April 29th 2012 Poetry Slowdown

I I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and amnot contain'd between my hat and boots,Aand peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,Tthe earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.--Walt Whitman, from "Song of Myself"This show is dedicated to Thing Two. Or Thing One. Who can tell? Who cansay?Who is precious and necessary to my heart, sweet mayhem of a late Aprilbirthday.In which we begin with a poem by Robert Frost on the blue butterflies ofwild April, ONE reason why April is National Poetry Month. This poem wasbrought to me by the Editor of *The Cedar Street Times*, Marge Ann Jameson,who brought it to the Poet's Perch, Whitney Lechich's legacy for PacificGrove to promote poetry, by which grace I am the city Poet in Residence.For the whole crew on California's Central Coast, I'm Professor BarbaraMossberg, your host, broadcasting live today from San FranciscoInternational Airport, SFO, having traversed our entire listening area inthe past few hours, I have truly been Fat Lady Flying! Thursday night ifyou are in the region of the Penninsula, May 3! Poems of uplift anddefiance against all that weighs us down . .7:30 pm. Pacific Grove Library. Central Avenue. Meringue served.FAT LADY FLYING!And on that theme, Hats off to you, our Poetry Slow Down, a bow, a way ofsaying a sincere and sweet salute to you. March with her hat has come andgone—do you remember how excited we were to hear at the beginning of March,Emily Dickinson's "Dear March come in", how the poet welcomed the pantingbreathless visitor, rushing her upstairs to gossip over the past year shewas away.  "Put down your hat," she says. We wear hats to honor anoccasion, a community;  in our language we wear hats of respect andrecognition—or rather, take them of; we humbly request, hat inhand—divested of our power, vulnerable, naked. We put them on, tip them,and take them off, and hold them, in polite company, gestures of respect.And just as we say, my hat goes off to you, we say grab your hats, for someadventure, we say, hold on to your hats! When we want to tell peoplesomething's coming, something sensational, and to not let ourselves bedestabilized, to calm down, at the same time as alerting them to some windyfate that would remove them. Well, hats are something we don that transcendclothes. Our show today explores the realm of hats in our lives. I'll tellyou what started this theme Poetry Slow Down—as usual from you, a listener,a spark from our community. A hat that came to dinner. Hats like cats cantake on their own lives. This hat belongs to said friend MargeAnn Jamesonwho wore it to a dinner of our Pacific Grove Poetry Committee, planning apoetry event for May 20 I will be telling you about, called ahem, Mayhem!Where the muse meets the melody, we're doing improv and formal recitationsby the denizens of mainstreet PG on May 20. So I made a dinner, which Ilike to do, making up recipes from colors, orange and yellow and green, andwhen people asked what they could bring I replied, bring a poem and wear ahat—that always makes for the best dinner, don't you think?. That seemedappropriate for the 19th century Victorian "tent" I live in, a cottage witha porch near to the sea, where people once wore hats and swirled dressesand carried umbrellas, and meanwhile I worked on olive oil organgeupsidedown cake with lemon curd, with meringue icing, and pumpkin cilantrolasagna. We stirred and boiled and bubbled ideas of a poetry event thatmaybe because of the hat MargeAnn wore, had us on the edge of our seatsholding on to our hats and taking them off  and then it was over, everyonewent home, and something was different. This being, this existence, was onthe sideboard. It was this presence. It was there and everything wasdifferent. It was shamelessly glorious. It was a high wide straw hat,defined and upright, with a brim, and then it was looped with olive coloredscarf of how do I describe it, a silky flowing. It occupied the room. Itoccupied my mind.  It took over. So I sat down and wrote this—*After A Meeting of the Pacific Grove City Poetry Committee** *A hat is on the sideboard, I cannot say *was left*, or *sits*, or *lays*,Because those words are not right for what that hat is doing.It has taken over.You could say it has taken a leadership role in my dining room,All right, a coup d'etat. Without lifting a finger, it owns the furniture,The room is no longer the room I lived in.Everything belongs to the hat.Maybe the room was always rebellious, always had it in it, to conjure thishat,This straw hat with stature, high hat and brimmed, for chin up escapades,Silk olive draped, bedecked with wide sash ribbon cascades.Bedecked, you heard me say,It's *beribboned*, *festooned*, you see what I'm saying,Having to use these words which don't belong to me or my life,These words it brings to the table now which needs quiche and good cheese.Its graceful pluck transforms the room to a Monet scene,The