November, 2012
The storm lasted 24 hours, but clean-up continues
across New York & New Jersey, a month later. Hers is a prolonged
wake, no burial in sight. Power has been restored to most, except those
homeless still residing in shelters like the two on my campus. Their
homes have washed away, others dead while many remain uncertain about where
they will go. I'm lucky, I know it. Before Hurricane Sandy came
ashore, I had just gone through a break-up and was bracing to face the torment
alone, which somehow felt fitting. But the fates waved a wand, and my
friend Matt descended with supplies and rifles. We spent the dark hours
with a radio and Trivial Pursuit. The week that followed, when Matt
returned home, is where the story breaks into fragments. Without power
& cable & transit (thanks, Mad Max gas crisis, thanks, power lines and
tree limbs crossing their arms across roadways), I found myself with hours on
hand and no real plan. I worked the property, moving wood and limbs,
cooking with propane and using my tiny cell service to assure the world and
find assurance in the world as best as I could. I also burned
wood to stay warm.
Power was restored to the local towns of Long Island
first, I guess to give folks places to converge. Lots of observations:
New Yorkers go gracious in trauma's aftermath. Looting was limited
and people got nice. Now resorting to candles and lanterns, the printed
word made a comeback. I went to the local indie bookstore, Book Revue, in Huntington, NY for society
and words. Even without a crisis, people are mostly friendly there, and
the aftermath was no exception: chat and coffee and lots of reading.
The Book Revue still offers used and new poetry books - several shelves
worth - as well as new journals of writing like Poetry, Washington Square,
Harvard Review, Ploughshares, and lots more. It's kind of unbelievable.
In between reading poets still publishing in print journals, more awarenesses
surfaced:
1.) Reading is thinking that draws ideas from the
recesses. What if I had not sat down, engaged those poets, and felt
things rising? My storm notebook would be blank. Gives new
dimensions to Kafka's "A book ought to be an ice pick to break up the
frozen sea within us." It is not just taking in another's ideas -
the very act is alchemy. The writing, the reading brings the surfacing:
alchemical regeneration. Making things by scanning the print on
dead wood. 2.) Annoyance over the feminization of "Mother Nature's
erratic children - Sandy and Katrina. Bitches are unpredictable.
3.) My break-up was right but emotional, preceded by signs neither of us
noticed until the final cathartic release. Not so much a bang or a
whimper, but more of a series of bumps warning of the cart about to topple.
How many notice such signs? And if such signs serve, how? Shouldn't
the higher ups connect the Sandy and Katrina dots with the melting permafrost that catches fire?
I mean, we're talking literal lakes of fire... Republicans got a
clue - New Jersey Governor Chris Christie praised Obama and NYC Major Bloomberg
endorsed Obama during the aftermath because of global warming. 4.)
And then there was the discovery of a pile of Ashbery's recent
translation of Rimbaud's Illuminations on discount. Rimbaud's "Je
est un autre" (“I is someone else”) also took on new meanings.
Reading the forgotten dreams of Rimbaud's neglect (these weren't supposed
to be his last) somehow emboldened. That Rimbaud was likely no longer
bothered with acceptance or finding a place in modernism, he wrote what he
wrote, freely. Illuminations offered a key through though, in that
bookstore, a permission to carry on among the destruction and sadness - this is
often referred to as the indomitable human spirit but, last awareness, that
spirit needs motivation, a path. Sometimes one finds it in the beauty of
the ruins as in Illuminations, printed on the bones of dead wood, ready to
ignite, if given to the deepest recesses.
Waters and sadness rise and raise the Floods again.
Because since they abated – oh, the precious stones
burying themselves and the opened flowers! – It’s wearisome!
--"After the Flood" -- Rimbaud
Amy King is the author of, most recently, I Want to Make You Safe (Litmus Press). Also, Slaves to Do These Things, I'm the Man Who Loves You, Antidotes for an Alibi, all from BlazeVOX Books, and The People Instruments (Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Award). She is currently preparing a book of interviews with the poet Ron Padgett, co-edits Esque Magazine and the PEN Poetry Series with Ana Bozicevic, and teaches English and Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College.
She has conducted workshops at such places as the San Francisco State University Poetry Center, Summer Writing Program @ Naropa University, Slippery Rock University and Rhode Island School of Design. Her poems have been nominated for numerous Pushcart Prizes, she was a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and she was the recipient of a MacArthur Scholarship for Poetry. Amy founded and curated, from 2006 until 2010, the Brooklyn-based reading series, The Stain of Poetry.
http://www.amyking.org/#!
She has conducted workshops at such places as the San Francisco State University Poetry Center, Summer Writing Program @ Naropa University, Slippery Rock University and Rhode Island School of Design. Her poems have been nominated for numerous Pushcart Prizes, she was a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and she was the recipient of a MacArthur Scholarship for Poetry. Amy founded and curated, from 2006 until 2010, the Brooklyn-based reading series, The Stain of Poetry.
http://www.amyking.org/#!
