Showing posts with label nan socolow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nan socolow. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Poetry As Resistance





Let's face it, we're not all as limber as the Greenpeace activists who are protesting the Trump administration's war on the planet by climbing up a crane in Washington, D.C. Many of us have neither the time, nor the strength, nor even enough spare cash, to travel from march to protest to sit-in.

Resistance can be boisterous, and it can also be quiet and quietly shared. Since knowledge is power, and reading is the ammunition of that knowledge, what better time than now to just say no to Trumpian "ignorance is strength" and pick up a good book to read for both inspiration and pleasure?

And that brings me to my friend Nan Socolow, a frequent New York Times commentator and also a sometime guest blogger here at Sardonicky.  Her collection of poems, some of which have previously appeared in such publications as Rolling Stone, New Republic and  Washingtonian Magazine, has just been published by Pisgah Press in Asheville, N.C.


Nan Socolow (back jacket cover, Invasive Procedures)

Invasive Procedures, the title of the volume, is an apt one. Her subject matter is as penetrating as her Times commentary, running the gamut from marriage, separation, motherhood, growing old, and intimations of mortality, to the fragility and beauty of our endangered planet and its varied life-forms. She finds humor and meaning even in such mundane tasks as changing the sheets and pondering the patterns in dirty dish water; in short, she takes everyday life and infuses it with unique and insight -- and plenty of startlingly piquant neologisms.


Biting the Bullet

When we reach
the overtime stage of life,
over 70, not the golden years,
there is no bible to tell us
what to expect.

And what to do about
the startling aches and pains
that befall our elderly
wellderly illderly bodies.
So we bite the bullet.

and tough it out
to avoid
the undertaker's
waiting room
heebie-jeebies.

Pulling 14
to 16 hour days
was de rigeur
in our thirties
and forties.

And now
in our overtime
we pay for the
crazy dancing
of those days.

In this vale of tears
weltschmerz and 
sporadic joys
are the coins
of our realm.

 Nan Socolow describes her literary sculpting methods in the introduction to her collection: "A poem is like a chunk of raw marble. I chip away and chip away at the chunk, and it takes form and becomes far smaller and when nothing further can be chipped away--when only the finest essence of a marble scrap is left--that is my poem."


An ardent environmentalist, her love and concern for our planet shine right through the suffocating murk of Donald Trump's unprecedented war on climate science and, as is becoming all too scarily apparent, life itself.
Bodies of Water

Aeons past
before the plates
became continents
when this Earth
was young
bodies of water
encircled
Panagaea.

Now our
blue planet
is a dying zone
a waking
nightmare
pillaged and
plundered,
its watery
places ravaged
by mankind.

Detritus dumped
debris dreck
bottles jars
and enough
plastic to gyre and
gimble and
strangle the 
Pacific wabe.

Bizarre fish
Asian snakehead carps
sea lamprey eels  
with round sucking mouths
and razor sharp
teeth encroach
in the freshwater
Great Lakes and
mighty Mississippi.

Lionfish
from the Indian
and South
Pacific oceans
loosed from 
American aquaria
gauzily dressed
to kill in
fetching saris
swirl en masse
in the Caribbean Sea.  

Pythons, boas
gators lurk in the
marshy sawgrass
of the Everglades,
eyes aslit for innocent
passers-by
to squeeze
and swallow.

The five continents
that were once one
Pangaea, connected
jigsaw puzzle pieces
like the carapace on a
hawksbill's shell
are now apart
and prisoned by
waste waters.

Billions of people
dying for a taste of their birthright
of potable water.
Global warming
climate change
inconvenient truths
of our lives on Earth,
truths denied by
some who buy
and chugalug
clean, birthright water
in billions of little
plastic bottles
that will remain
on Earth
long after
we've gone. 

*****

Invasive Procedures is available for purchase from Amazon.com and also directly from the publisher, Pisgah Press.

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Bodies of Water


An Ocean of Plastic (photo credit, UC-Santa Barbara)


***
"Bodies of Water"

By Nan Socolow

Aeons past
before the plates
became continents
when this Earth
was young
bodies of water
encircled
Pangaea.

