Tom Wisner, Bard of the Chesapeake

I have only just now learned that Tom Wisner, the Bard of the Chesapeake Bay has passed away. Daddy Art, that is to say, Captain Art Daniels delivered the eulogy.

It is always sad to see a piece of the Chesapeake's history and culture pass away, but I am sadder still that this is old news and I have only just now heard it. That's what comes of committing the disloyalty of spending my year on the Delaware side of the world, crewing the Kalmar Nyckel and her boat, the Little Key. I have never been homesick for any place in the world, but I am surely homesick for skipjacks. Finding out that I missed something important has made me miss the Chesapeake even more.

Tom used to go around to festivals on the Chesapeake Bay and I saw him perform a few years ago at the Havre de Grace Maritime Museum, if memory serves me correctly. I was also thinking I would see him again, because Erik Spangler is composing a 'Watershed Sound Poem' that includes some of my poetry from Heron Sea along with some of Tom's work and other local artists and sounds. Watershed Sound Poem has an estimated time of arrival next spring. I am hoping to be able to attend its performance, which will be even more poignant if it includes Tom's work.

In Japanese aesthetics there is a quality called 'aware', pronounced ah-wah-ray, which is translated as 'the pity of things,' or an awareness of the perishable of the world. I encountered this Japanese aesthetic principle as a teenager, thanks to the Japanese exchange student we had, and was immediately and deeply immersed in Japanophilia for several decades. 'Aware' impressed me deeply and has provided me with a melancholy but not depressing way to view the world and to prize its fragile beauty. It also introduced me to the classical tanka of the Kokinshu and Shinkokinshu eras -- when I was homeless, Carter's Traditional Japanese Poetry was one of the items I managed to retain possession of.

It was not until many years later that I wrote tanka and found in the 'aware' of Japan a way of viewing the world that was a perfect match for the fragile beauty of the Chesapeake. There is a numinous quality in both tanka and the Chesapeake, so it would not surprise me if some Japanese pilgrim erected a Shinto gate in the shallow waters of the bay. It would have to be painted blue if they did, because blue is the traditional color for offerings given to the god of the Chesapeake by the Indians who lived here. Boats are never painted blue here because if you do, the god of the Chesapeake will accept the gift and pull it under.

I am currently serving aboard a big blue ship, the Kalmar Nyckel, a reproduction of a 17th century vessel that was used to bring Swedish settlers to the Delaware Bay. When I have been aboard her going along the Chesapeake Bay, I often reflect on these matters, and I expect I will reflect again when she goes to the Chestertown Downrigging Weekend. Chestertown, Maryland, was the site of the Chestertown Tea Party during the American Revolution, and there is nothing more beautiful that a dozen or more historic and wooden ships and boats cozy together as October ends with a crazy Halloween party.

I keep

the ship's cat

company

at three am

on a Cape Cod night

I am glad to be home again.

~K~

Skip a Stone for the Poet of the Chesapeake Bay

The Heart of a Sailor, a tanka chapbook by M. Kei is available through the WCP Toolbar by World Class Poetry. These short online chapbooks are free to read and share using the WCP toolbar. Heart of a Sailor by M. Kei, blends his famous watermen poems with a tinge of homoeroticism as a sailor yearns for love amid the beauty and dangers of work on the water.

The introduction by Allen Taylor, publisher of World Class Poetry:

M. Kei has a distinguished following. His Japanese short forms are as extraordinary in their language as they are in their form. But even more extraordinary than his writing on the sailing life is his living it. A resident of Chesapeake Bay, he is as close to the beaches and the lifestyle that he writes about as a poet can be. A volunteer aboard a skipjack, he has learned firsthand how to catch the spirit of sailing. I suppose experience truly is the best mentor.

A lively voice on Twitter, M. Kei doesn't just post his poems. He engages with his followers on a conversational level as well. He is widely published and edits a tanka journal so he's busy in the literary world, not just a casual observer. These poems prove his worth.

The cover photo was snagged from gterez on Flickr and can be found at http://www.flikr.com/photos/pixel8ed/119252208/. The stones and the steps against the backdrop of weeds illustrates the rocky depths of a lonely heart and perfectly compliment M. Kei's final lines: "i don't want / to move heaven / and earth, / just the heart / of a man."

