was female, they called it "Jacko." Shortly afterwards, a man who had been walking in the woods found another jackdaw with a hurt wing, and knowing that Dorothy and Pog were caring for Jacko, he brought it to the sisters, who named it "Muffin." This new jackdaw became Jacko's loving companion. In The Cry of a Bird, Dorothy wrote:

We have often wondered what would have happened if Jacko had not broken her wing. Would there ever have been a Hospital for Wild Birds at Mousehole? Without doubt Muffin, our second bird, came because someone had heard about Jacko. So also came our next birds, two fledgling jackdaws.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Birdsong Under the Wisdom Tree by Megan Chaskey. Copyright © 2015 Megan Chaskey. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: BalboaPress
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1504338626
• ISBN 13: 9781504338622
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 356