TU ES PETRUS: EXTREME CONCENTRATION

Tu Es Petrus

About that workshop in the south of France

I didn’t go to: I only wanted to steal away

to the church of St. Pierre, its fortress walls

the remains of a Benedictine abbey

on an ancient pilgrimage route.

In the cracks of the eternal,

swallow nests and tufts of grass,

stubborn and scraggly

as Saint Peter was. But the instructor,

so beyond lapsed that she advertised

the conference chiefly in terms of food –

eight local varieties of olives, four of wine! –

would find me fluttering away, a dove,

homing in the broken arches

of my childhood faith –

though beauty never left me,

swiftest pilgrim, the most holy part.

Instead of wine-tasting, I’d be genuflecting,

crossing myself, fingertips barely

moistened, anointed rather

with the water from the sweaty font,

its dusty, sacramental scent,

blossom of stone after the first drops

of summer rain. In brightest June

could she comprehend

how a gesture, when repeated

for a thousand years,

becomes its own source of light,

a zigzag glimmer in the dark,

blessing we no longer know whom –

urbi et orbi, the town and the world.

And the sign of the cross,

gliding in the nave’s narrow dusk,

rides a shiver of joy that the words,

Tu es Petrus, and upon that rock

I shall build –

were not spoken merely

to a single man. 

   ~ Oriana

**

This poem was born both from not having gone to a workshop in France, in Auvillar, with its ancient church of St. Pierre (I had hoped for a merit scholarship, but it was given to a woman who had “matching funds,” as the instructor informed me, with amazing candor) – and from suddenly seeing the words Tu es Petrus, and taking them personally. In that moment I felt I was Petrus/Petra. Later, while writing, not yet knowing what the ending would be, I experienced the insight that those words were meant for everyone.

It’s not a question of building a church. I realize how heretical I am, but that’s a deep pleasure of a being lapsed. The doctrines mean nothing next to personal understanding and experience. For everyone, the task is different. Tu es Petrus – you are the rock. The simple sentence suddenly came to life. It was as simple as the pronoun "you" finally breaking through to me in the personal sense. 


You are that rock upon which something great can be built. I am that rock. Each person is potentially that rock, that foundation. We are not sand; we are the rock. Our strength is enormous, if only the right builder (the best part of ourselves) comes, identifies, and sets out to work. 

What edifice? And how is this building to be done? Thanks to Lilith’s comments, I realize that instead of “extreme effort,” I should have said “extreme concentration.” I am more likely to produce something of quality on days when I managed to start with my “soul hour” of slow reading. That’s my personal meditation practice. Before I can create anything beautiful and nourishing, I need to nourish my own soul.

I am also tempted to say that “three things are needed for mastering the art of concentration: turn off, turn off, turn off.” Since we live in the Age of Distraction, the Age of Attention Deficit, the Age of Mania, it takes a special effort to enter one’s private Carmel. The first requirement is to turn off (or, if it’s morning, not to turn on) the computer, the cell phone, the little ding that announces email. Sometimes noise-canceling headphones (I mean those with white-noise murmur) are the only rescue from the noisy, manic environment. One way or another, we have to plunge into quiet and slowness, because “speed kills.” It’s thanks to slowness that we can go in depth and start building that which has a chance of lasting. 

Hyacinth:

I like "sweaty font" and  a gesture" zigzaging in the dark" – visual even to those of us who are not Catholic.

As for " extreme concentration," it comes about during alone-time. I think one of the main reasons there were fewer women writers and poets was because, as Virginia Woolf pointed out, women needed a room of their own, minus the inevitable chaos of many other voices, especially little voices, the chorus of which drowns out thought.

Personally I have had to learn to write with distractions: TV, phone conversations, clients needing help with their computers, etc. But the quiet times are by far the most productive.

Oriana:

Thank you, Hyacinth, for pointing out the most critical condition for creative work. For me the alone-time is supremely important, and I have arranged my whole life around securing that necessity. I especially appreciate your remark about “the inevitable chaos of many other voices, especially little voices, the chorus of which drowns out thought.”

