Introduction to The Art of Spell-Casting
An interactive enchantment of the collective through the magic of words
Hello Dear Readers!
This is the first post in a new project I’m starting on the Art of Spell-Casting that will be offered to paid subscribers. I’m offering this introductory post to all my subscribers so everyone can get an idea of what the project is about and if they’d like to join. Don't feel like you need to register now, but if you’re excited hit the subscriber button now and upgrade. You can jump in at any time as the project will be on-going. I will still be offering my regular weekly posts to all subscribers, hopefully every week as I’ve been doing. Paid subscriptions would go a ways toward making that happen! If you love my work, please consider supporting it financially.
Introduction to the Art of Spell-Casting
The year I was twelve I won a book that changed my life. The book was Poems That Live Forever, compiled by Hazel Felleman, and was filled with literary classics like Tennyson, Longfellow, Yeats, Shakespeare, Dickens, Whitman, Langston Hughes and Browning. It was the second place prize in the Henry Carter Hull Library declamation contest.
The HCH library, just up the street from my family home, was the first place I was permitted to go on my own at age eight when we moved out of our raised ranch in a woodsy part of town to an old Victorian in the heart of Clinton. This move took place in the same town, but to an eight year old, or maybe just to a child who didn’t know yet how sensitive she was to place, it was like moving to another country. On Brickyard Road our houses were surrounded by trees and a swamp. We weren’t permitted to go past the bends at either end of our stretch of the road and we didn’t. Commerce Street was lined with grand old houses on acre lots. In front of the houses were sidewalks. My orientation to space changed completely. With my parents’ blessing, I left the woods behind and promptly set off on the sidewalk to the world of books.
At the library, characters out of storybooks shuffled through the card catalogue and made sure the shelves were in alphabetical order. Most importantly, they were always eager to recommend the next book that would open you to a new world of wonders. Seriously, the staff was straight out of Dickens. I don’t know how they knew (maybe it was because I was the only eight year old there every day), but they welcomed me as a member of their tribe with delight. Downstairs was the adult collection, upstairs was the children’s room under the rule of the magician Mrs. Mays, assisted by her sorcereress’s apprentice, Mrs. Houpert.
Mrs. Mays was straight out of Mother Goose. She dressed up as a witch with a black pointy hat and played the auto-harp at story time. Mrs. Houpert adored opera and was the kind of adult who spoke to kids like they had something important to contribute, although “like” isn't the right word. Looking back, I think she believed we did have something important to contribute. Walking up those stairs to the children’s room felt like entering the life I was born to live.
I think I recited “To a Waterfowl,” by William Cullen Bryant, at the first declamation contest, but I honestly can’t remember. It must not have been that memorable if I can’t remember it, but I was still indignant at coming in second!
It may have been a set up by Mrs. Mays, for I was surely meant to receive the second place prize. At next year’s contest I recited a poem I’d read in Poems That Live Forever. I’d read the poem so many times I didn’t even have to try to memorize it. “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes enraptured me with its reckless romanticism, and while I was again indignant at again coming in second (the same girl won first as last year so she must have actually been better than me), I don’t regret how that poem made me a hopeless romantic enchanted by poetry and determined to join the ranks of the greats, even if it may have instilled some pretty fucked up co-dependent patterns in my young and impressionable mind.
Life took me down many pegs, which is ok. I’m still a poet, still in love with language, still fascinated by summoning words out of thin air and arranging them in lines on a page, and poetry has led me on many adventures, formed friendships and community, which is one of the things I want to do here with this project.
Why did those poems in Poems That Live Forever mark me as indelibly as brands, tattoo themselves onto my heart and soul? Simple. They rhymed. They were also written in meter, rhythmic patterns actually founded on measurements grounded in the body, but I was not aware of that as a young reader. I was too enchanted by the poems took me to notice how they hooked me.
In college, I took a creative writing workshop where the professor kept commenting on my old-fashioned diction. She wanted me to sound more modern. “Make it sound more natural,” she said. “Do you speak like that? I hear all these old poems in your voice.”
She clearly hadn’t read Poems That Live Forever. I resisted the rhythms inside me and became more “natural” in my writing, which means I tried to sound more like a normal 20th century American. Yet, the incantatory somehow always found me. That same professor handed me a photocopy after class one afternoon saying, “I think you’ll like this.” It was André Breton’s “Free Union,” a surrealistic paean to the beauty of a woman he loved that works through juxtaposition and repetition that still stands as one of my favorite poems.
Most likely the poems on the tip of your tongue are rhymed and metered. I don’t know anyone who can recite an entire poem by Sharon Olds, who I mentioned in my last post, let alone modern greats like Jorie Graham or John Ashberry. The poems by these poets, even if they are writing about the body, are mental processes. They were written for the page.
There’s nothing wrong with that, but how far can poems like this take us? Literacy is a step in evolution, but to read and write does not make a culture superior to one that doesn’t. Even in our time, books can be burned and banned. Books can be attacked by mildew and rot; they can crumble into dust. The body shares this fate. Our flesh rots and leaves bones that hold on a bit longer to form than ashes, but they will disappear, too, be inhaled like inarticulate dust.
But a poem that’s been memorized can be passed on to another body, and that other body can be passed on to another body through a living voice who will speak it out loud for as long as humans continue to exist on Earth. I can’t attest to what will happen after that, but I do believe the stories will be shared somehow, changing shape as they move through the consciousness of different life forms who express them in whatever ways they can. We may not recognize the stories, but that’s not what matters. What matters is that they were passed on, that they contribute to the evolution of love.