I hope you enjoy these poems from M. Kei as I have. And if you're ever at the beach, skip a stone for the poet of the Chesapeake Bay.

Allen Taylor
aka @WorldClassPoet
http://Twitter.com/WorldClassPoet

Have a Wreck (But only if you're over 21)

You heard it here first.

Last fall my family and I went to a crabshack, which is a local institution here in the Chesapeake region. It's a roof over an open air bar that serves steamed crabs and other food. I wanted a good drink, and I like gold rum, so my daughter devised a mixed of gold rum and cranberry juice with a bit of pineapple. I added a spritz of ginger ale and the bartender threw in an orange slice. Voila, tasty drink!

It needed a name, so I called it the 'wreck.' Yeah, have a few of those and you'll definitely get wrecked.

My daughter, being under 21, was the designated driver. She's looking forward to her next birthday in which it will be legal for her to sample our concoction.

Enjoy responsibly!

~K~

Stylus Review : Slow Motion

Patricia Prime has also review Slow Motion : The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack in the current issue of Stylus Magazine. A lengthier and more literary review, she gives ample space to discussing the form and content from various angles. I am grateful for her deep appreciation for what I was trying to accomplish with Slow Motion .

She quotes a number of the poems to illustrate the points she makes.

"Slow Motion is a collection of haiku and tanka, interspersed with narrative that has many of the characteristics that are the essence of good writing: concise expression, clarity, sensory immediacy, an allusive quality of hinting at more than is directly stated, a preference for specifics and concrete images rather than generalities, a lightness of touch, a willingness to share the fundamental realities of experience, and an ability to communicate with others. The book is about M. Kei’s life on a skipjack fishing vessel in Chesapeake Bay. Kei takes readers on a journey that paints a vivid picture of live as a skipjack crewman.

"The poetry in this collection shows an intensely lived connection to the natural world. It deals with personal experience and emotions not in isolation; the personal is not expressed against a decorative background of natural imagery, but the two are intimately interwoven.

"Kei brings a contemporary feel to the tanka form that encapsulates the qualities of timelessness, poignancy and simplicity that can give tanka a sense of being lived by the reader. Whether it’s a description of the skipjack:

the old lady
wants a new dress:
five patches
in her sail
and more needed

Off Worton Creek

"or that sense relaxation that can follow after setting sail and is profoundly evoked in this haiku:

sails set
a deckhand
studies law

off Thomas Point Light"

...

"The narrative sections nicely complement the tanka. Like the tanka, there is a strong sense of personal engagement with seascape, history and personalities that pervades the narrative. Kei’s is poetry of locality, a range of history, and the constant in the relationships between narrative and poem is the poet himself. He imbues his scenes with a sense of spirit and mystery. And despite this much personalised relationship with the sea, his main concern is to bring the beauty of this world to the reader. One needs to reach beyond the confines of the short poem in order to fully achieve the necessary imaginative vision to express the history, the feelings of place, and the hardships of life at sea, and to find those anchors or signposts to help us navigate our way through.

"Slow Motion is a collection that maps a personal territory, but also addresses themes that are of universal concern. It is unusual in being a successful amalgam of haiku, tanka and narrative, with each demonstrating its particular strength."

Thank you Pat, and Stylus Journal!

~K~

For the Love of Skipjacks

Slow Motion : The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack made the cover of Bay Weekly Magazine October 9. The lead article 'For the Love of Skipjacks' reviews Slow Motion and includes excerpts and photos from the book. Reviewer Dotty Holcomb Doherty touches briefly on the history of tanka poetry and covers the wide range of treatments possible, from sensory intake, to life experiences, philosophy, and humor.

rolling swells
spray breaking every
tenth wave
the cries of seagulls
scatter around us

–Off Tilghman Island

"In his poems, Kei captures the briefest moments — often overlooked or dismissed as ordinary — to take us on a sensory voyage, immersing us in the smells, sights and feel of sailing a skipjack."

Bay Weekly is a free weekly magazine distributed throughout the Chesapeake Bay region. It is a must read for boaters, vacationers, and residents, devoted as it is recreation and conversation of the 'great shellfish bay.'

