Dirt, beautiful dirt.An online acquaintance asked, rhetorically, perhaps, at the foot of his recent blog post if there was any subject unsuitable for poetry. I allowed as how I thought we could write poetry (in one form or another) about anything we wanted.
Of course, after I left that comment, I started thinking more carefully about his question, and wondered if, once again, I had shot off my mouth too soon.
No, I decided; I stand by that assertion...with this modification: not saying the poem will be good verse, only that it will be verse. Then I set myself the challenge to write about a subject one might not normally think of as versifiable (if that is a word.) So, here you are:
Dirt
I carry with me
Memories of all the dirt
I have touched – or that
Has touched me –
In my sojourn on this Earth.
The sandy dirt
Near the Roanoke River,
Which runs past the town
Where I was born.
The gumbo of Arkansas,
Louisiana and Texas – fine
Silty soil that bakes brick hard
In the summer sun,
Makes perfect clods for chunkin'
But locks you in its sticky embrace
When wet –
Leaving a gooey barefoot
Trail ‘cross Mama’s pristine
Freshly-mopped floor.
Sweet-smelling leafy loam from
Delaware to Ohio. Sour mud-dirt
Along the bend of Horseshoe Lake,
Across the Mississippi from
West Memphis.
The dirt I treasure most,
The dirt I am loathe to depart,
The dirt I will take with me when I go
Is the dirt in my backyard.
Undisturbed for almost a hundred
Years, graced over time with tons of leaves
And the tilling of millions of worms,
My dirt is home, my connection
To Pennsylvania and to all
Those I'll leave behind.
I will carry it with me
To every town I visit when I leave here:
An olfactory, tactile reminder of home,
A touchstone when I am afraid
And lonely, or have lost my way.
It will go into the ground with me
When I die, adding to the dirt
In Menallen Friends Cemetery.
I am made of dirt,
The good soils of America
And of Ireland and Scotland before,
Of Africa long before that.
I love dirt.
Of course, after I left that comment, I started thinking more carefully about his question, and wondered if, once again, I had shot off my mouth too soon.
No, I decided; I stand by that assertion...with this modification: not saying the poem will be good verse, only that it will be verse. Then I set myself the challenge to write about a subject one might not normally think of as versifiable (if that is a word.) So, here you are:
Dirt
I carry with me
Memories of all the dirt
I have touched – or that
Has touched me –
In my sojourn on this Earth.
The sandy dirt
Near the Roanoke River,
Which runs past the town
Where I was born.
The gumbo of Arkansas,
Louisiana and Texas – fine
Silty soil that bakes brick hard
In the summer sun,
Makes perfect clods for chunkin'
But locks you in its sticky embrace
When wet –
Leaving a gooey barefoot
Trail ‘cross Mama’s pristine
Freshly-mopped floor.
Sweet-smelling leafy loam from
Delaware to Ohio. Sour mud-dirt
Along the bend of Horseshoe Lake,
Across the Mississippi from
West Memphis.
The dirt I treasure most,
The dirt I am loathe to depart,
The dirt I will take with me when I go
Is the dirt in my backyard.
Undisturbed for almost a hundred
Years, graced over time with tons of leaves
And the tilling of millions of worms,
My dirt is home, my connection
To Pennsylvania and to all
Those I'll leave behind.
I will carry it with me
To every town I visit when I leave here:
An olfactory, tactile reminder of home,
A touchstone when I am afraid
And lonely, or have lost my way.
It will go into the ground with me
When I die, adding to the dirt
In Menallen Friends Cemetery.
I am made of dirt,
The good soils of America
And of Ireland and Scotland before,
Of Africa long before that.
I love dirt.
18 comments:
It could be verse...
...though not by much.
Good one, Zhoen.
:D
Wonderful, I can so identify with much of this. And I love what can sometimes be found in dirt, like ancient artifacts left behind by our ancestors, with their mysteries and questions...
There you go, Crow. Soon you'll forsake prose altogether. I suspect that once you'd got started dirt didn't seem such an undesirable subject; rather the reverse with lots of potential. I particularly like the rounding-off bit - It will go into the ground with me... There are echoes here of the best song ever written by an English composer: Purcell's "Dido's Lament" which starts "When I am laid in earth..." The word "earth" is much more powerful than any euphemism (eg, "to rest") and gives it staggering poignancy. The best version ever is by Janet Baker; if you haven't heard it I promise you you'll weep. Well, I did anyway.
As to my own concerns, the subject I wrote about was abstract and personal. Some of the lines were precious close to doggerel. They've been slightly improved. I may post, we'll see how brave I feel.
Anyway, my congratulations for the above.
