The Art of Loosing

After the sudden death of his father, the poet Kevin Young looked for a collection of poems that might speak to his sense of loss. To his surprise, he couldn't find such a collection, so he went to work compiling one. The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing, Young's anthology, came out earlier this year.
Early in the collection, Young includes a poem, "Funeral Blues" by W.H. Auden, that was read at his father's service. It begins:
                    

                        

   Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

                         Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

                    Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

            Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

                                                         

Young says the best poems are "precise about a feeling. A poem can be both blunt -- it can say it straight out -- it also can say, 'Stop all the clocks,' 'Do not go gentle into that good night.' It can plead in a way that we may wish, but we are not able to. And I think that that ability -- to be direct and say it full out, but also make music out of it, make metaphor, make meaning -- is really what a poem does best."
Courtesy of the author Kevin Young has written and edited many collections of poetry. His 2003 collection, Jelly Roll, was a finalist for the National Book Award.
As grief comes in many forms, so do the poems in The Art of Losing, which takes its title from the Elizabeth Bishop poem "One Art" ("The art of losing isn't hard to master ... "). Young includes poems on subjects from the unexpected -- like David Wojahn's "Written on the Due Date of a Son Never Born" -- to careful preparation, as in Hal Sirowitz's "Remember Me":

Every weekend your mother & I tour cemetery plots,

Father said, the way most people visit model homes.

We have different tastes. I like jutting hills

overlooking traffic, whereas she prefers a bed

of flowers. She desires a plot away from traffic noise.

I let her have her way in death to avoid a life of Hell.

Near the end of the collection, Young begins a section on redemption with "The Trees" by Philip Larkin, which points out not only that, while they seem to be reborn each year, trees eventually will die ("their yearly trick of looking new / Is written down in rings of grain"), but also that "their greenness is a kind of grief":  That burst of hope, Young says, is "one of the feelings that these poems capture.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh                                                                              

In fullgrown thickness every May.

Last year is dead, they seem to say,

Begin afresh, afresh, afresh

Mr. Grass

Neighbors today are really not the same as they were then. Mama had one neighhor that realized that she was having to struggle. Mr. Grass did not see Mama as mentally ill or crazy. He saw her as women with two small children he could help. It is not uncommon for men to tell their women they are crazy. Nobody wants to be told that.
It was Mr.Grass that helped us when she needed something. She did at this time somewhat try to hold it together a bit. Forty dollars must have been alot of groceries in 1967 or so. Many times she would get to the register then having me to take things back to the shelves. With the means she had to with. In years to come I would understand more why nothing she did seemed logical. The stress of not having help can make anyone screw everything you touch up. Not enough time, nobody to help and no money make you want to lay down. Mr. Grass was forever letting her borrow a cup of this or a box of that.

Mr. Grass's house was also a place of refudge for us when Daddy had some kind of drinking occurance happening. For instance once one of his buddies stole or borrowed money that Daddy was trying to get from him. He was looking for him by phone at first. The conversation was threatening to me as a small child. I just know he was mad. Regarding the same man with stolen or borrowed money was a rush into Mr. Grass's house where Mama had taken us to hide. Mad and with a gun he came running in telling Mama that he was going to find this man. The preception I have a my daddy is not this way. This did happen. It was whiskey driven, I am sure. That is why I have two different attitudes towards him. The one that he was an humble good man most of the time. Then there is the drunk or getting off a drunk selfish mean guy. To be continued

The Greyhound Bus

We lived up north until I was seven. Seven years that seem much longer than seven years do now. The events that lead to the day we came south are many. In the short to get to this story, I am going to explain how in four months of waiting we finally made it to Alabama. Alabama by way of Pulaski Tennessee. That is two different places to a seven year old girl that was sure she was smarter than the adults raising her.

I came home from school for lunch. I was in the second grade and lived close enough to school to walk in the snow to and from school. Their was a man that I had begun to recognize well. He came to the house only a few times. I knew from what Mama and Daddy were saying that he was from the bank and was wanting Daddy to pay for our house. He was a heavy man that wore a hat and long dress over-coat. He was not there the day I came home to see all the furniture outside in the snow. Mama was prancing back and forth lost as a goose. I still do not know where Daddy was just that he was not there. In all of these memories my little brother is not so vivid in my mind. Maybe it is because through all of this Me was who I was most concerned about. I remember Mama and Daddy clearly because they were the ones that I could sit back and listen to for clues how to work the problem of the moment out. The worry of the stuff left at this house would stay with me for years. Mama knew where it was, but never had the means to recover it. She made sure that it was put in Mr. Grass down the streets garage and that was where it stayed.

