Miriam Glassman

A light exists in Spring

Miriam — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 23:25:00 +0000

Yesterday, April 1st, we woke up to 3 1/2 inches of snow. But as I’ve been reminded, on April 1st in 1996, we woke up to 3 1/2 feet of snow. So I guess yesterday’s April Fool joke only qualifies as a prank. Anyway, in honor of the new month and eventually, the new season, I thought I’d post a few spring poems. May your days be “mudluscious” and “puddlewonderful.”

Spring by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918)
Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Sonnet 98 by William Shakespeare (1609)

From you have I been absent in the spring
When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem’d it winter still, and you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.

Poem #812 by Emily Dickinson

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period —
When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.

Because of Alan

Miriam — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:03:36 +0000

Because of Alan I own more than thirty books on the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson.

Because of Alan, I woke up at 6:15 on weekday mornings when I was 16 to watch Neil Postman give televised lectures on the subject of communications.

Because of Alan, I learned that International Dinners were more about writing a great satire of the 3I’s than about the spanakopita and cold spaghetti.

Because of Alan, I understand the significance of the pickle dish in Ethan Frome.

Because of Alan, I love literature.

Because of Alan, I understand that what isn’t said is just as important as what is said.

Because of Alan, I know it’s not about having the right answers, but about bringing good questions.

Because of Alan, I just let the phone just ring.

Because of Alan, I tried to learn ancient Greek in college–and failed miserably. But,

Because of Alan, I took up Latin and dated an ancient studies scholar, instead.

Because of Alan, I understand that an education is not simply something you take, but something you find for yourself.

Because of Alan, I question authority.

Because of Alan, I believe it’s important to be a life-long learner.

Because of Alan, I care about writing clearly.

Because of Alan, I put Greece at the top of my list of places I wanted to see.

Because of Alan, I finally went there with the only guidebook he said I’d need.

Because of Alan, I have a lot of faith in young people.

Because of Alan, I will never look at corduroy pants and not think of him.

Because of Alan, I feel so grateful.

Because of Alan, I share a history with a wonderful community of people who also feel grateful and live some part of their life everyday,

Because of Alan.

My Teacher

Miriam — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:57:35 +0000

My dear teacher, my first true mentor, has died. His name was Alan Shapiro and in the 1970’s – 1980’s he headed up an amazing alternative high school program in New Rochelle High School called the Program for Inquiry, Involvement, and Independent Study, known to all as The 3I’s. He taught English and several inter-disciplinary courses, his favorite being his class on Ancient Greece. His ardent passion for the architecture, history, theater, and mythology seared straight into my 15-year-old heart and mind, and in getting to know Alan I felt I’d met a kindred spirit–one who was 35 years older than me–but a kindred spirit, nonetheless. He also introduced me to many voices who spoke to my soul and enriched my world through their writing: Emily Dickinson, Hawthorne, Melville, and Shakespeare, to name just a few. Alan’s teaching style was often exhilarating because he believed students should be active learners, and deeply respected and nourished our ability to question, challenge, and ponder. I credit him for teaching me how to read, for he believed that understanding literature is not about having the right answers, but about having good questions.

This fall, my husband and I finally took the trip to Greece I’d been looking forward to since I’d first sat in Alan’s class. While planning our trip I had the pleasure of enlisting his help in shaping our itinerary. It was like uncorking the genie’s bottle, and Alan generously poured forth his treasury of memories as well as his very opinionated recommendations. I thought about him all through our trip and when we finally climbed the Acropolis, my husband took a photo of me holding the only guide book, according to Alan, that we would ever need. My hope was to get together with him and his wife, Sue, to swap our Greek adventures. Unfortunately, we never got the chance to do that. But in his last email to me during the holidays, he said his holiday gift to me was the recommendation of a new book on the poetry of Emily Dickinson that he’d recently discovered and was excited about . In that letter, he also brought up a memory of me as a student challenging him with my question of why he always referred to the poet as “Emily,” but not, say, “Walt” or “Ezra.” I immediately put the book on my birthday wish list, and have it here by my side.

Anyone who knows me knows how connected I feel to the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Her voice is the one I wish I had, and it was Alan who introduced me to “my” poet. I can’t thank him enough for that. Alan often mentioned the following Dickinson poem as a favorite and at this moment, it feels like a bridge to his heart and soul.

