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They made a mountain

out of dirt,

crumble slopes

to flat plateau

with tread prints

all around

but no machines

in sight –

and there it sat,

fenced in

setting, hard

from all the chills

and locked up

so that nobody

could conquer it.

After all, who

would want to jump

that fence, rip

their pants,

bear crawl up

sending avalanche of dirt

and dust rocks

down the side?

The base spreads

towards the fence –

a dance, up on top

took place:

boot/sneaker

prints erasing tire tracks

of bull dozers, now

they lead back

over cold iron fence (as

tarp shivers in wind)

and take

the mountain away

bit by bit

inside their shoes;

bandits

of the Earth,

spreading dirt

like it was love.

 

 

I’m not sure I will ever be able to adequately express my love for the poetry of e.e. cummings. The poet, himself, definitely has his personal flaws, but 99% of his work is incredible. Probably one of his most famous poems, “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in,” is, in my humble opinion, what love is. There is no further explanation necessary. He should have submitted it to Webster’s.

On the other hand, I do understand why someone would get frustrated with him, because I’ve been this person too. A little bit about myself: I thrive on structure, on organization, and all things linear. I appreciate logic and try find an explanation for everything. So, understandably, when I read my first cummings poem, I wanted to throw it out the window. To be honest, I felt a little deceived, like his signature insertion-of-parenthetical-statements/go-to-hell-punctuation style was a lot like subliminal messaging. I remember thinking: What does any of this mean? Through the years, though, I’ve come to understand that all poetry isn’t something to be read quickly or easily. Cummings forces you to slow down and pay attention to each word that he has taken the time to arrange. He makes you figure it out and that’s why I started enjoying his work. It was challenging art — like a puzzle or a mystery and I was Nancy Drew.

However, I would soon discover that there was danger in thinking that poetry was just waiting around — static, dormant, and ultimately, nonexistent — for me to decipher it . . .

At around this time last year, I was assigned to complete a poetry explication. Previously, I had heard that cummings had written a sonnet about legendary New York bohemian, Joe Gould, entitled, “little joe gould has lost his teeth and doesn’t know where,” and I decided that I absolutely had to use it as the subject of my paper. I had read Joe Gould’s Secret by Joseph Mitchell and loved it. So, I saw this as an opportunity to write about two of my favorite dead men together in a paper. What could go wrong?

A lot.

A lot went wrong when I came to the parenthetical statement, “(nude eel).”

I stopped. And read it about fifty more times, continuing to go no further.

“(nude eel)”

What the hell?

As an English major, I had been trained to look for phallic symbols in everything. So, that had to be it, right? Eels burrow into ocean floors, hiding themselves away, so this had to represent the emasculation of Gould as a starving, homeless man . . . without many clothes?

But it still didn’t make sense to me. Or feel right. Since when did eels wear clothes to begin with? Wouldn’t all of them be nude? And Joe Gould didn’t hide himself away. He was a personality.

So, I kept reading it. And I wrote my introduction and explicated the first three lines to death. After some procrastination, though, I realized I needed to comprehend those two words.

When I reached the point where I was totally out of ideas, I started saying the words out loud. “Nude eel, nuuudeel, nuuu deeeel.” Then, finally: “Oh my God . . . New Deal.” And I simultaneously felt elated and idiotic. How could I have possibly missed that? Or, at least, why did it take me so long?

The answers: Because I was trapped in my head. Because art is something that should be interpreted, but not overly so. It can be natural, even if in disguise. It can make sense.

So often in my undergraduate career here, I have heard English students (including myself) rely on the notion that every little thing in a book or poem must have an underlying meaning in spoken phrases like:

“Clearly the blue curtains are a symbol for the inner turmoil this character feels.”

“Obviously that broken clock in the attic is a metaphor for time coming to a screeching halt in her environment.”

“Evidently, the lines in her face indicate that she feels burdened by the pain of her world.”

When really, sometimes the curtains are just blue. Sometimes there is just a broken clock in the attic and time continues to pass, because, you know, physics. And sometimes, if they’re lucky, people get old.

There can be simplicity in everything that at first seems complex.