We were lucky that my Grandma and Grandpa lived up north not far from the house we had just lost. Mama called a taxi that Mr. Grass possibly even gave her fair for. My Grandpa may have paid it when we arrived at his house. I am sure Mama did not have that much money she was forever scrapping up pennies to by cigarettes with. We were now at Grandma and Grandpa's house. It was the most beautiful clean place I had ever been to. I had been there every Wednesday for as long as I could remember. Wednesday was the day that Mama set aside to spend the day with her Mama and Daddy. Grandpa would pick us up in his black Ford Galaxie 500. The streets were concrete and made a clicking noise as I rode in the back seat of his car.
Mama I think had finally decided she was going to have to women up to her responsibilities. Daddy was nowhere to be found. She got a job babysitting/cleaning a working moms house. She had three children that made a huge mess constantly. She must have had a good job, because there were always all kinds of good things to eat there. Seems like food was really important to me.

Mama hid the money she made in the dresser drawer at Grandma and Grandpa's. I know it was alot of money for her to have. I know this because I found it and counted it often. Once I even got fifteen dollars out and gave to my new friend I made when we stayed with Mama's parents. Christina was her name. It was her birthday party. Mama got me a present to take that was to me not enough. I got into Mama's savings and gave it to Christina as a birthday gift. Her Mama went straight to Mama with the money. Fifteen dollars must have been alot to give then for a birthday present. I was so ashamed.I was a child that took a scolding very much to heart. It may have been the fact that I had not wanted to be caught not so much as I was sorry for what I had done. I have always wanted everyone to think the best of me. I work very hard at it. I hate to hear someone say I really don’t care what everyone else thinks, yeah right. The people who say this most of the time spend most of their breath trying to impress someone.

Getting to Alabama was a chore for a seven year old girl to say the least. We were all snug at Grandma and Grandpa’s with plenty to eat. Mama was making enough for me to have some better clothes for school. We would have been alright with them. I am still thankful we finally got to come south. The trip was the most nerve racking thing for me. Mama got calls from Daddy often telling her to take us and meet him at the bus station. She would have Grandpa take us everytime he said he would be there. We went more than I can remember that he did not show up. May have been that he did something with the bus fair then had to get more before he could come.

He finally did show up. He looked as though he had been living in the street. His face was unshaven. He had on a leather jacket that I thought was really strange for him. He never did answer me when I asked him where he got it. Usually when you asked him something he did not want to answer he would ask, "are you writting a book." I would always say yes. His reply would be, "leave that page out." What a smart ass answer. He really did not like anyone asking too many questions or talking too much.

The thing that caused me to panic was he went to get our tickets with me right on his heels, of course. He asked for tickets to the wrong place. I freaked out, he was buying tickets to Pulaski Tennessee. I panicked like no other seven year old had ever panicked. I tugged at the sleeve of the leather jacket telling him that we were supposed to be going to Alabama not Pulaski Tennessee. There was nothing I could do to stop him. I had to go with Daddy and Mama no matter where they went.

When we got on the bus we went straight to the back seat. All four of us sat on the back right side of the bus. There was plenty of room, because I was so worried that I stood up the whole seven-hundred and something miles. I was for sure he had messed up and was taking us to the wrong place. I was so relieved to find out how close Pulaski Tennessee was to Alabama. At seven I did know that it was two different states. My grandmother, aunt and her two little girls arrived not long after the bus. Daddy did have enough time before they got there to buy a new shirt and shave in the bathroom. I stood and watched as he shaved almost knowing the reason why.

Up north may have not been so bad. Up north was what we always called it. My brother has never been back. I went when my Grandpa died more than twenty years later. The time I spent there was just not all that great. Here we did have grandmother to make sure we had a dry place to sleep. She was surely a good cook. Her life was not all that easy either. The men to her were to be respected no matter what. She cattered to what ever they wanted when most of the time they should have been put on the road. When my daddy did go to work she got up a three in the morning to fry him a whole chicken for his lunch. I guess she thought since he was going she would make it seem she was willing to do that much for him to work. She really did try to make it good for them thinking she could make them do better.