Sas agapo, Alan. So much.

–Miriam (Geiger) Glassman

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers-

Untouched by Morning-

And Untouched by noon-

Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection,

Rafter of Satin and Roof of Stone-

Grand go the Years,

In the Crescent above them-

Worlds scoop their Arcs-

And Firmaments-row-

Diadems-drop-

And Doges-surrender-

Soundless as Dots,

On a Disc of Snow.

Wit & Wisdom of Edith Wharton

Miriam — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 22:13:54 +0000

Two of the famous people I share a birthday with are Edith Wharton and Mary Lou Retton. Edith Wharton is one of my favorite writers. She seems to me what Harriet M. Welch would’ve become had she lived at the turn of the century: A privileged New York woman with a talent for spying into the hearts and lives of those around her and turning those observations into marvelous stories. I’m sure Edith could write rings around Mary Lou. But Mary Lou could probably do a backwards handspring off of Edith and stick it. I thought I would post some of my favorite Wharton quotes. Happy Birthday, Edith. Happy Birthday, Mary Lou. I’m lucky to be in such good company.

“If only we’d stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.”

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

“I don’t know if I should care for a man who makes life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.”

“My little dog–a heartbeat at my feet.”

“Ah, good conversation–there’s nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.”

“Each time you happen to me allover again.”

“There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one’s self, the very meaning of one’s soul.”

“We can’t behave like people in novels, though, can we?”

“What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.”

“In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.”

“Silence may be as variously shaded as speech.”

“A classic is a classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.”

And okay…one from Mary Lou:

“Be cocky. Walk into the Georgia Dome like you own it.”

Sometimes a TV show is just a TV show…

Miriam — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 02:38:20 +0000

…And sometimes, perhaps, a show signifies something more? Call it what you like: Separation anxiety, transference, holiday blues. But I have to admit I have unresolved feelings of great loss now that my weekly sessions with Dr. Paul Weston have terminated. Is it the accent? The mumbling into his gray zip-up sweater? Or is it his irresistible charm when he finally swears, and lets his animus fly? I will so miss the master of mishegoss. His deliciously rumpled blend of Freud and Lt. Columbo made witnessing the on-going internal struggles with the human condition such a deeply satisfying experience. Termination is hard to do. But maybe we could check in with each other in a few weeks?… See how things are going?

Happy Birthday, E.D.

Miriam — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 16:03:08 +0000

How could this have happened? I pay my membership dues to the Dickinson Homestead, and regularly receive– and read– the “News From the Meadow.” But somehow, somehow, the knowledge that Garrison Keillor is going to make a special presentation in Amherst tonight in honor of Emily Dickinson’s 180th birthday, eluded me! The tickets are sold out, and one can only share in the experience by attending a simulcast at some Amherst movie theater. Blah to that.

Oh, well. I bet Emily would’ve stayed home, too.

But in her honor–180 is a significant birthday, after all–I thought I’d post some of my favorite poems of hers over the years. The first one was my favorite poem when I was 17. It resonated with me then and continues to, though for different reasons. Like any great work of art, the meaning of a great poem takes on more texture as the reader’s own life becomes more layered. One of the things I love about her poetry is how it still has the power to startle me. There’s a mischievous spirit at work here, and a gift for dynamiting the soul. Dickinson’s subversiveness is evident in how she often took a very familiar form–the church hymn– and worked in very unorthodox ideas and expressed powerful emotions. “My Life had stood–a Loaded Gun–” Not exactly the shy spinster of Amherst, a myth people loved to propagate about her. But thanks to modern scholars and poets, as well as scholarly poets like Billy Collins, that myth is now considered so 1880’s. Passionate, angry, erotic, joyful, rebellious, despondent–the range of subjects and emotions Dickinson plumbed is capacious–universal and at the same time, deeply personal. Another myth is that many of her poems can be sung to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” That’s because the rhythm in her poetry often feels so familiar, like some little song you know. It was familiar to Dickinson, too, for many of her poems have the same cadence as the church hymns she knew so well. Yet, within that predictable, familiar structure, she created something fresh and often, astonishing. A poem about seeing a tiny snake in the grass moves from being a lovely, precise observation to a chilling recognition in the line: “But never met this Fellow/ Attended, or alone/Without a tighter breathing/And Zero at the Bone.” Zero at the Bone. We know exactly what she means. It is perfect in its conciseness, and exhilarating for its surprising use of the word, Zero. And it’s been borrowed many times by artists, film makers, writers, or anyone else who’s ever tripped over the line. But I bet you already knew that. In any case, what nicer way to spend some time than typing out some favorite poems? It’s very hard for me to narrow it down, but here are a few from the voice I wish I had:

I held a Jewel in fingers–

And went to sleep–

The day was warm, and winds were prosy–

I said, “‘Twill keep”–

I woke–and chid my honest fingers,

The Gem was gone–

And now, an Amethyst remembrance

Is all I own–

*************

I taste a liquor never brewed–

From Tankards scooped in Pearl–

Not all the Vats upon the Rhine

Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of Air–am I–

And Debauchee of Dew–

Reeling–thro endless summer days–

From inns of Molten Blue–

When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee

Out of the Foxglove’s door–

When Butterflies–renounce their “drams”–

I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats–

And Saints–to windows run–

To see the little Tippler

Leaning against the–Sun–

*********************************

To lose thee–sweeter than to gain

All other hearts I knew.

‘Tis true the drought is destitute,

But then, I had the dew!

The Caspian has its realms of sand,

It’s other realm of sea.

Without the sterile perquisite,

No Caspian would be.

***********************

Ribbons of the Year–

Multitude Brocade–

Worn to Nature’s Party once

Then, as flung aside

As a faded Bead

Or a Wrinkled Pearl

Who shall charge the Vanity

Of the Maker’s Girl?

*************************

There is a solitude of space

A solitude of sea

A solitude of death, but these

Society shall be

Compared with that profounder site

That polar privacy

A soul admitted to itself–

Finite infinity.

**********************

Our lives are Swiss–

So still–so Cool–

Till some odd afternoon

The Alps neglect their Curtains

And we look further on!

Italy stands on the other side!

While like a guard between–

The solemn Alps–

The siren Alps

Forever intervene!

***************

You cannot put a Fire out–

A Thing that can ignite

Can go, itself, without a Fan–

Upon the slowest Night–

You cannot fold a Flood–

And put it in a Drawer–

Because the Winds would find it out–

And tell your Cedar Floor–

*****************

To tell the Beauty would decrease

To state the Spell demean–

There is a syllable-less Sea

Of which it is the sign–

My will endeavors for its word

And fails, but entertains

A Rapture as of Legacies–

Of introspective Mines–

*******************

Estranged from Beauty–none can be–

For Beauty is Infinity–

And power to be finite ceased

Before Identity was leased.

Excuse me, I Used To Live Here

Miriam — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 01:26:52 +0000

On the Fourth of July, a car pulled up to the front of my house and a woman I guessed to be about my age came to the door. Seeing that she was not holding a clipboard or pamphlets, I greeted her in a friendly manner. Perhaps she was having car troubles. Perhaps she was lost and needed directions. “Excuse me, but I used to live here,” she said. She told me her name and I instantly recognized the last name. I remembered it because whenever there is a big snowstorm around here, we hear about about how when the superintendent of schools lived in this house, our street was among the first to get plowed. Nowadays, our street looks like Siberia when the rest of Framingham is already down to blacktop. Anyway, the woman seemed perfectly harmless and when she asked if she could possibly see her old house, I invited her in. I showed her around and during most of the tour, her eyes were very wide and her mouth, open. She was given to gasping and blinking, and I wondered as she walked around the house, what she was seeing. She seemed a little dismayed that we had lowered the ghastly cathedral ceiling in the family room with its rough stucco plaster and fake beams, and had replaced the heavy stone fireplace with French doors leading to an enclosed porch. I was glad I’d refrained from saying that before the renovation, we thought of the room as something befitting the testosterone-oozing Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. “We used to put our Christmas tree in here,” she sighed. “My father would get a really tall one.” And indeed, I could imagine something akin to the tree in Rockefeller Center soaring high into the stratosphere of the family room. “Wow,” I said. “That must’ve been something.”