Cover: BayWeekly.com (good Oct 9-16, 2008)
Article: http://www.bayweekly.com/year08/issuexvi41/leadxvi41_2.html

The Ever Expanding Obsession

As readers of this blog know by now, as do all my friends and relatives, there is nothing I like better than sailing wooden boats on the Chesapeake Bay. Yes, I even like it better than poetry, but don't ask me to choose between them! They can be accomplished simultaneously, one lived through the other.

Over the period of October 17 - 22 I once again crewed aboard the Martha Lewis, this time for a trip down the bay to the Crisfield Watermen's Festival. Crisfield is about as far south as you can go on the water and still be in Maryland. I also learned many new an interesting things, including how each and every one of us has a built in map of the Chesapeake Bay. To use it, raise your arm up straight, but put a slight crook in your elbow. The fingers tips are the head of the Bay with Havre de Grace. The elbow is an Annapolis. The armpit is Crisfield. Extending the anatomical metaphor, Norfolk is your rear end. Or to put it this way: If you were going to give the Chesapeake Bay an enema, Norfolk is where you would insert the nozzle. I'll spare you the rest of the watermen's humor I encountered.

Everywhere we go, we meet watermen who tell us about the time they served with Martha or some other skipjack. I have noticed a common thread. Speaking as they do in the common language, intent only on talking about things that matter to them, watermen are developing a peculiar figure of speech. More than once I have heard an older waterman describe himself as working on the Bay "back when winters were cold." Global warming may be a subject of debate to people who lived in climate controlled boxes in cities, but for the people who live and work the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, it is a manifest fact.

When I tell young people that a hundred years ago the Upper Bay used to freeze over and that ice cut from it was Maryland's second largest export, they are astonished. Their grandparents then chime in to tell about how when they were young and the Bay would freeze over, they would walk across the ice from one side to the other. More astonishment. When I ask them when that was, they say the 1950s. Indeed, as late as the 1950s, skipjacks were sometimes caught in the ice and had to be rescued by the Coast Guard. Wooden boats are no defense against the slow grinding crush of winter.

But while Crisfield was interesting for many reasons, that which most attracted my attention (aside from a few brief but exciting moments when my glove was pinned against the samson post and the skipjack was swinging out of control at Tilghmans Island), was the three log sailing canoe, Ruby. She belongs to Randy George who lives on Galen's Creek, or as it used to be known and still is known to oldtimers, Red Cap Creek. He kindly invited us to go out on it with him, and three of us accepted.

the magic trick
of dawn:
a slim white sailboat
materializes
from the mist

Arriving at night, the creek and sailboat were invisible. But as dawn rose, the slim white lines of the sailboat emerged from the mist. What a beautiful sight to behold! About thirty feet long, including her Roman-nosed bowsprit, and about six feet wide, she sported a single mast with a skipjack rig. She was built in 1895 and is an example of the working type of log sailing canoe. She had been used for oystering.

The log sailing canoe was evolved by the colonists from the Native American dugout canoe. In the case of the Ruby, three logs were affixed side by side and hollowed out with axe and adze to make the hull. Then her sides and coamings affixed and the whole lot rigged as it pleases. The result is an extremely shallow, narrow, and quick sailboat, so much so that they survive today in the sport of log canoe racing, which is unique to the Chesapeake Bay. The modern log canoe with its trapezoidal sails and hiking boards is a strange and unmistakeable sight. There aren't many of them left, and even fewer that are still rigged as workboats. The oldest canoes in the racing fleet are over a hundred years old.

The Ruby then was a sweet little boat and when I saw it I think I must have felt much as Mole felt when he first saw the Water Rat's little boat, and for much the same reason. As Kenneth Graham said in The Wind in the Willows , "There is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

my hand on the tiller
like Water Rat and Mole
with no particular place to go
and no particular desire
to get there any time soon

Randy very kindly let us each have a turned at the tiller, so we sailed down Red Cap Creek to the Big Annemessex River. The marshes were all brown and sere, quite, and with few insects about. The waters were placid and a light breeze blew. The curves of the waters wended through the stands of tall marsh grass, and the higher ground ('high' is a relative term) with its trees and houses fell away. The sky overhead was the purest blue, fading into silver at the horizons.

How my heart went out to it! A skipjack is and always will be beyond my means, but wouldn't it be possible to some day perhaps have myself a log sailing canoe? It's not so very large, and the skills -- knocking out the rotten wood and replacing the Bondo and other makeshift repairs with something more solid -- requires no great skill. Mast hoops made of rope and a sail that I could probably stitch myself . . . why not?