On the conscious level, at least (and I agree that it's 90% not a conscious decision; it's not the neocortex that decides, but the limbic system, craving affection and touch), I made the decision against having a child when I read an article that pointed out conditions for having or not having children. If I recall correctly, the #1 reason for not having children was genetic disease. #2 was: "Your work requires a lot of solitude."

But I know that I can use that quiet time for construction or self-destruction. By the latter I mean depression.

If I work, then there is never enough of the alone-time. If I start brooding, my inner temple becomes a vipers' nest of isolation, loneliness, and pointless reiteration of the idea that, coming from another culture and having my kind of erudition, I might as well be from another planet because where I am now only two things are valued: 1) money 2) family. And family is not extended family, a ton of colorful relatives who are already there, enriching your life with their own fantastic life stories, but children you have to give birth to if you don't want to be alone (in the lonely, abandoned sense of "alone").  

There might be something to these depression-bred observations, but they don't lead anywhere constructive, only to further isolation and alienation. Likewise, it's just the kind of black-and-white thinking characteristic of depression, and not the rich mosaic of more accurate thinking. So I collect crumbs of beauty and insight for the part-mysterious edifice that I, but more than I, build upon the rock of my strength. 

Jack Gilbert says somewhere that if you are alone, that's usually by sheer luck. I think at this point he is very lucky that enough people appreciate him enough to have provided decent care for him, and he hasn't ended up on the dung hill like Job or Argos, the once-splendid dog of Odysseus. But it's in his previous solitude that he produced those unique poems that made people care.

It's the old solidaire-solitaire paradox: there has to be both solitude and connection. It's not a question of balance; solitude is more important by far. A little connection goes a long way, but not a little solitude. Just as I say extreme effort and extreme concentration, I should probably add "extreme solitude." Extreme by other people's standards, that is. For you and me, there is never enough of that magical quiet time when the surprise of inspiration can unfold.

Hyacinth:

In a workshop years ago, the leader said something I remembered: the ones who rob you of time to write are the ones who give you something to write about.

Oriana:

Yes, there is something to that. I'm thinking of P, who was a crazy maker, who created chaos and destabilized my creative routine (which I belatedly was only beginning to create) -- and of course so many of my poems are about him. And I also think of the women we know who are mothers of bipolar children -- maybe they wd not have even become writers except for the trauma.

But I can also say: because the intensity is there. If there is mostly drudgery, the effect is destructive. Here I remember that article about male post-partum depression that startled me completely. It was first-person confession of a man who became depressed when sharing in child care deprived him of his quiet time. He wrote that he went into mourning and literally wept for his former life when he could read and write and just enjoy being with his thoughts. His marriage ended in divorce, no surprise, but how sad.

I think that if any country has the right motto, this is the one: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These are the "unanlienable rights." What if these rights were truly granted -- and in a sense, they are all one? What if we took "pursuit of happiness" seriously, as a human right? Would not lack of time for the nourishment of one's soul then be a violation of human rights?

I also think of Sharon Doubiago, who said that after she had her first child, her mother came and said, "Today I take the baby. Every Tuesday I take the baby, and you can do whatever you want with that time." And Sharon started reading, and then took a class. Whatever it was, she started creating herself on that "day off."

But how many women have this kind of wise and generous mother? Should affordable daycare (or nightcare, if applicable) be a substitute? I don't know what the practical solution is, but I have seen women weep, literally weep, saying, where is that bright girl I used to be? Where is that free spirit who'd get up and start dancing? She is dead . . . 

The Winged One wasn't there with them -- I mean Eros, or whatever we call that angel. That level of animation, of being alive. But we make the best of whatever we have, and I am continually astonished by the quiet, unobserved heroism of so many people -- including that housewife in Tony Hoagland's poem who does not, after all, break out of a check-out line at Vons, screaming that she can't take it anymore.