By the time my husband and I were leading her upstairs, I was growing a tad weary of her sentimental journey. But I dutifully showed her the ugly, old tile in the bathroom, the wallpaper we didn’t bother stripping in the walk-in closet. “My mother used to have a vanity in here,” she told us. It all felt rather mundane and I was ready to make up some story about a ghost in the attic to liven things up when we came to my office. “Oh,” she said. “This is where my mother slept before the divorce.” Her words jolted me, and for a moment, the three of us were silent imagining her mother in this room. For an office, the room is cozy. But for a bedroom, it would be very cramped, with barely enough room for a twin bed and a small dresser. Suddenly, this wide-eyed pixie of a woman who used to plaster her room with magazine photos of Bobby Sherman became someone else. Someone who’d lived in a house with parents who were sleeping in separate rooms, and all that implied. What had that time been like for this daughter of hers? If I knew her better, I might’ve told her that I’d lived through a similar situation. But I didn’t know her, so I just sighed sympathetically and asked her if she’d like to see the backyard.

For the rest of the tour, I was aware of how this house had a Before and After life. It had been a place of happy family times– Nutcracker Christmases in the family room–but later, painful times, when the walls must have vibrated with anger and pain, while she took refuge in what is now my younger daughter’s room.

Still, her over all feeling towards the house was that of seeing an old friend. She hugged us good-bye, and asked for my email in hopes of sending a photo of the place as it looked when she’d lived here. After she left, my husband lifted his brows and pointed out to me how shrewd he’d been when she’d blithely inquired if we were going to fireworks that night. Unlike naive me who would gladly volunteer our whereabouts to a stranger, he’d had enough savvy to say we were staying home. We then joked about her casing the joint in the hopes that we’d be out of the house that night. We joked about how she’d paused in front of the basement fireplace, and asked if it was a working fireplace, as if a hidden treasure was stuffed up the flu and she was planning on reclaiming it. We laughed a lot that weekend about the so-called teen-aged daughter who used to live here. But whenever I went into my office that weekend, I thought about the mother taking refuge from a broken marriage, and how every home holds so many stories. I was grateful that my office was my office, and not separate quarters. And somehow, it felt fitting that on a holiday celebrating Ma and apple pie, a stranger came to the door requesting permission to reconnect with her childhood home and all the memories held within these walls. Maybe that’s the treasure she’d returned to claim.

Because I Could Not Stop for Billy–

Miriam — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 02:12:26 +0000

I know what you’re thinking: Quel triptych. But the other night while driving home from work at the library, I turned on the radio and by chance, tuned into one of my many personal holy trinities: Terry Gross interviewing poet Billy Collins about….wait for it….Emily Dickinson! Billy Collins has written the introduction to the Modern Library edition of Dickinson’s poems. It’s a particularly wonderful interview because Terry Gross really puts Collins to the test explaining his life-long affection for her poetry, and why we should all love it, too. In her challenge, Gross even goes so far as playing Mitch Miller’s “Yellow Rose of Texas” because according to some unfounded myth, all of E.D.’s poetry can be sung to this song. Not true! Not true!

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=7-6-2010

Anyway, it is a very cool interview and Collins is so wonderfully mellow and eloquent. If I was a poet, I’d have the right simile to describe his voice: the velvet fog is already taken (by singer Mel Torme). But it’s along those lines. And if the above link doesn’t work, you can go to NPR’s “Fresh Air” and listen to the July 6th show. And if you have any good descriptors for Mr. Collins’ voice, toss them my way.

Not So Wild About The Wild Things…To Say the Least

Miriam — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 01:53:31 +0000

Okay, so I finally watched it. And after about a minute and a half I turned to my daughter, Julia, and said, “I hate it.” “I knew you would,” she replied. But I didn’t click it off. I didn’t. I sat there,and watched it in its entirety, though at times I admit to turning to my daughter and rolling my terrible eyes and roaring my terrible roar. Other times, I sat there simply shaking my head: Why, oh, why have they given the Wild Things voices? Why humanize them? They’re not human, for goodness sake. They’re Wild Things! That’s what made them so much fun, so much scary, endearing fun– in the book, that is. Oh, shut up. This isn’t the book, Miriam. It’s the film. And it’s not trying to be the book. It’s inspired by the book. Okay, I know. But one more thing: What’s with the names? Carol? KW? Ira? Please make it stop!