Ah. The real difficulty is not with the boat but the shore. Where to keep it? It won't fit in the living room. Where to store it where it could live safely while I puttered with it for as long as it took my meager funds to slowly patch it back together and return it to the water? I'd live in a shack if it had a bit of creek for a boat. I have, at times in my life, been gifted with chocolate, plane tickets, medication, and old clothes, but never with a waterfront home.

Alas. Such is not be. I've got a job working at Walmart, running my legs off so that people who make as little as I do can have their DVDs and gaming consoles. How they spend, spend, spend on HDTV, the latest pop album, and gadgets for their gadgets. It feels a little strange to be selling people things I have no use for, and if they had any sense, they wouldn't have any use for them either. Once upon a time, little boys messed about in old wooden rowboats and explored the riverbanks and marshes. Nowadays their parents keep them away from those dangerous places and give them better entertainment, like 'Grand Theft Auto' and 'Hitman.'

~K~

7 Wonders of the Chesapeake Bay

I love the Chesapeake Bay and I believe it is best seen from the water. I have seen sites of spectacular beauty along its shores, especially from the deck of the Skipjack Martha Lewis. Several sites impress me with their beauty and so it has occurred to me to develop a list of the 'Seven Wonders of the Chesapeake Bay." Much to my surprise, apparently no one has done such a thing.

My list is barely begun, but I offer the following candidates:

1) The view from Turkey Point. This is an absolutely breathtaking panorama which allows a person to see more than thirty miles to Poole Island. From water level, the island is only a barely visible dark smudge, but from atop the 100 foot bluffs, the island is a broad expanses. Add to this the Turkey Point Lighthouse, built 1833, and the hawks and other migratory birds that use Turkey Point as a launching point to cross the bay, and you've got my number one pick.

2) Sharp's Island Light. The famous Leaning Lighthouse of the Chesapeake. It was nudged over by heavy ice in 1970. The Leaning Tower of Pisa is more famous, but why? Sharp's Light was built in 1882 on what was then Sharp's Island. This is one of several islands of the Chesapeake that has completely eroded away, becoming a set of shoals that require the light for warning. There are very few places in the world where a historic structure is still standing when the land under is has disappeared. Sharp's Light is our very own Atlantis.

3) The Calvert Cliffs. They line the Western Shore for more than thirty miles, a stretch with no harbor, making them a peril to mariners when storms blow out of the east. More than one ship has been sunk here. In addition, the cliffs have yielded more than 600 species of fossils. Because they are constantly eroding, they are constantly revealing new fossils. Crocodile teeth, anyone? Prehistoric crocs from the Miocene period lived here when the Cliffs were at the bottom of a shallow sea. The Cliffs are also the highest shoreline along the Chesapeake Bay.

4) The Skipjack Fleet. Listed on the National Register in 1985 and listed in 2002 as one of the eleven most endangered historic places in America by the National Historic Trust, these beautiful hard working vessels and the people who keep them afloat are truly a wonder. Official boat of Maryland, the number that are still dredging could be counted on one hand by a man who has lost a few fingers.

These four seem to me shoo-ins for Wonders of the Chesapeake Bay. I am undecided about the rest of the Wonders. I prefer natural wonders, but there is Sharp Island Light and the skipjacks... If we are to include man made wonders, then the C&D Canal, dug by hand with dirt hauled in baskets by mules is a prime candidate, and so is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Yet I admit to having a bias against the Bay Bridge. Maybe it's simply too new for my historical taste.

As for other candidates... Tangier Sound offers possibilities. And I admit to a great fondness for the little town of Wingate. It's a tiny place composed of two churches and seventeen crabboats where people are in bed by 9 at nine because they get up at 3 in the morning to go to work crabbing or in picking crabs in the crabhouses, and the docks are missing most of their boards. But the view of skipjacks heading out in the morning mists is something never to be forgotten.

~K~

2nd Place for Skipjack Martha Lewis

As regular readers of my blog know, I have a bigger obsession than tanka poetry, and that is the Chesapeake Bay, and skipjacks in particular. Over Labor Day(s), I spent five days crewing aboard Martha as she took two days to get down the Bay to Deal Island (I wonder if the name was originally 'Ordeal'), one day to race, and one day back. I did get showers which made life bearable because it was sunny and hot on shore. On the Bay it was sunny and very pleasant, and I have intensified my tan with only minor sunburn to report.