Hyacinth:

When my oldest daughter got into her teens, she gave me a day off in the summer once a week . She kept the younger children and cooked dinner. She was 12 years older than her baby sister and the boys were in between. I'd go to the beach with a book and a blanket and sometimes just nap or take a long walk. and sometimes I'd take one child and they got to do whatever they wanted. Once my son and I did beach combing, once we body surfed, and once with one of the children gathered shells. It was delightful and such a gift. The kids tell me now their big sister ruled them with an iron hand and they minded her.

Oriana:

What a gift – what sensitivity and generosity in a teenage girl! I remember now that Sharon Doubiago’s mother said, “If I don't take the baby so you can have a whole day to yourself,  you will lose yourself.” 


Going back to that chorus of small voices drowning out thought, even angelic choirs are unwelcome when I want to be alone with my thoughts. I love classical music more than anything else, more than poetry, but having it “in the background” while I’m writing, which means thinking, is out of the question. I’m not a multi-tasker. When I listen to music, I want bliss. When I write, I want the silence that is like a womb of slow, deep thinking.

My favorite scene in the movie “The Serious Man” is the exchange between Rabbi Marshak’s secretary and the hapless anti-hero who seeks advice from the holy sage. “The rabbi is busy,” the secretary replies, denying access. “He doesn’t look busy!” the protagonist protests. “He is thinking,” the secretary explains, and that’s the end of it. I find this scene inspiring because for me it goes to the heart of the matter: our culture doesn’t see thinking as “being busy,” and doesn’t respect the silence that thinking requires. 

Tu es Petrus – and upon that rock something great can be built. It may take an immense amount of work done with a lot of concentration, and a strange trust that we are, indeed, building even when we don’t see it. 

LINDA PASTAN AND JORIE GRAHAM ON MASACCIO’S “EXPULSION”

FRESCO

In Masaccio’s Expulsion

from the Garden,

how benign the angel seems,

like a good civil servant

he is merely enforcing

the rules. I remember

these faces from Fine Arts 13.

I was young enough then

to think that the loss of innocence

was just about Sex.

Now I see Eve covering

her breasts with her hands

and I know it is not to hide them

but only to keep them

from all she must know

is to follow from Abel

on one, Cain on the other.

            ~ Linda Pastan

**

Here is another poem inspired by the same fresco. We need to see more of the chapel to understand Graham’s reference to the world outside Eden. This image includes some of the surrounding frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. Masaccio's work dates back to 1425. 

MASACCIO’S EXPULSION

Is this really the failure

  of silence,

or eternity, where these two 
        suffer entrance 
into the picture  
        plane,

a man and a woman 
        so hollowed 
by grief they cover 
        their eyes 
in order not to see 
        the inexhaustible grammar


before them – labor, judgment, 
        saints and peddlers – 
the daylight hopelessly even 
        upon them 
and our eyes. But this too 
        is a garden


I'd say, with its architecture 
        of grief, 
its dark and light 
        in the folds 
of clothing, and oranges, 
       for sale


among the shadows  
        of oranges.  All round them, 
        on the way down 
        toward us, 
woods thicken.  And perhaps 
        it is a flaw


on the wall of this church, or age,  
        or merely the restlessness 
of the brilliant 
        young painter 
the large blue bird 
        seen flying too low


just where the trees  
        clot. I 
want to say to them 
        who have crossed 
into this terrifying  
        usefulness – symbols,


balancing shapes in 
        a composition, 
mother and father, 
        hired hands – 
I want to say to them, 
        Take your faces


out of your hands 
        look at that bird, 
the gift of 
        the paint – 
I've seen it often 
        here


in my life, 
         a Sharp-Shinned Hawk, 
tearing into the woods 
        for which it's  
too big, abandoning 
                 the open


prairie in which 
                   it is free and easily 
eloquent. Watch 
        where it will not  
veer but follows 
        the stain


of woods, 
        a long blue arc 
breaking itself 
        through the wet 
black ribs 
        of those trees,


seeking a narrower 
        place.  Always 
I find the feathers 
        afterward. . . . 
Perhaps you know 
        why it turns in


this way 
        and will not stop? 
In the foreground 
        almost life-size 
the saints hawk their wares, 
        and the women


and merchants.  They too 
        are traveling 
a space too small 
        to fit in, 
calling out names 
        or prices


or proof of faith. 
        Whatever they are, 
it beats 
        up through the woods 
of their bodies, 
        almost a light, up


through their fingertips, 
        their eyes. 
There isn't a price 
        (that floats up 
through their miraculous  
        bodies


and lingers above them 
        in the gold air) 
that won't live forever. 
   