Okay, enough already about the Wild Things. How about the fact that the film seems to negate everything Sendak was saying about kids allowing their rage to reign free in wild, cathartic abandon as way of gaining power over those reckless emotions? Oh, that’s right. This isn’t the book. It’s the film; and in the film, Max wins the respect of the Wild Things by lying about being a career king rather than by simply asserting his own wild, commanding powers. As the story develops or spirals down, however you look at it, it seems to become less a narrative of an emotional journey and more a child psychologist’s puppet show in which all the members of Max’s fractured family are represented by the Wild Things, including Max. Maybe that’s why my mind was constantly tortured by echoes of H.R. Puffinstuff and little Jack Wild? (Ah-ha! Maybe I’m on to something!) In any case, Max ping-pongs between being the child and the adult, voicing not just his own, but the perspective of everyone back at home–his mother, her boyfriend, his sister, etc. And when Max finally admits to his puppets/analyst that he’s not really a king–just a kid telling a fib–he looks like a sad, deflated balloon, not a wisp of wild energy left in the little tyke. He might as well take his boat and sail home.

So have you got this? Only when Max acquires empathy for all and stomps out all his animus through transference is he ready to return home. This left me feeling sad, sad, sad because Max trades his wonderfully self-centered childishness to become a soul wise beyond his years. And well, okay, maybe that’s what the film maker was trying to say. That in order to journey successfully towards adulthood, we have to leave a part of ourselves behind, and we grieve a bit for that part of ourselves. Sigh. All I can say is, poor Max. Poor lovely little book that celebrated the ecstatic power of our emotions. Next time, I’ll know better. And keep the hope that future filmmakers in love with their childhood favorites will do the same.

Book Group in the Mist

Miriam — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 01:45:33 +0000

My book group is a wonderful Whitman’s Sampler of women. Our ages range from 50 to 70, and our various backgrounds bring enough stories to fill a thousand and one nights. Truly, I often feel that the most interesting discussions are not necessarily about the book but the personal stories prompted by the book.

This week one of our fellow members, Clover, turned 70. Clover is our non-fiction advocate, and always pressing interesting books on us about remarkable primate behavior or remarkable human behavior. Because of her passion for studies in primate behavior, Eilene figured that a surprise trip to the zoo was the perfect place to celebrate Clover’s birthday. We heartily agreed, and assembled at Eilene’s early this morning where she greeted us with banana bread (what else?), coffee, fruit salad, and chimp masks. At the appointed hour, we all put on our chimp masks and as Clover made her entrance we serenaded her with the version of “Happy Birthday” that ends with “You Look Like a Monkey, and You Smell Like One, Too!” Did I mention that our ages range from 50-70… years? Clover was indeed surprised, but still didn’t know where we were headed when we all piled into the Suburban a.k.a. The Monkey Mobile. She was sure we were going to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts because she’s been dying to see the Egyptian exhibit. Sorry, Clover. Mummy can’t play today. Instead, we spent the morning at the Franklin Park Zoo with a delightful homosapien named Megan, who gave us wonderful and informative presentation on various primates, and informed us that all but two percent of our DNA is the same as that of gorillas. Megan then guided us to the tropical exhibit hall where we encountered various primates, among them gorillas, lemurs, and tamarinds. The glassed- in environments allowed for the closest contact I’ve ever had with gorillas, and it was truly thrilling to see them come directly up to the glass where a mutual checking out could occur. At one point, a gorilla came right up to the glass, sat down in a relaxed manner and proceeded to eat her own shit. That’s right. Gorilla’s eat their feces for reasons I didn’t quite catch. To extract more nutrients from their food? To gross out the people standing on the other side of the glass? Megan didn’t mention that the two percent difference in our DNA is a really important two percent. At one point, a gorilla had herself a little excrement snack, then smeared the remainder on the glass. This being one of the less endearing behaviors of our simian friends, we averted our eyes only to find our gaze landing on another gorilla playing with his genitals and smelling his hand. I can’t even tell you how freakin’ evolved I felt at that moment. And yet, there is something so compelling about our distant cousins despite their um, quaint mountain-dwelling customs.

We also enjoyed the lemurs and the colorful tamarinds, a pygmy hippo, some zebra and a lion in the distance. And the peacocks! Oh my god. The peacocks strolling the grounds looked so magnificent in their jewel-toned feathers I half expected to find Joan Rivers around the corner giving her running commentary. So all in all, a wonderful, edifying trip to the zoo and an inspired, memorable birthday party. Perhaps the next person in my book group approaching a significant birthday will confess a passion for decadent desserts or hot stone massages. I do, however, recall her expressing a deep love of alpacas. Uh oh…