As part of an annual Unitarian Universalist service titled Poetry Sunday, I revisited what poetry means to me and read a poem by Mary Oliver. The talk is on YouTube and below the video is the text.
When I think about poetry and what it means to me, I think first about the image. There are many things that attract me to poetry – the immediacy of reading about another person’s experience which is often so direct that it feels intimate is one, the way the poem lies on the page – a kind of dance between the text and the white space is another, but most of all I think of the image and how the image is the most immediate way to convey the beauty of the world. Before I was a prose writer, I was a poet; before that, I was a photographer, which I still am. It seems I used to do many things. But I reconsider. Perhaps what I used to do is with me now in the things that I do. Perhaps when I am writing prose, I am influenced by the rhythms of poetry. Perhaps when I take a breath, it is all there too.
Take a breath with me; together we will feel the beauty, the vastness, the stillness, and the sound of everything.
We’ll start now and breathe to a count of three
(ring bell – beginning and end)
Thank you.
After her recent trip to Maine, Maryellen was mentioning the magic of seeing a loon. I remembered from my trips to Maine’s coastal areas, seeing this air and sea bird and remembering its long graceful dives from the sea air down under the gray waves of the ocean where it would catch its food.
After Maryellen and I talked about doing this Poetry Service together, I was delighted to find this poem by Mary Oliver, a Unitarian Universalist as well as a prominent author. Let me read it to you now.
The Loon
Not quite four a.m., when the rapture of being alive
strikes me from sleep, and I rise
from the comfortable bed and go
to another room, where my books are lined up
in their neat and colorful rows. How
magical they are! I choose one
and open it. Soon
I have wandered in over the waves of the words
to the temple of thought.
And then I hear
outside, over the actual waves, the small,
perfect voice of the loon. He is also awake,
and with his heavy head uplifted he calls out
to the fading moon, to the pink flush
swelling in the east that, soon,
will become the long, reasonable day.
Inside the house
it is still dark, except for the pool of lamplight
in which I am sitting.
I do not close the book.
Neither, for a long while, do I read on.
***
It is the memory of the image and the image itself, the poem – the words and the white space on the page — that connects me to the word and the world.
–Namaste—
For more information on my most recent published novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:
In honor of the I Heart SapphFiction website featuring my novel The Unicorn, The Mystery (Adelaide Books) in the nonbinary category of the reading challenge, I am posting this section which has never been published before, which is written from the point of view from the monk living in the abbey in the 1500s. First, I have included the information from the back of the book, to provide context.
You can view the post below on You Tube or read it below.
“In The Unicorn, The Mystery, we meet a unicorn who tells us the story of the seven tapestries, called “The Hunt of the Unicorn” from the 1500s on display in “the unicorn room” in The Cloister in Manhattan, now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The tapestries tell the story of what is still called an “unsolved mystery.” The story is set in an abbey in France not far from the barn in the countryside where the tapestries were discovered. Pursued by a band of hunters, the unicorn is led along by observing birds, smelling and eating the abbey flowers and fruits (including imbibing in fermented pomegranates), pursuing chaste maidens (there is one in the tapestry) and at times speaks to other animals such as the majestic stag.
A magical, medieval world through the eyes of a unicorn and the heretical young monk who is enthralled by her is in The Unicorn, The Mystery by Janet Mason. Hunters are out to capture and perhaps kill the unicorn. The monk’s devotion may turn out to be the unicorn’s rescue or downfall. Like a beautiful tapestry, the novel weaves together theological debate and unforgettable characters, including queer nuns and their secret cat companion. Mason blends myth and history to conjure up a spellbinding vision.” – Kittredge Cherry, Publisher, Qspirit.net, Author of “Jesus in Love: A Novel”
“In her latest novel, The Unicorn, the Mystery, Janet Mason weaves a fascinating tale told from the alternating perspectives of a unicorn and a monk. With the gorgeous and magical Unicorn Tapestries at the Cloisters in New York as a conduit, Janet Mason unfolds her story with lyricism, poetry, philosophy, and a profound spiritual consciousness.” – Maria Fama, Poet and Educator, author of The Good for the Good, Other Nations: an animal journal, and other books.
“The Unicorn, The Mystery has all the big ideas — passion, redemption, guilt, loneliness, empathy, pride, destiny, humility, lust, and love — told in simple, down-to-earth language. The unicorn’s story will resonate with me for a long time.” – Louis Greenstein, author, The Song of Life
(Chapter Eighteen)
‘“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.’”
I studied the Greek words in the Bible that I had placed on the olden wooden desk before me — lingering over the word logos. The page was old and brittle so I traced my index finger in the air over the long lines of the lambda, the circle of the omicron, the crevice of the gamma, the roundness of the second omicron and the plural sigma at the end that looked like a curved snake with its head below the bottom line.
There was a long narrow gold and blue “J” travelling the length of the page on the left-hand side of the page. It looked like a spear but on closer inspection, I could see that it was an elongated and elaborate letter. This was the first page of the Gospel of John in The New Testament.