      ~ Jorie Graham


**

Some readers will prefer Pastan’s more accessible poem; others will be dazzled by Jorie Graham’s unexpected, electrifying language (especially in the first half of the poem). I know that it’s Graham’s poem I will be returning to again and again, though I greatly appreciate Pastan’s wisdom. I will be returning to Graham’s dramatic tension and mystery.


I especially love the second stanza:


a man and a woman
    so hollowed 
by grief they cover
    their eyes
in order not to see
    the inexhaustible grammar


before them -- labor, judgment, 


*

Graham's poem could end:


I want to say to them,
    Take your faces


out of your hands,
   look at the bird,
the gift of 
      the paint --


but the poem flows on as though by itself, and that too is a mystery that compels me to read it to the end, and ponder the price we keep on paying for any significant choice. 

As for the fresco, I find it mesmerizing. I identify with Eve. It wasn’t that I was exiled. I exiled myself because I too wanted to know (“to see the world”) and to be as the gods (those who lived in the West). Like Eve, I yearned for a “larger life.”

Until I gained a broader perspective, reality seemed a travesty of that yearning. The sense of loss was overwhelming. Yet I had to admit that California was certainly “also a garden,” as Jorie Graham puts it, in an almost desperate attempt to put a positive slant on the Expulsion.  

Graham protests too much, and this spoils the second part of the poem. The bird entering a space too small for him is an unconvincing role model. But I agree that those exiles and immigrants who remain pathologically blind to the world around them (though I understand the dissonance that comes with having a different world inside you) deprive themselves of a chance for happiness. It’s a more complex happiness than the easier, warmer, more natural happiness of those who remain settled in their homeland and their culture, but one can work through to contentment (I speak as one who once thought that could never happen, at least not in my case; that a “happy immigrant” was like a “gay corpse”).

The emptiness of suburbia and the stress of huge commutes are still a part of my life, but I realize that living in another place would bring other problems. That’s how reality tends to be everywhere: nothing is all good or all bad. My real homeland is the country of the mind. 

**

Hyacinth:

There is much to be said about both poems. Pastan's style is more in keeping with the way I write, very much in the vernacular , simple direct and clear and startling at the conclusion. Graham's is much more complex and makes demands on the reader, delves more deeply into all aspects of the painting. Her  poem doesn't just present what we know of the painting but makes us want to know more and even more. Will take many readings. I esp like the woods images but see no woods in the painting or bird??? or oranges- is she just imagining some of this? I'm confused but delighted anyway.


Oriana:

Jorie grew up and traveled in Italy and no doubt got to see the entire fresco-covered chapel -- and somewhere there must be a bird, and oranges for sale. I agree that this poem invites many re-readings. Pastan addresses one feature of the fresco in particular: Eve is covering her breasts.   This small and banal-seeming detail blossoms into an unexpected commentary on the rest of the human history that's yet to unfold, indicated simply by the names of Cain and Abel. 

Seretta:

As always, I enjoyed the art, poems and comments. I found Linda's poem easy to access and Jori's will require several readings and more contemplation. I agree with the point where you thought the poem could end and I felt that it went on longer than it needed to. I am impressed with the fact that the sword is the one spot of black in the fresco and it stands out with vengeance. The expression of the angel doesn't look angry but the sword is piercing and war-like. The way the figures are covering themselves seems to be something more than either poem has addressed. It may be fear or shame or grief. Could it be a primal self-consciousness as they are naked and exposed to an angel who has suddenly appeared? I don't think that either poem has captured the emotion of the scene. Perhaps I am being too critical.