walls become French doors, windows open to a terraceWhere a woman stands in white flowing dress with pink sash,Or is that England, haberdash, is London outside, The Street Where I Live,Freddy singing, or is Paris outside, my bedroom a Renoir boudoir,Am I blushing, where is my corset? My life is become a je ne sais quoi,A bustle, a hustle, and a rustle, there's parrots and laceAnd panache, words I have to think now, say now, ways I have to live now,Oh I could return the hat, I could see it as a loan, and give it back,But the truth is, you know the truth is,The cow has left the barn.April 21, 2012Poet's PerchFor MargeAnn© Barbara Mossberg 2012Then Marge wrote back, then Laura, then Susie and then Cathy,  so this onetaking off a hat inspired all this, then, in returning the hat, justcarrying it, I stopped at a store and saw a dress in a window and I don'tgo out and buy dresses in windows, or buy dresses, I wear my mother's anddaughters and what I wore first teaching in the seventies,  it was olivegreen the color of the scarf of Marge's hat, with a wide front zipper hemto collar,  an enormous collar like Queen Elizabeth, and it was unlikeanything I wear, so stylish! So I wrote to my friend Dorothy about thishat-inspired style dress and that hat was so potent even in retelling SHEwho has been laid up got in the car to PG to look for new dresses ofstyle—thinking her mother wore hats to the gates of paradise, and gloves,who knows where the wearing of one hat can lead? And so it seems that onewears a hat, all zaniness lets loose, a freedom of spirit somehow, tophatsgoing with feet going wild in marvelous rhythms, tapping and strolling,street quartets of harmony, cat in the hat frenzy, Alice in Wonderland teaparties, thinking of hats seemed to inspire the heads which wear them, andso now Poetry Slow Down, we are planning a mad-"cap" poetry happy-ning hereon the Central Coast May 20: ahem, Mayhem! Grab your hats! Where the musemeets the melody, we're doing improv and song and formal recitations ofmusic and poetry by the denizens of mainstreet PG on May 20. At our PublicLibrary, 3-5 pm, that time of day when nothing remarkable is going on or ifit is we're too tired to notice, the time just before the crisis when theBritish say we need a cup of tea, or more . . .: join a frolicsome,boisterous, seriously marvelous crew! More on this anon!and I was at The Works Bookstore and Café, sponsor of this poet inresidence readings and so many literary events—and speaking of mixing it upin poetry and song, the owner Robert Marcum covers Gordon Lightfoot and weare hoping he joins this zest fest—I was looking at poetry on hats, and Ihad to buy Philip Levine's latest, his News of the World, and on the coveris a scene of people sitting wearing hats. Coincidence? I think not.There's a fountain and a bicycle and columns, so we know we're in Europe,and then, everyone is wearing a hat.  What does that mean?As Billy Collins says, to wear a hat is to be in history, to wear a hat isto be in art, or be an artist, to wear a hat is to be a great lady or manof stature, to wear a hat is to be in literature, and it is to be in poetry.If we think of our earliest exposure to poetry and poetic language, nurseryrhymes have hats, The Night Before Christmas by Clement Moore, Frosty theSnow Man—there must have been some magic in that old black hat he wore . .. now I have to ask you Poetry Slow Down, have you ever given someone a hatfor their birthday? Or has someone ever given you a hat for your birthday?You see what I mean?On this theme, we read from *Days With Frog* and *Toad and Frog and ToadTogether*, on the topic of a birthday present of a hat, and how itilluminates the creativity that goes into friendship.So THAT is THAT about what kind of friend is so good to have, who not onlygives a hat, but makes it fit . . .so Poetry Slow Down, you'll hearphilosophy and music about hats, reflections on *The Cat in the Hat*,poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, Lewis Carroll, William Jay Smith, Aaron Belz,David Biespel, Ogden Nash, James Tate, Stanley Moss, Mary Oliver—yes—she'son record for wearing (and/or taking off) a hat, and Billy Collins, who Iknew had to have a poem about a hat—all around, a bevy of your favoritepoets talking about their thinking for themselves about hats . . . andyou'll hear me (you're the only ones besides my children, who didn't knowbetter when they were young what songs were supposed to sound like) sing asong I wrote to my daughter when she was born, on the topic of flying forour Fat Lady Flying show, let's keep it on the down low, as we slow downnow, I'm wearing the hat of your host of our show, Professor BarbaraMossberg, taking off my hat to YOU for slowing down today for poetry on thetheory and practice of hats! What a joy it was for me, and I hope for youas well, so hold on to your hats! And write me, at bmossberg@csumb.edu.Share this with a friend, and if you write me, I'll write back.© Barbara Mossberg 2012