I felt my eyes widen as I thought about the fact that I just happened to flip open to this page. I had long had a love of language, reading and writing. The Bible fell open to the perfect page for me. I took it as a sign. This was a special Bible. It was in Greek rather than the Latin Bibles that the priests used in the abbey. This Bible looked old and valuable.
I had found it in the back of the shelf hidden away behind the more modern books. I wondered who had stashed it there and why.
The word for God —Theos —was there too. It was one of the first Greek words that I had memorized. I located the first Theos and traced my finger in the air over the capitalized theta that was narrow and elongated, a large “O” with a horizontal line through it; followed by a small epsilon like the Latin “e” but curved; the omicron, and the plural sigma. As important as this word was, it felt secondary.
Logos seemed to be the most important word. From listening to the Priest, I knew the “Word” was supposed to be Jesus. God sent his only son, Jesus, to earth to spread his teachings. So, the story went. But “word” was the subject of the first clause – so even grammatically it was the main event. The sentence mentioned God — but it did not mention his son, Jesus. That was something the Priest said. Everybody was just supposed to accept it. Why did the Priest have so much power? Why did I want that power?
‘“In beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.’”
Because of the long illuminated initial, I almost thought that the book was a psaltery. But I didn’t think a book of the psalms would also house the canonical gospels.
The book looked elaborate enough to have been used in a coronation. Who had used it?
What had they used it for?
The passage didn’t make me think of Jesus. It seemed to be saying that the written word was sacred – maybe especially that the Greek word was sacred. It was, after all, the most ancient language that I understood — although there must have been others that came before. I shuddered, wondering what secrets the ancient languages would unlock.
For as far back as I could remember, I have always loved stories. I loved the worlds they created, and I loved that those worlds lived in my head. (I also loved my mother’s soft voice, the brush of her lips on my forehead at bedtime before I fell asleep.) When I learned to read and write, I was amazed to see the letters that I wrote forming sounds and then words.
To me, the word was always sacred. The word was how ideas were expressed. The word represented thought. It was the word that drove me to see the world more brightly. The word could change hearts and minds. The word was everything.
I imagined how scholars deciphered languages. Maybe they found the languages that went before the languages they were studying. Perhaps they looked for similar characters and patterns of word endings. Perhaps they discovered how the language flowed by looking at the white space — or the empty beige clay of the tablets at the end of the line. Maybe there was an ancient stone hidden somewhere — that would tell them, for instance, the meaning of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Maybe someday they would find this key.
Maybe they would tell of sacred creatures who were rarely seen by humans. Maybe these creatures had their own language.
I looked around the library guiltily. If there was anyone there, they might be able to read my heretical thoughts.
I was still thinking of Thomas after seeing him walk down the hall from my teacher’s office yesterday.
I doubted that I would see him — or for that matter Gregory — in the library. Gregory would just have been here last time because he was looking for a secluded place to express his sorrow. And Thomas — if he was romantically involved with Father Matthew — would have no need to come to the library.
They were young men who loved themselves more than musty old books. They certainly didn’t love their sad and weary teacher even if they pretended that they did.
I guessed that most people loved themselves first.
I had myself to look at. I had loved my beloved unicorn — and I betrayed her for my own gain.
I had even come to the library for myself.
When I was learning ancient Greek, I always felt reassured. The language made me think of my mother and the stories she used to tell me.
She didn’t speak Greek, of course. She always spoke in her peasant French. But she told me many of the Greek myths and legends that she had learned from her father. One of my favorite stories was about Jason and the Argonauts searching for their fabled Golden Fleece.
I would close my eyes at bedtime when my mother told me the story of Jason. He learned that to return to his native land and become King, he must first bring back the fleece of the Golden Ram which was located on a far-away island. With the help of the god and goddesses, especially his special goddess, Hera, he chose his crew. They assembled a wooden boat and embarked on the first long-distance ocean voyage. The fleece hung on a tree on the island of Colchis, then on the edge of the known world. The fleece was hung by the son of Helios, the sun god, in a sacred grove, and it was guarded by bulls and a magical dragon who never slept.
To get to the island, the ship — steered by Jason — and rowed by his Argonauts, his crew of sailors, the men had to forge unknown territories of the sea which in included treacherous islands.
Every night, my mother would tell me of their harrowing adventures, that included visiting an island with towering, life-threatening giants. At the very end of the story, before Jason and the Argonauts reached their destination, they had to pass through the clashing rocks that guarded the entrance to the Black Sea. I do not remember the ending — only that Jason did reach his destination and found the Golden Fleece. I imagined that when they were traveling the sea at night they looked up and guided themselves with the constellation of Aries which is Latin for Ram.
My mother did not turn the pages of the book and read to me because there was no book. She didn’t know how to read because it was forbidden for women to be educated. So, she just told me the story from her memory – of how it was told to her.