Martha took second, outsailed by the spry Captain Art on the City of Crisfield, who at 86 is the last of the old time skipjack captains. He still drudges, too. Art is a Deal Islander and knows his waters, and he's been winning skipjack races since before our captain was born. It was a duel up until the final stretch. We made the first mark but he cut inside us and got ahead, then we caught up to him. We parted ways when he ran up the bay and we took our turn for the next mark early, way ahead of everybody else.

Turned out we turned too early and had to tack back to make the second mark, thereby losing ground that we had gained. City of Crisfield was waaaaay out there, and came screaming into the next mark on a broad reach - her best point of sail. Captain Art trusted his boat's ability to reach to give him the speed he needed in spite of us taking a shorter course, and he was right. We crossed her bow and tried to steal her wind, but he pulled away from us. He was just ahead of us going around the last mark, and then the wind died.

He got the City of Crisfield wung out, and though we tried, we couldn't get Martha to run wing and wing. Skipjacks are hard to wing out because of their club-footed jibs. Only one other skipjack got her sails wung out, which I do believe was the Rebecca Ruark. She'd had a block break earlier that cost her time and she wound up coming in fifth. There were three skipjack's fighting it out for third and a piece of the money. But as it was, the wind went nearly dead and we dawdled toward the finish line. City of Crisfield sails well in light airs, and we couldn't catch her, although we tried. We came in a quarter of a mile behind her (7 mile course). It took about an hour and a half.

Looking back, a flock of skipjacks was rounding the mark behind is, crossing each other and coming about, fighting it out for third. The fight was among Rebecca Ruark, Thomas Clyde, H. M. Krentz, and Fannie Daughtery. The third place spot went to Fannie Daugherty.

Finals were:
1st City of Crisfield
2nd Martha Lewis
3rd Fannie Daugherty
4th H. M. Krentz
5th Rebecca T. Ruark
6th Thomas Clyde
7th Helen Virginia
8th Somerset
9th Wilma Lee

Pen a Poem at Bay Weekly

'101 Ways to Have Fun - Summer 2007', the summer supplement to Bay Weekly Magazine has just come out. Bay Weekly is a regional newspaper serving the Chesapeake Bay. Freelance writer Dotty Doherty found my poetry online and asked permission to reprint three tanka from Heron Sea, Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay in the article 'Pen a Poem'. Of course I was delighted to agree.

Dotty did a lovely job introducting tanka to the readers of the magazine, and I was surprised and gratified to see that 'Pen a Poem' ranked #5 on the list, just after hula hoops and just before watching fireworks. I believe that poetry consists of reporting what is extraordinary about the ordinary, so I was glad to see that Bay Weekly apparently thinks so too.

The entire summer supplement is filled with wonderful ideas, so I hope you'll hop on over and drop them a line to let you know you enjoyed it.

~K~

Romanticism in Tanka

I have decided to post some of the essays I have written in discussions on email lists to my blog because I think they contain useful information and it makes sense to have my writings together in one place.


While media res (in the middle of things) is a good technique, it isn't the only one. A person could just as well begin at the beginning and omit the end, or present the end and let us guess the beginning and middle. It depends on the nature of the scene presented. Likewise, a narrative can be complete. When we talk about these techniques what we are really talking about is multivalency, which is to say, the ability of the poem to evoke more than it depicts. I would hate to pin the poet down to one particular technique for doing this.

With regards to romanticism, it is Romanticism (not romance) that I object to, and I do think there is a difference. Romanticism is not the only means by which the natural world can be appreciated;
Romanticism is a particular method, which, while engaging the natural world, also insulates us from it. There are various useful analyses of Romanticism online. Wikipedia provides a useful introduction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism; while Answers.com pulls material from various standard references, including the Encyclopedia of American History at: http://www.answers.com/topic/romanticism. Emerson and Poe are examples of American Romantics, Byron and Scott were a couple of English ones.