Now our
blue planet
is a dying zone
waking nightmare
pillaged and
plundered,
its watery places
ravaged by mankind.

Civilization has
dumped debris
detritus dreck
bottles and jars

and enough plastic
to gyre and gimble
and strangle the

Pacific wabe.

Bizarre fish
snakeheads
and sea lampreys
with sucking razor
sharp teeth delve

in the fresh water 
of the mighty Mississippi
and Great Lakes

And Lionfish
from Indian and Pacific seas
swimmers loosed from

American aquaria

dressed gauzily 
to kill in fetching saris
swirl en masse
in the Caribbean


Pythons, boas
gators lurk in the
marshy sawgrass
of the Everglades,
eyes aslit for innocent
passers-by
to squeeze and
swallow



The five continents
that were once
Pangaea, connected
like the carapace on a
hawksbill's shell or
jigsaw puzzle pieces,
are now apart and prisoned
by waste waters.


Billions of people
dying for a drink
of clean water for
their birthright
of potable water.
Global warming
and climate change
are inconvenient truths


of our lives
on Earth,
though denied by some
human folk who buy
and chugalug water in billions 

of little plastic bottles
that will remain on Earth
long after we've gone.

***

(This poem by Nan Socolow will be included in a volume (working title, Invasive Procedures: Earthquakes & Calamities) due to be published later this summer.)

Monday, July 2, 2012

Remembering Amelia Earhart



Lost and Found

A Poem by Nan Socolow


Rumors that Noonan
and I were buried
on Saipan or Tinian
That we were
spying for America
before Pearl Harbor
beheaded at
Garapan
by the Japanese
False rumors
urban legends
all
Noonan and I
just glided
from the sky
Out of fuel
we dropped
from the clouds
Past Howland
onto a Phoenix isle
in Kiribati
Nikumaroro
known then as
Gardner Island
My Lockheed
Electra
landed hard
On the atoll's
sharp shallow
reef
I was 39
that day
2 July 1937
And I did so radio Itasca!
radioed Itasca
over and over!
They searched
every dot and cranny
for Noonan and me
Except for Gardner
the obvious spot
350 miles from Howland
The day we fell
2 July 1937
I was 39
Five eight tall
fair and freckled
gaptoothed
Small shoe
size 6
Cat's Paw heel
The Press
called me
"Lady Lindy"
But they never
got the story
straight
Noonan and I died
marooned
needles in a haystack
And the story hung
by a thread
the thread just a leaf
overturned
in the island underbrush
by a hermit crab
revealing the
Cat's Paw heel
of my shoe
I would have been lost
gone with the wind
forever
My poor bones
were sent to Fiji
(and "misplaced" there)
Sic transit
Gloria
Mundi
Sic transitted
my Lockheed
10 Electra
My DNA awaits
discovery
on Nikumaroro
Bits of the
Electra's
undercarriage and
My heel
and smashed jar of Dr. Berry's
Freckle Ointment too
I went
the way of all flesh
on 24 July 1937
My 40th birthday
no cake or candles
or balloons
But isn't it swell?
Isn't it neat?
This news
That the seekers
will find me this July!
Or maybe next year?
+ + + +
Nan Socolow
British West Indies
*******************************
Ed. Note: Nan, a frequent contributor to the New York Times readers' comments feature, says she has always been fascinated by the exploits of Amelia Earhart, who "disappeared" 75 years ago today during a round-the-world flight.
Just in time for the anniversary, a jar of the freckle cream that Earhart was fond of using, and other artifacts were discovered recently on a remote South Pacific atoll near the crash site. Experts have also been able to prove that there were several radio transmissions from the immediate area in the days after the plane went down. 

That she and Noonan not only survived the crash, but survived for a substantial period of time, is now morphing from speculation to proven fact. But the absence of any human remains only adds to the continuing mystery of their ultimate fate. An expedition using high tech equipment is being launched this week in an attempt to locate the wreckage of her plane off the coast of Nikumaroro. You can read more details here, here and here.

Amelia Earhart would have reached the ripe old age of 115 later this month.