Many years later when I entered the monastery, the Priest told me that the Golden Fleece represented many things, chief among them the forgiveness of God. He then went on to tell me, with great authority, that “the heroic character of Jason was a re-invention of Jesus.” When I innocently asked how Jason could be a reinvention of Jesus, when the tale of Jason and the Argonauts was written so long ago, the Priest just gave me a blank look.
I gazed at a ray of sun filtering down from a high window in the dusty library and wondered briefly if there was any connection between the Golden Fleece and the Holy Grail. Both were brilliant and gleaming like the sunlight.
I looked down at the Greek New Testament still open on the desk before me. I didn’t know enough Greek to understand all the words on the page — but I did know the Greek word for light: phos. Again, and again, my eyes came back to it. I knew what the lines said because I had studied the Bible in Latin. The lines in the Gospel of John had caught my eye: “‘The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through Him might believe; He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light; That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.’”
I studied the lines of the opening Greek character Phi. It looked like an upside-down pitchfork with curved prongs. This was followed by a lowercase omega — pronounced like the Latin O — and ended in the plural sigma which was a Latin c sitting on the line and lowering to the left in a curving subscript. I said the word softly under my breath: phos.
The word made me think of the brightest light I had ever seen when I was a young monk and had glimpsed my beloved unicorn in the clearing. It seemed like the sun was blazing into the unicorn’s magical horn and her white body. The light behind her was magnified by the stands of white birch trees.
Perhaps we are all creatures of the light.
Like Jason and like the knights of King Arthur’s Round Table — who searched for the Holy Grail — I felt that I, too, had something bright and gleaming in my future.
The Unicorn, The Mystery is available online wherever books are sold, through your local bookstore, and through your local library (just ask the librarian to order the book if they don’t have it).
To learn more about my recently published novel — The Unicorn, The Mystery, click here:
I was very excited to hear about The Home Place, Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature by J. Drew Lanham, published by Milkweed Editions and when I received a copy, read it and was not disappointed. Below is my review which I posted on Book Tube. Under the video is the text of the review. I hope you enjoy it.
When I opened The Home Place, Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature by J. Drew Lanham, published by Milkweed Editions in 2016, I expected to read the story that is described in the title. And while the book relates the magic of being in nature and that the sense of the author’s race influenced his experience, what I discovered is that this is a profound book about identity, connecting the past with the present.
In one section that particularly resonated with me of how our identities are often stumbled upon and shaped by others, in particular deeming “what is acceptable,” the author, a hybrid of scientist and poet writes:
“Black and white, good and evil—ideas harped on by religious folks, preached from some pulpit, or broadcast on television—were an ice of the pool of my consciousness. There are preconceived notions—of where I should go, of what I should do, and even of who I should do it with—of who I am supposed to be as a black man. But my choice of career and my passion for wildness means that I will forever be the odd bird, the raven in a horde of white doves, the blackbird in a flock of snow buntings.”
A professor, ecologist, and birder, Lanham traces his love of nature back to his boyhood in South Carolina where one of his important influences was his paternal grandmother who was one generation removed from slavery and was equally spiritual (some might say superstitious) and traditionally religious without seeing any contradictions.
I found myself immersed in The Home Place as if it was taking me on a literary journey on which I was eager to see what happened next. I was particularly moved by the author’s relationship with his father, who died young when the author was in high school and whose death Lanham had not really grieved until his forties when a writing instructor gave him the assignment that evoked this book.
Reading The Home Place, Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature by J. Drew Lanham, published by Milkweed Editions, greatly enriched my life. It reminded me of how complicated identity can be and that nature is worthy of not only respect, but reverence.
This is Janet Mason with reviews for Book Tube.
For more information on my most recent published novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:
Recently, when I heard about the director of the Mt. Airy Art Garage, Arleen Olshan, being forced out of her position and her artwork being censored by board members who said her work was not fit for “Family Values,” I had occasion to view images of her work which was censored. Looking at the images took me back. Before Arleen and her partner founded the Mt. Airy Art Garage fourteen years ago, Arleen was one of the co-founders of the pioneering lesbian, feminist and gay bookstore Giovanni’s Room (which is still on Pine Street in Center City Philadelphia, but under different ownership). I spent much time in Giovanni’s Room as a budding young writer. For many years, Arleen’s paintings hung upstairs in a room where people could sit among the books and her paintings and soak in the lesbian culture. That culture was rare in those days (even rarer than it is today) and the store was a place where you could feel at home.
Arleen’s work that was censored, contains images of lesbians who are nude. She portrays images of women that are natural and seen through a lesbian eye. There is plenty of nudity in art museums, much of it violent towards women.
Also, as my partner said when we first heard about the situation, kids see their parents naked, and no one thinks that’s harmful.
Last week when my partner and I drove past the Mt. Airy Art Garage on Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia, we noticed that there is no longer a Pride flag flying outside. Mt. Airy is a section of the City known for its diversity. What happened to Arleen makes me angry, but it also makes me sad.
To learn more about the situation, click on the following link for the article in the Philadelphia Gay News:
Janet Mason, author 