Oriana:

I particularly agree with the statement: "I don't think that either poem has captured the emotion of the scene." The fresco is simply startling in its emotional expressiveness. I think Pastan comes closer to entering Eve's mind, but neither poem does full justice to the extraordinary painting. I admit the task would be very difficult. 

It's interesting that the couple are presented naked. Going by Genesis, they should at this point be clothed in animal skin outfits created for them by God as the first fashion designer. But nakedness connotes vulnerability and feeling "exposed," as you observe. I also love your having pointed out the dramatic blackness of the sword.


I wonder if perhaps there is simply too much in this poem, and yet not enough. Do we really care enough about the sharp-shinned hawk? It's the drama of the couple that I want to stay with. I like the turn the poem makes with "take your faces out of your hands, look . . . " -- but what follows is not enticing enough. 

“MR. COGITO MEDITATES ON REDEMPTION”

[Madonna/Trinity Cross, 14th century, in Sejny (on the Polish-Lithuanian border; it may have been used by the Teutonic Knights as a field altar]

MR. COGITO MEDITATES ON REDEMPTION

He shouldn’t have sent his son

too many saw

the son’s pierced hands

his ordinary death

            we were doomed

            to be reconciled

            through the worst of reconciliations

too many nostrils

drew in with pleasure

the smell of his fear

            one mustn’t

            stoop

            fraternize with blood

he shouldn’t have sent his son

it was better to reign

in a palace of marble clouds

on the throne of terror

holding the scepter of death

          ~ Zbigniew Herbert,

translated from Polish by Oriana

**

You can read more of my translations of Herbert's poems here:
http://www.thescreamonline.com/poetry/poetry7-2/herbert/oriana_ivy.html

**

It is interesting that the medieval and Renaissance tradition of presenting the Trinity in the form of God the Father holding the horizontal beam of the cross as though to display his martyred son, with the Holy Spirit as a dove hovering around the cross or perched on top of it, vanished from large-scale religious art in later centuries. Possibly, as religion became milder, the image was seen as too gruesome.  And yet even now the image, and of course the concept of the deity requiring a blood sacrifice, has not been completely lost in popular religious art, as can be seen in the “trinity crucifix.”   

                                                                           

In Christ, A Crisis in the Life of God, Jack Miles writes,

"The crucifix is a violently obscene icon. To recover its visceral power, children of the twenty-first century must imagine a lynching, the body of the victim swollen and distorted, his head hanging askew above a broken neck, while the bystanders smile their twisted smiles. Then they must imagine that grisly spectacle reproduced at the holiest spot in whatever edifice they call holy. And yet to go even this far is still to miss the meaning of the image, for this victim is not just innocent: He is God Incarnate, the Lord himself in human form." 

To the believers, however, this is the image of supreme love, more so than the universal and non-controversial image of Madonna and Child. The pleas of those who would like the triumphant image of the Resurrection to take precedence have been ignored. And thus we are left with what may be called the "tragic vision." Tragedy is the dominant genre in great literature, perhaps because we sense its vision is more accurate.


And yet, having seen endless representations of the crucifixion, I would say that only a minority are gruesome. For all my admiration for Jack Miles, who won the well-deserved Pulitzer Prize, I don't think I'd classify most depictions of the crucifixion as pornography of violence. Some of them are striking for the serenity they convey, the calm acceptance. Simone Weil remarked that they are meant to be a healing image -- like the copper serpent that Moses showed to those bitten by "fiery serpents."


My favorite religious images, those that seem to have a healing power, are neither crucifixion nor resurrection, but those that present Christ as a radiantly serene figure.


One of the ironies and paradoxes is contained in the very name of Jesus, which is the Greek form of Yehoshua -- Joshua in English, the great warrior. But this new Joshua says, "Turn the other cheek" and "Love thy enemy." The radical nature of this message startles us even today.


It's been suggested that if Christianity is to survive, the archaic idea that "Jesus died for our sins" must be abandoned (e.g. Bishop John Shelby Spong). What remains of value is the message of non-revenge (cf  the Buddhist "hatred by hatred never can be ended") and compassion. In some areas, there has been progress toward compassion and forgiveness, but the problem of suffering remains. Perhaps the ideal should be not universal love, but universal respect. If humans ever learn to treat one another with respect, then indeed we can build paradise right here on earth.