For an art form to remain a significant contribution it needs to evolve by adapting to the needs of the people. There is a thriving poetry culture in the United States, but it’s a subculture, a niche (many niches in fact) filled with diverse people who love words they are flinging at drones they will never be able to divert before they kill us all. Poetry will not stop the ice caps from melting.
Yet love, true love, keeps me writing. And love has me searching for a way out, or a way beyond the continual conflict which seems like it will never stop before it kills us all. It won’t. The only hope is for conflict to consume itself.
How?
We must evolve American poetry, or any poetry written in English, which is, through colonialism, the dominant language in the world, by using our modern voices to reanimate language and the creations we express through it by returning to our primal roots as spell-casters. We all need to become witches.
I have about 10,000 more things I want to express right now, but I’m going to bring this introduction to a conclusion. Sometimes a wave you can ride is better than a tsunami. All times, actually, unless you are high up on a valley ridge looking down.
We are all on the ground now. The tsunami of change is coming. And you know what, with enough skill we may even be able to ride it. I believe that. Despite all the odds, all the dire news, you reading this right now are the result of your ancestors. You are safe and have enough time to look on a phone or a computer and absorb my words. What are you going to do with them?
The first thing I’m going to ask, is that you think about your ancestors. Even if you don’t know your heritage, make an altar, something in the physical like an arrangement of stones and shells, a crystal, a plant, a photograph.
For three days offer your ancestors food. If they came from Europe offer them wheat or barley, if Mexico, corn. What did they like to drink? If your Irish or Scottish offer whiskey. If Russian, offer vodka. You get the idea. You can also offer smoke offerings: juniper, sage, mugwort, paolo santo, try to find plants that come from their cultures. If you don’t know, offer something you love. They will feel that and maybe a little door will be opened in your heart where you’ll hear a voice that says, “I always loved the scent of chamomile.” Court that voice with a cup of chamomile tea. You’ll be surprised what happens.
Don’t say anything. Just listen. After three days, offer them some words. Read them a poem or a prayer (or recite if you know one!). Tell them you are here, you are grateful, and that you want to have a conscious relationship. Ask if there’s any unfinished business you can help them with. It may be affecting you now. Ghosts are everywhere. It may be the only reason why you aren’t living the life of your dreams.
For the last three days of this cycle of nine, offer them something you beautiful you made. It can be poems, but it can also be a story spun out of thin air, or a painting of the sunset, an improvised song, sung or played on a bamboo flute.
Throughout this journey, we’ll work the cycle of nine. I’ll explain the significance of that in my next post, nine days from now. In the meantime, I leave you with a poem I wrote to my ancestors. It’s a pantoum, a Malay verse form that weaves its spell through repetitive lines moving from stanza to stanza.
Note: We’ll be exploring the implications of using forms from colonized cultures to reinvigorate American poetry in future posts. At this point, I’m not even sure it’s possible to avoid cultural appropriation, but I want to do my best to have as much integrity in this process so I’m bringing it up now. We may not be able to achieve what we want. But we have to try.
Some more housekeeping: I’m going to create a chat for paid subscribers. Feel free to off your thoughts on this essay to the collective. Share photos, songs or poems you share with your ancestors, anything you write to them that feels like it wants to be shared with others.
Be careful with this. Sometimes we share too soon and too widely, what is meant to be a private and intimate courtship. If you haven’t acknowledged your ancestors, it may take some time to earn their trust. Best not to expose their intimate feelings and thoughts. I have learned this through making this very mistake, which like all mistakes, is really an opportunity to learn. What I learned is that I didn’t need to produce something in order to be loved. You’re here and we’re here for you. All you have to do is show up.
And please ask questions or offer suggestions in the chat!
Poem To My Lost Ancestors
In search of faith I came again to the forest,
laid my hollow bones down in ferns.
Looked up. Begged the shadows for a boon-
touch my face, soothe my shame, accept my secrets.
Hollow bones down in the ferns,
longing for tenderness I moaned:
touch my face, soothe my shame, accept my secrets
so I can trust again. Longing
for tenderness I moaned
in surrender to the shadows
so I could trust again
the path my ancestors walked in dark forests
in surrender to shadows.
My name taken by the wind
on the path my ancestors walked in dark forests
in search of water’s source.
My name taken by the wind
I rode a dream horse into dark clouds
in search of water’s source. In the
eyes of a newborn foal I saw myself
ride a dream horse into dark clouds
running from loneliness.
In the eyes of a newborn foal I saw myself
hesitant at the edge of a clearing
running from loneliness.
The foal was not afraid of me,
hesitant at clearing’s edge.
What was I waiting for?
The foal was not afraid of me.
The mare on her side lay covered in blood.
What was I waiting for?
Light anointed skin like holy water,
the mare on her side lay covered in blood.
Fern spores dusted me gold; light
anointed my skin like holy water.
Without asking
fern spores dusted me gold. Light,
I was delivered through clouds by wild horses
without asking
across two oceans flowing as one.
I was delivered through clouds by wild horses
in the shelter of the trees’ rooted shadows.
Across two oceans flowing as one
my bones came to rest in the river sound.
In the shelter of the trees’ rooted shadows
my ancestors found me
bones resting in the river sound
born and reborn.Kō aloha lā ea
Concentrate on love by way of the light
Nice work, Jennifer!
Somewhere out there Lynnabeth and Helen are smiling.