At their best Romantics introduced us to subject matter and points of view that had been invisible before; Gericault's 'The Raft of the Medusa' is a singularly Romantic and horrific view of an actual
tragedy that stunned the world (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Théodore_Géricault). Surely we must appreciate Gericault for connecting us with the suffering of the survivors of a shipwreck who were abandoned by their captain to save his own skin, but do we really think that his highly charged picture is an accurate representation of what actually happened? No, the picture engages us with its emotional intensity which tells us a truth we need to see, but it is not an accurate reproduction of the tragedy itself.

Romanticism is powerful stuff and has had an effect on modern Western culture and how we experience it. while Denis made an earlier point about the 21st century being exposed to much that is brutal, as we can see, horror has never been exempted from the Romantic view; 'The Fall of the House of Usher' is as much a part of the tradition as is 'On Walden Pond.' To the extent that we allow Romanticism to sanitize nature and our interaction with it, it is as much a disservice as ignoring nature completely.

Since people are reluctant to critique poetry by fellow poets, I shall offer some verses of my own that I regard as embodying Romanticism to illustrate my points.

At the water's edge
trees rustle in a cool breeze
not yet felt in town;
sloops at anchor turns their heads
to face the gathering storm

her screw
still turning as she
went down,
the Sarah C. Conway,
dead at 114

what spirit flew
out of this hole
in winter’s snow?
on the other side
a flock of geese

A storm, a shipwreck, and a spirit, all deeply grounded in the traditional culture/folk art of the Chesapeake Bay. If that's not Romanticism, I don't know what is.

I was already familiar with Romanticism in various forms; like many I read the novels of Walter Scott and the short stories of Edgar Allen Poe, looked at art and even did some art history study, but it was not until I was reviewing article about Romanticism online that it came into focus and I saw exactly how I was participating in, insulated by, and using Romanticism in my own work, most especially my poetry of place. It's very hard to articulate to others what it is that makes the Chesapeake Bay and its traditional culture so special; Romanticism, with its appreciation for folk art and the common man. With its emphasis on nature, and its vivid, emotional images, makes an excellent tool for depicting my subject matter.

But it certainly isn't the only tool. I don't think it's the best tool, either. I don't know what the best tool is, but I know that it is thoroughly grounded in plain, unadorned reality. Yet Realism
(http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/2F55/realism.html) is an inadequate tool for what I am doing as well. There are many valid critiques of Realism, not the least is that Realism cannot include everything, therefore Realism makes selections, and by the selections made, shapes our perceptions. This is why the camera is a liar, it presents only what the photographer wanted us to see. Don't believe me? If you stand at the same vantage point from which the picture was taken, can you see what is behind you? Of course not. You can't see around corners, either.

Is it possible to see behind the photographer in a poem as short as tanka? I think that it is. Denis calls it 'dreaming room,' I have called it the 'labyrinth of the poem.' What we are both trying to
describe is the ability of a tanka to serve as a sort of lens gathering both visible and invisible light to illuminate our experience. The best tanka do indeed see around corners. The absolutely fascinating thing about them is that the scenes are not static, but change depending on the viewer's perspective.

Looking at Gericault's 'The Raft of the Medusa,' the artist's view of the scene is overwhelming; there is no room for any other way of seeing it. The artist has drawn us into his reality and made us experience something that we wouldn't have otherwise. This is powerful stuff, and by no means bad -- but it isn't what tanka is about. A person looking at 'Medusa' would never think to turn around and try to imagine what _isn't_ depicted in the painting.

At first glance, my treatment of the wreck of the Sarah C. Conway appears 'realistic,' but it isn't. It is pure Romanticism. My treatment is deliberately stripped of emotional language; it is the
opposite of how Gericault treated his shipwreck. I used the language of obituaries (dead at 114) to personify the ship and represent drowned seamen everywhere. My particular choice of details evokes the ancient age of the vessel, likewise my choice of the colloquial, nearly archaic term 'screw' situates the vessel as originating in a much older but defined period of time, and by depicting its death, symbolizing the death of the traditional Chesapeake Bay culture associated with the same time frame.

Does the poem work? Reluctantly, I am obliged to think that it will succeed with only a very narrow segment of the readership, namely, those who know about the Sarah C. Conway. Alas, not even Google knows her story. By contrast, Gericault's painting, precisely because it tells us how to experience the event, succeeds with just about everyone. Very little exterior knowledge is necessary to grasp the meaning of 'The Raft of the Medusa,' but without considerable exterior knowledge, my tanka on the wreck of the Sarah C. Conway means little.

