In the periphery I was secret gong

In spare online moments over the last few months I've been reading poetry (and interviews etc) by Catherine Wagner. I'm not sure what started it, her name just popped into my head. I've known it for twenty years but that was all, I knew she wrote the kind of US poetry I liked; I still haven't read or seen any of her books. On the other hand, there's plenty about her books online, mostly from across the Atlantic. Of Course, her fifth collection, was published in 2020 after an eight year hiatus.

Here's a short poem, or part of a poem, from Of Course -- one of three in the Old Pal ezine. 

“In the periphery”

In the periphery I was secret gong
hanging the hammock thinking CALL MY MOM
not doing that or any other task ha
HA I'll do my job of 

putting head outdoors    the garden ringing  
unfocused my eyes allowed 
  moving shadows on the lawn       
                        like baby whales playing 20 feet underwater
   to shift their noons  

                             
Sun on green leaves brings out their yellow 
      My eye drags tree to sky, prints violet margin.

[Poem source: https://www.oldpalmag.com/issue-3/2019/9/27/catherine-wagner-three-poems .]

In the periphery, not on the periphery. 

The story continues in the next two poems. She goes out of the garden to the "trash thicket" on the border of the neighbouring golf-course -- that is where the "course" in the title comes from -- we learn there's a problem with one of her contact lenses, hence the unfocused aspect, which combines with a enhanced awareness of sound -- it's a messy, vibrant, sense-evading nature . . . we see a dead ash tree, the poet curses the Emerald Ash Borer.

In the poem sound comes from unseen sources, blurs remind of other blurs, even what is seen (green leaves) turn out to be not just green and not just leaves. Nature is squeezable i.e. reduced to this periphery ("wildlife corridor") that exploits a legal border (privacy, ownership, segregation), but nature remains ungraspable, we're in it and it's in us.

*

(Emerald Ash Borer, Agrilus planipennis, a NE Asian beetle that does not kill the ash trees of its native range but is destructive elsewhere. This is the scourge affecting ash tree species in the USA; there's plenty of it in the Cincinnati area where Catherine Wagner lives. It's also approaching Europe from the east, but hasn't reached us yet. However, European ash species are already being hard hit by ash dieback caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus first noticed in Poland in 1992 -- which is possibly identical to the Japanese species Lambertella albida (again, harmless to its native flora).) 

*

Re the first line, there might be more specific reference but the spiritual tradition of the gong is doubtless relevant, e.g. 

Masters of the Gong Tone of Life recognize that ‘Now’ exists suspended in the ocean of the gonging experience ...

Because the gong feeds the non-linear mind or the mind behind the mind, it is a consciousness supportive tool that fosters spiritual wholeness.

The gong is not an enemy of the linear mind, but a................

friend to all in all dimensions. Hence, the name of Maitreya or Mithra is associated with it.

The concept of the mysterious alchemist stone that the ancients sought and which is able to transfer its powers of transmutation to the beholder can also be understood to be the secret Gong Effect caused by universal resultant tones channeled through its remarkable alloy pulled by the Source, the mysterious attractor we call 1.618033989, and which is the frequency of 207.1 Hz. G#, or approximately, the orbital tone of the Uranus Gong, ruler astrologically of the new present Aquarian Age.

(Source .)

Some more extracts from  Of Course :

https://brooklynrail.org/2019/05/poetry/three-wagner

Maybe these poems come from it too. Anyway, I just liked them:

"The city has sex with Megan": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/149690/from-the-city-has-sex-with-everything

"English is 99% buckled to a rock": https://580split.org/issue/breach/#editors_letter

"Thanksgiving is over":   https://www.benningtonreview.org/catherine-wagner

*

I walked in the house

on the flat aspect of the wood

I took rectangular instruction of the wood

...

                                                             Something electric charged into our account

and zinged out of it, pre-instructed

 

and paid for the house. I felt

house on my heel then instep and toe.

I had a bad foot and I paid

to get it fixed so I could walk here.

I paid for the house and I paid for the

foot that touches it. I paid to be

directed rectangularly and down a hall.

I curved my body to direct

my waste through a hole. I am helped

and paying for it.

 

all of me exchanged,

housing exchange.

                                   I saw us standing

   up in the world.

And we sank into

   exchange

  vibrating transparency

                 like a sea nettle

              afloat in the night sea

 

the edges of the sea-veil

      tensed slapping above, visible

when the wind crevassed and doilied

...

Just a taste of another favourite poem, "I walked in the house", from Macular Hole (2004). You should definitely read all of it -- it's only about twice as long as what I've quoted, but for some reason I got cold feet about pasting the whole lot. 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54526/i-walked-in-the-house 

I love that her two chosen examples of capitalism in action are housing and healthcare, not fluff like fancy clothes and sports cars. 

The poem bangs up against not doing this: letting the house fall apart, sitting at the broken window keeping the pain of your broken arm to yourself. 

What's maybe not so clear from the poem in isolation is that there's more at stake here for the protagonist: there's a baby (the overarching theme of the poems in Macular Hole). A roof over your head, healthy and fit ... these things matter, or they seem to. (Hence the subsequent reference to dirty bathwater, as in, throwing out with...)