 Daddy freshly shaven with a brand new shirt he had bought just so my grandmother would not see the rags he was wearing. The leather jacket was not needed as it was hot here. He just left it in the men's room at the bus station. I still wonder if it was ok for me to be in the bathroom watching Daddy shave. I guess it was. Could have been it was not a mens room at all. There was possibly just one for everyone to use. The way it faced is still vivid in my mind. Years later I would not only watch him shave; I would shave him. This shave was on a Sunday afternoon for him to head to Jackson Mississippi to work. He had come home for the week-end and was not all that able to head back on Sunday evening. I knew he needed to go for the money, or work. Work was what he was supposed to do. I knew this, but money what would it be used for. Grandmother made sure my brother and I were sheltered, feed and clothed. I just wanted him to go, because that was what he should do.

The four of us fit into the back seat of my daddy's only sisters car. In 1967 the roads from Pulaski that we traveled that day were still dirt roads. It was the end of June. June 28, seems to be the exact date to me for some reason. My girl cousins were in the front seat with Grandmother and daddys only sister. There were three boys and one girl born to Grandmother and Granddaddy. She was the youngest and my daddy was the oldest. We must have seemed like aliens to the two little girls riding up front. They peeped over the seat all the way back to Grandmothers house. Which I was so relieved that I was wrong in thinking Daddy did not know where he was supposed to be going.

Picking Cotton

It was a given that when you were old enough to pull a sack you were to pick cotton. We picked ours by hand when the fields next to us were using machine pickers. It was really fun when I think of it now. It was even more fun when grandmother hired people to help us. It was like they were our employees, even though I was just a small little girl. When the hired hands had their sack full we would weigh them. When there was someone other than just the family picking, the family did the other chores associated with the gathering of the cotton. Most of the time my daddy did the weighing and loading onto the cotton wagon. The job was bigger when there were more pickers. Someone had to be at the scales at all times, because everyone did not fill their sacks at the same time. On these days we did not have to pick as much. I rarely ever just stayed at the wagon, however. It was another one of those things that the boys did instead of the girls.

My sack most of the time may have weighed twenty pounds at the most. There were ladies that we hired that every time they came to weigh up; the weight was more than ninety pounds. These were women that my grandmother had always said, "she can pick over four-hundred pounds a day.
This was possibly the craziest cotton crop we ever made. The planting was a mess with it raining so much that year. It took several attempts to just get the seed in the ground. Finally one Sunday afternoon the odd crew of two little kids, a grandmother and Mama waited on the planter. Daddy pulled a planter he had borrowed from Preston Dean behind the old Ford Tractor Granddaddy and Grandmother owned. After the cotton was up with a good stand, surprisingly, we were still faced with lots of rain. It was so muddy in that field that one day we were pulling the bigs weeds. My feet marred up in the mud loosing my shoes.

Daddy making this cotton crop on his own meaning that he rented the land from Preacher Corum. Daddy didn't plant this cotton on Grandmothers land. It was an extra way for him to make money himself. Grandmother was proud of him. Proud until the not so unusal Daddy persona  came out. Preacher Corum really wasn't a preacher that was just a nickname he was given. It always puzzled me how he could be a preacher that was saying ugly curse words. A question my curious-nosey-little-self finally asked my grandmother. "How can he be a preacher if he says the words he says." Grandmother then told me that was just a name they gave to him, because when he came home from the army he bought lots of new clothes and dressed up everyday. He was not a very industrious man so it was a neighborhood joke that he dressed up like a preacher when he came back from the army. He had a little cash and was trying to make the people think he was a big shot. He did later get a job at Reynolds Metals. That was the best job in this area at the time. I thought they were rich because they had an air conditioner in their house.

The cotton really did well considering it was worked by a tractor that broke down often and two women and children. Now came the time to pick it. This was the worst part of the whole crop. Daddy must have gotten tired of the whole cotton patch thing by the time it had to be picked. The tractor would not start. He was the only one that could have started it. Had it been just a few years later my brother could have started the tractor. The picking of the cotton was nothing unusual for Grandmother, Mama, my brother and me. That part was left to us without saying.

The tractor thing was important to put the cotton in when we picked it. When it was ready to be picked, it had to be picked.  The cotton patch was across the road from the house. The four of us picked a whole bale of cotton without a wagon to put it on. A bale had to weigh two-thousand pounds before there was enough to take to the gin. Every evening after school we would pick as long as we could. When our sacks were full we pulled them across the road to the carport and poured it on the floor. After we got enough for it to be taken to the gin, Grandmother finally got Daddy to get up off the couch to crank the tractor to go to the gin. This meant the cotton had to be put back in the sacks to go in the cotton wagon. Makes me wonder how all that work was worth the six-hundred dollars Daddy made. He used the money buy the green Catalina Pontiac that he smashed the front of before spring.