Reading, Writing, and Chromatophores

You know that feeling when you encounter something really great and it makes you want to create in the same vein? Like you have a great meal, then want to cook. You see a great painting, then want to paint (or, in my case, apparently, to buy paint, so so much paint). You read a great poem, then want to write.

Today was my third day working on a new book of poems as writer in residence at the Marion Davies Guest House. When I got to my office, I decided to prime the pump -- drink coffee, read a little Richard Wilbur.

Richard Wilbur's work is gorgeous. Sometimes difficult. Generous. Melancholy. Encouraging. It makes me want to write. And it's also a little depressing, sometimes, reading it. Because let's face it, I'm never going to write as well as Richard Wilbur writes. He does things like this, from "The Beautiful Changes":

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon's tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

I mean, come on. Write something that great in your entire life. You've done it? Hooray! You're lucky, and good.

So I drank my coffee and read a little Richard Wilbur, and the pump pulled up water: a draft. And I'm at the Marion Davies Guest House to draft. And to drink coffee, and to read a little Richard Wilbur, and to look past a bouquet of waxy white flowers out a window at the nearly empty autumn beach, where a few people hold their Converse and socks in their hands and test the chilly water with their sock-printed toes and decide maybe, no, nope, not to wade in.

Well, next time, then. You don't have to be brave every day.

Room for Everyone

When I read Richard Wilbur, I think

I must write immediately and also

really, why write ever again?

With Richard, you get how the beautiful

changes: as a forest is changed

by a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it.

With me, you get some stuff

about a carnival fish, Love’s Baby Soft,

the idea that to Prince,

mini marshmallows were regular size.

But there is, as they say, room for everyone.

The carnival fish was a guy I won

with a quarter, took home,

and named Carl. He lived for years

before the bathroom funeral,

the long spiral into nothingness.

I might recall Carl’s little orange body

with a smile when I am ninety.

I might remember that for a few days

in 1984, I kept Carl in his bowl

in my junior high locker, which smelled

of Love’s Baby Soft and wet wool jacket.

Carl swam around in there

past and past a page from Tiger Beat

taped to the door: Prince,

resplendent in white, glowing purple

under stage lights, his lace jabot

the envy of the Venticelli.

And after the concert, his assistant made him

an instant hot cocoa with marshmallows

of regular size, to his thinking,

as I attempted metachrosis,

tuning my skin to my locker, trying 

to be invisible or really anything else at all.

-- Catherine Coan, 10/24/18