Comment part two, broken off from part one by a visit to the supermarket (Now there's a humdrum subject for a poem).
I just wanted to add I was pleased to see you taking advantage of one of the US's great assets - its geography (eg, Near the Roanoke River...The gumbo of Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas). The names of states, towns and rivers, derived as they are from all sorts of fascinating roots, always help give a special width to writing about America. To Brits who knew nothing about the USA I used to say: Pittburgh is where the Monongahela and the Allegheny come together to form the Ohio; it sounded so good. Think too of the intro to "The lady is a tramp" - "I've wined and dined on Mulligan stew and never asked for turkey/As I've hitched and hiked my way across from Maine to Albuquerque..."
Re-reading your piece I'm struck with your choice; just imagine doing something on being clean. Keep going.
I think it's quite wonderful, up until the very last line. That, unfortunately, falls a bit flat, as if you weren't quite sure how to end the piece. But other than that, it's a terrific job of versifying (that's a word, so versifiable ought to be, as well) something out of the ordinary.
Of course any and every subject is ripe for poetic representation. That's what makes someone a poet, that they can craft words to make something meaningful out of anything and everything they experience.
Marja-Leena
I have found pottery shards, two arrowheads, porkchop bones and an iron key in my backyard, in digging to make flower beds.
Was most surprised by the arrowheads, which seemed unusually close to the surface. However, on farmlands near the creeks in the area, each spring tilling turns up arrowheads, so maybe those in my flower beds aren't so unusual.
:)
Good morning, BB:
I chose dirt as a subject because I thought most everyone else would think it unworthy of poetry. Truth is, I love dirt. I was a weird (by some people's standards) kid because I liked to smell dirt...still do. Must be the years I spent on farms around the country. One can tell a great deal about the earth by smelling it.
Clean -- now there's an unlikely choice for a poem; a challenge, to be sure.
I hope you will post your poem when you've finished it, BB. I'd like to read it.
:)
KD:
I agree, that last line is out of place; perhaps the one before it, too. I think I had two poems running through my mind at once; or two takes on the subject, anyway.
As I mentioned to BB, I used to smell dirt when I was a kid, and still do, though not as much now as then. I was thinking of that when I wrote the last line.
:)
I always find the US term 'dirt' jarring.
'Dirt'to me is well, just dirt, something unclean and not very nice.
The earth, loam or soil, on the other hand is a wholly different thing. The source of growth. A wonderful thing so well described in your verse.
I often wonder how you in the US took to calling 'soil' dirt.
AWB:
I can't speak for anyone else in the US, but I learned the word from my parents, who learned it from theirs, who learned it from theirs, and so on, back through the ages. My earlier ancestors brought the word with them from Ireland or Scotland or France or Switzerland, depending upon which ones of them first introduced it to the family line.
Interesting question.
:)
It takes thousands of years for the earth to make good topsoil and it's only right that when we're done here our remains be returned for its renewal. There's no such thing as ordinary dirt.
Nice poem! Do you know GM Hopkins' (see http://www.bartleby.com/122/7.html) and Wendell Berry's work (see http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/wendell-berry/13999)?
Susan:
There is something wonderful about dirt, no matter what it is called.
When I was a little kid, I'd come in after playing hard all day in whatever dirt surrounded our home, and the first thing my mother said was, "Go wash your hands, and clean those granny-beads off your neck."
:)
Hello, ER:
I've heard Berry's name before, but haven't read either man's work. I'll follow the links you've listed; thanks.
:)
I am sorry to have come so late to this. I have always agreed with you about any subject being suitable for poetry if you feel strongly enough about it. And you have proved the point here, though for the subject is not difficult to identify with poetry. I wondered, incidently, whether BB might have commented on the narrower defintion of the word "dirt" in English English as distinct from American English. We don't for example have "dirt" roads in England. It obviously didn't worry him as it doesn't worry me. You have written a true and sublime American poem with American names ringing though it. It puts me in mind of Stephen Vincent Benet who I discovered along with American poetry in general with its freedom, richness and diversity when I was at school.
"I have fallen in love with American names
The sharp names that never get fat
The snakeskin titles of Medicine Hat
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat..."
...still holds good for me today.
Thank you, Plutarch Joe, for your kind words. I regret that I haven't read more poetry over my years, as much as I enjoy it when I do. Perhaps I would write better if I read more.
By the by: what do you call dirt roads in England?
:)
Unmade roads, usually. Or cart tracks, perhaps. I think that "dirt" still retains the meaning of soil, but the suggestion of unclean or filthy matter and obscenity seems to be stronger over here. I love the word loam which you use in your poem.
Post a Comment