Image source: http://www.clivejames.com/pieces/metropolitan/cummings

 

House shows are nothing new for Vail cooperative house in Kerrytown. Vail house has an ideal setup for loud shows and parties, existing dingily in its own cottage-like universe, chronically unnoticed by police or neighbors. Though the coop sits in the middle of a student-housing neighborhood close to the city center and campus, an unkempt wilderness surrounds it on all sides, allowing it to stretch peacefully almost across the city block – breaking the neat rows of gravel and garages unnoticed. An enormous, solid old oak tree sits between the house and the sidewalk, dwarfing the house with warped perspective. When I lived there for a year, I learned to love the wood paneled, windowed living room and the washed out glory of the faded, split and mended 30-year-old furniture and carpeting, the shelves filled with forgotten knick-knacks and musty books, objects that hadn’t touched hands in decades.

 

After a month, I had learned to navigate the dark hallways without pause – I could fly from my room to the basement to the kitchen in near complete darkness while my friends felt along the walls, lost within the horizontal labyrinth. The vanguard of trees, shrubs and grasses dimmed the sunlight during the day and, and at night on the second-floor porch the smoke from a half dozen spliffs floated upwards in one ghostly mass while the riffs from a mandolin, a banjo, a guitar rippled around us. Trash and recycling spilled out of their containers, the floors could turn a bare foot black in minutes, and nobody cared enough to not sit on the large tubs of flour and sugar in the kitchen while they drank whiskey and ate garlic toast on stale pretzel rolls.

 

My memories of Vail – both frustrated and fond – came rushing back to me when I returned to the house for the Frontier Ruckus living room show tour this past Friday. Frontier Ruckus, the verbose Ann Arbor based folk band, has been touring the country doing a series of intimate living room shows. After fans purchased tickets on line, the venue was revealed to them (though Vail House residents and ‘friends and family,’ myself included, were admitted for free). Openers Fred Thomas, a solo Michigan acoustic musician, and Wych Elm, Vail’s folk-band-in residence turned actual folk band, played on a ‘stage’ consisting of a carpet against the wall, with an audience of 75-100 strangers and friends sitting on chairs and couches or standing against the wall.

Then Frontier Ruckus took the stage, feeding off the already warm and intimate energy established in the audience. As the band played songs from their three albums, front man Matt Milia offering vignettes and stories to accompany his lyrically dense anthems of Midwestern angst, while David Winston Jones provided an energetic banjo and Zach Nichols rotating between trumpet, musical saw, and the Vail basement’s defiantly un-tunable grand piano. Former member Anna Burch joined with the band to provide the harmonies, a key addition to the band’s sound. I had seen Frontier Ruckus before without Anna’s accompaniment, and I noticed how much her voice added – both amplifying the acoustic sound and complicating the melodies. I found myself paying more attention to the singer throughout the show, as she performed unprotected by a musical instrument, hands occasionally clasped behind her back, completely comfortable in the space she occupied.

 

Though Vail often has live music performances, usually they take place during a party or in a party-like atmosphere – people thrash and dance, holding red cups, while the amplified musicians sweat, either hollering through or grooving to the chaos. I once spent most of the Vail House Band’s fourth of July porch show anxiously, drunkenly protecting a cello player who had set up her expensive instrument too close to the keg. This show was different, intimate, respectful. People hadn’t come to drink and party, accompanied by music, they had actually come to see music that they were interested in. I was oddly touched, realizing that of all the house shows I’ve attended at Vail – including shows that I had fun at, shows that took place when I lived at the house, shows of bands I’m more dedicated to than Frontier Ruckus–  this may have been the one that I was the most present for.

I was very fortunate to make it out to see Bear Hands playing at the Blind Pig last night and I thought they deserved some major credit for the show they put on. I’ve known a couple of their songs for the past three years and I’m really excited to see that they’re beginning to get the recognition they deserve. Their fame was big enough to procure a crowd with a handful of fans singing along, but small enough to leave them packing up their own equipment as they finished their set. I love this about them, the combination of pure talent, but also a really real sense of humility. The only thing better than a band that makes great music is a band that makes great live music. I only knew one song from their set, but I was fully engaged throughout the entirety of their show. They have a noticably unique sound, which mixes traditional guitar/bass/drums with less common instruments such as maracas and what looked like a synthesizer. The band clearly has a great concept of sound because they incorporated backup vocals and instrumentals into the songs in ways that were simultaneously surprising and immensely pleasing. I came away from the night with a vast appreciation for this band and the many up and coming indie bands like them. I also came away with a new favorite song that really pulled it all together for me. The song is called Agora and it gives an excellent glimpse into their talent, down to earth demeanor, and ability to produce engaging and catchy music.

Definitely check out their albums, my personal favorites are linked below:

Agora

What A Drag

Bad Blood