Poetry & Science: Jane Hirshfield Reads her Poems

“Poetry & Science: A Shared Exploration” event on October 16, 2013. C.P. Snow complained of a world in which the “two cultures” of science and the humanities have grown increasingly separate. This two-part evening offers another story, in which four neuroscientists discuss research in language, cognition, emotion, and the ways that our brain structure may affect the language of poems. Followed by four poets reading work that delves into the sciences with curiosity, range, and the imagination. Co-hosted by Litquake and the UCSF Memory and Aging Center’s Hellman Visiting Artist Program, in which Jane Hirshfield is the 2013 Poet in Residence.

• Dr. Bruce L. Miller directs the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. He is a behavioral neurologist with a special interest in brain and behavior relationships, language, and the biology of disease.
• Dr. Marilu Gorno-Tempini obtained her medical degree and clinical training in Neurology and her doctorate in Imaging Neuroscience. In her research she combines neuropsychological and imaging techniques to characterize the language deficits in dyslexia and dementia.
• Dr. Virginia Sturm is an Assistant Professor at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. Her research centers on emotion and social behavior in patients with neurodegenerative disease.
• Educated at Oxford, Pireeni Sundaralingam has held research posts at MIT and UCLA, and has received national fellowships in both cognitive science and poetry. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares and The Progressive, among other journals.
• Jane Hirshfield is Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a UCSF Hellman Visiting Artist. Her work appears regularly in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, and Best American Poetry. Her most recent book is Come, Thief.
• Forrest Gander is a writer and translator with degrees in Geology and English Literature. His book Core Samples from the World was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
• David Watts, a poet and UCSF physician, has published seven books of poetry, two books of short stories, and numerous essays exploring the necessity of humanism in medicine.
• Kay Ryan, United States Poet Laureate from 2008-2010, is most recently the author of The Best of It, which received the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Among her other honors is a MacArthur Award.

Poems Read:

Kay Ryan:
Train-track Figure
The Pharaohs
A Hundred Bolts of Satin
Forgetting
Lacquer Artist
Doubt
The Mock Ruin
Why We Must Struggle
Swept Up Whole
Learning
New Rooms
NatureStudy: Spots

David Watts:
Words (Watts)
the petunia at the end of the garden (ellis)
The Body of my Brother (Watts)
missing Bill (ellis)
Fragment at the Beginning of Something. . . (Watts)
ancestors (ellis)
lunch (ellis)
The Delicate Sprigs of Love (Watts)
the dead (ellis)

Jane Hirshfield:
"Alzheimer's" and "The Pear" from COME, THIEF
"Optimism" from GIVEN SUGAR, GIVEN SALT
"My Skeleton"
"My Proteins"

Forrest Gander:
"Field Guide to Southern Virginia" from Science & Steepleflower
"The Carboniferous and Ecopoetics" from Redstart

[BUKCOLLECTOR]

Very much enjoyed your wonderful heartwarming
poems.

I, too, am a poet specializing in Japanese forms i.e. haiku, senryu, tanka/kyoka, haibun.
I hope you don’t mind me sharing a tanka, a haiku dedicated to Matshuo Bashō’s frog with added insightful
commentary by the late great AHA founder and poet Jane Reichhold, and a haibun.

Here’s the haiku with commentary:

Bashō’s frog...
four hundred years
of ripples

At first the idea of picking only 10 of my favorite haiku seemed a rather daunting task. How could I review all the haiku I have read in my life and decide that there were only 10 that were outstanding? Then realized I was already getting a steady stream of excellent haiku day by day through the AHA
forum. The puns and write-offs based on Basho's most famous haiku are so numerous I would have said that nothing new could be said with this method, but here Al Fogel proved me wrong. Perhaps part of delight in this haiku lies in the fact that I agree with him. Here he is saying one thing about realism–ripples are on a pond after a frog jumps in, but because it refers back to Basho and his famous haiku, he is also saying something about the haiku and authors who have followed him. We, and our work, are just ripples while Basho holds the honor of inventing the idea of "the sound of a frog leaping is the sound of water". As haiku spreads around the world, making ripples in more and larger ponds, its ripples are wider–including us all. But his last wordreminds us all that we are only ripples and our lives are that ephemeral. It will be the frogs that will remain.

~~

Now for the haibun that not only will appeal to Afro-Americans but I believe to all individual and groups that experience racial injustice. It’s based on a true incident that took place in the 1950s when racial inequality was rampant. But the story has a surprise ending that coincides with my own belief akin to Dr Martin Luther King. Titled “ Eloise, Edna And The Chicken Coop”

~~

ELOISE, EDNA & THE CHICKEN COOP

There was once a Black woman named Eloise who inherited from her grandmother a parcel of land in the suburbs of Compton California at a time when there was strong racial prejudice against women of color—especially those Black women who owned property in predominately white neighborhoods.
It happened there lived adjacent to Eloise’s land a white woman named Edna who did not like the fact that this Black woman owned land next to hers.
Eloise would try to be friendly because she believed Jesus when He said “Love Thy Neighbor” and to Eloise that meant even if your neighbor was unfriendly.
But whenever Eloise saw Edna, Edna would turn her back in disdain. In fact, ever since her husband died a decade ago, Edna became mean and unfriendly to everyone in the neighborhood.
But to Eloise, she was so hateful and full of animosity that one night when all the lights in Eloise home were off Edna went to her own backyard where she kept her chicken coop and gathered up all the manure and dumped it on Eloise land and upon her tomatoes and her greens and everything she was growing, in an attempt to destroy it.
And when Eloise realized the next morning that there was all this manure, instead of becoming angry, she decided to rake and mix it in with the soil and use it as fertilizer.
Every night Edna would dump the manure from her chicken coop litter box and Eloise would get up in the morning and turn it over and mix it.
This went on for almost a month until one morning Eloise noticed there was no manure in her yard.
Then one of the neighbors informed Eloise that Edna had fallen ill. But because Edna was so mean and unfriendly, no one came to see her when she was sick.
But when Eloise heard about Edna’s condition she picked the best flowers from her garden, walked to Edna’s house, knocked on her front door and when Edna opened the door, she was in complete shock that this Black Woman who she had been so cruel to, would be the only neighbor to visit
her and bring flowers.
Edna was deeply moved by Eloise kindness.
Then Eloise handed the flowers to Edna who said,
“These are the most beautiful flowers I’ve ever seen! Where’d you get them?”
Eloise said, “You helped me make them, because when you were dumping in my yard, I decided to plant some roses and use your manure as fertilizer.“
Tears flooded Edna’s eyes. This genuine act of kindness opened the floodgate of Edna’s heart that had been closed for so long.
“When I’m feeling better, I would love to have you over for tea, ” Edna told Eloise.
“Thank you, “ Edna replied, assuring her she would come. And then added “ I will pray for your speedy recovery every night”
And with those words Eloise departed.
It’s amazing what can blossom from manure.
There are some who allow manure to fall on them and do nothing.
But then there are others—like Eloise —who “turn the other cheek” when abused or in this case “turn over the soil” to make something new like those bevy of beautiful roses that opened a white woman’s
heart.

—Al Fogel.

All love in isolation from Miami Beach, Florida,
-Al