As for Herbert's poem, I think it would be even more powerful without the set-off stanzas, i.e. no commentary. Well, poems can be somewhat flawed, yet still powerful. For me, the "shiver factor" remains.

**
Ursula:

As a non-Catholic I always found the crucifix to be both horrifying and fascinating in a most unpleasant way.  Seems to me Jack Miles is making some good points.

Oriana:

He does make some good points. I probably became desensitized to the violence of the image through many years of daily exposure starting in early childhood.

[Masaccio, The Holy Trinity with the Virgin and St. John, 1427; Florence, the church of Santa Maria Novella]

Mary McCarthy writes, “The fresco, with its terrible logic, is like a proof in philosophy or mathematics, God the Father, with his unrelenting eyes, being the axiom from which everything else irrevocably flows.” (The New Yorker, 8/22/1959)

Angie:


Re: Madonna with the Trinity Cross. This is wonderful.  I, too, love that the Madonna is bigger than the Trinity.  And what an impish smile she has.  Fantastic.


Oriana:


It's as though the Mother Goddess, holding her child, asserted that what's below there, the barbarous sacrifice, is nonsense, since the eternal axis is the loving bond between mother and child. "Mother" is of course whoever is the primary care-giver. The most essential law is compassionate and nurturing love, and not the "ransom of blood" for some primordial offense. 

EMBRACING THIS WORLD: HIRSCH'S EARTHLY LIGHT

EARTHLY LIGHT

4.

I remember the warm day in winter

when I stood on a hotel balcony listening

to bells ringing in the distance.

I had just seen all those galleries

of seventeenth-century light slipping

through interior courtyards and alleys,

branding doors and ceilings, pressing down

lightly on skulls of buildings.

I had just seen rhetorics of light flashing

on curtains and tablecloths, mirrors

and windows, old maps and well-preserved

canvases varnished and framed.

I was alone, and for a while I stared

into a sky washed clean by rain,

an atmosphere luminous and polished,

ready to ascend, transparent as wings.

I saw tugboats pulling heavy barges

up and down the ice-filled river

while a white disc flamed overhead

and hands of purple light that resembled

bruises drifted and gradually dispersed.

I thought of northern skies flooded

with blue and gray, of monochromatic clouds

and rain-soaked wind blowing across the plains.

I thought of a landscape flattened

like unbleached canvas and steeped

in vertiginous greens, of the artists

who could liquefy thickest sunlight,

and the tangible, earth-colored country

that was all there would be to paint.

That February day I looked directly

into a wintry, invisible world

and that was when I turned away

from the God or gods I had wanted

so long and so much to believe in.

That was when I hurried down the stairs

into a street already crowded with people.

Because this world, too, needs our unmixed

attention, because it is not heaven

but earth that needs us, because

it is only earth – limited, sensuous

earth that is so fleeting, so real.

~ Edward Hirsch, from Earthly Measures

**


Note: "Unmixed attention" is Simone Weil's definition of prayer.

Hirsch seems attracted to religion (note that this section starts with church bells ringing in the distance), and it’s likely that he’s read (or tried to read) Simone Weil’s Waiting for God. But ultimately, like Jack Gilbert, he “refuses heaven.” 

That February day I looked directly

into a wintry, invisible world

and that was when I turned away

from the God or gods I had wanted

so long and so much to believe in.

He turns to fully accepting and celebrating the earth. Only Jack Gilbert goes further and says, "We have already lived in paradise." 

But my favorite lines in Hirsch's poem are these:

I had just seen all those galleries

of seventeenth-century light slipping

through interior courtyards and alleys,

branding doors and ceilings, pressing down

lightly on skulls of buildings.

-- that seventeenth-century light slipping through courtyards and alleys slips into me forever. "Skulls of buildings" is brilliant.  Edward Hirsch is one of our greatest living poets. I find him more interesting and versatile than W. S. Merwin or Jack Gilbert.  


**