My effort in this particular poem was to apply the trope of Romanticism but strip it of its authorial authority in order to provide dreaming reader for the reader. I think this approach offers possibilities and will continue to study and experiment with it. The older poem, 'water's edge' (notice the 5-7-5-7-7 form) I think is a more successful blending of techniques, but seems to have failed to capture an audience. I don't know if that's because the poem fails, or if the subject matter is simply not appealing to the audience.

By contrast, 'what spirit flew' is more overtly Romantic, the language is not realistic even though it invokes real and ordinary images. Snow does not have 'holes' and spirits do not fly through them, but this tanka evokes mythology to create an emotional truth even though it is not an accurate description of physical reality. The disconnection between physical reality and the poem is more obvious here than in the superficially realistic depictions of the other two poems; of the three poems I think it works the best as poetry but is furtherest away from my personal goals for artistic
development.

~K~

HERON SEA, Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay

BOOK NOTE: Please Forward to All Appropriate Places

HERON SEA
SHORT POEMS OF THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

Available 9 April, 2007

“Poetry lovers, sailors, everyone in Bay country, and anyone who wants a powerful and beautiful read, should buy this book!”—Denis M. Garrison, editor, Modern English Tanka

March 15, 2007—Perryville, MD

Heron Sea, Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay, is the first collection of poetry by M. Kei, editor of the critically acclaimed anthology, Fire Pearls, Short Masterpieces of the Human Heart.

M. Kei, an award-winning poet, is well-known on the Upper Bay for his volunteer service with the Skipjack Martha Lewis and the Havre de Grace Maritime Museum. In Heron Sea he has gathered together more than one hundred and fifty poems written while sailing the Bay, dredging for oysters, raising a family, and living on the green shores of Bay Country. All of his poems are true to life portraits of life—and loss—at the Head of the Bay.

Most of the poems are tanka, the five line lyric form originally from Japan, as well as haiku, tercets, and other short forms. All of the poems are immediately accessible, featuring places and scenes instantly recognizable to residents of Bay Country. Denis M. Garrison, editor of Modern English Tanka, said,

“[E]ach is a pleasure to read but all together they comprise a startlingly moving look into the heart of the poet and at the incomparable beauty of the Chesapeake Bay. A Bay dweller, myself, I can attest to the accuracy of M. Kei’s eye and pen. Kei has tapped into the magic of short verse and presented the reader with a collage of amazing depth and insight. Poetry lovers, sailors, everyone in Bay country, and anyone who wants a powerful and beautiful read, should buy this book!”

More praise of Heron Sea:

“Heron Sea is a rich word-tapestry of the Chesapeake Bay area. M. Kei’s attunement to environment and the life it engenders is remarkable. Here is a sensual experience so lovingly detailed that the reader is left with a sense of being there. Do visit the world of Heron Sea, see/feel for yourself.” —Larry Kimmel, editor of Winfred Press

“M. Kei’s collection is a gem. The personal anthologies of haiku/tanka that I think are best contain a sharp picture of the poet. He is never sentimental, and his poems have a special quality of honesty and integrity. The last section on ‘Threnody’ is totally moving. In other words, Kei has written a unique collection whose voice is like that of no one else. I admire it enormously. Kei is coming into his own, and should become one of the best haiku/tanka poets of the decade.” —Sanford Goldstein, co-translator of Midaregami, Tangled Hair

“In Heron Sea, M. Kei has crafted a poetry of place with lyrical intensity, placing the reader somewhere between the author's heart and the Chesapeake Bay. No cheap sentimentality here—the verse within these pages is filled with hard-earned love, adventure, tragic loss, and wry humor. Kei’s prose Introduction to the book is every bit as moving as the poems that follow. It’s hard not to read this collection without thinking, ever after, that you've been to the Chesapeake Bay area. An impressive achievement.” —Dave Bacharach, tanka poet

Excerpts:

I write poetry
like the hills of Maryland,
slow, easy, green swells,
rolling from creek to vale,
with all the time in the world.


the great blue heron
the blue painted ship
the blue silence


no wind tonight
a puddle of silver
in the bay’s darkness,
a full moon
off the port bow


storm bells
the musical tones
of halyards
ringing in the
freshening breeze


she talks as she sails
this old wooden boat
of oyster days
and summer bays
and watermen grown old


these widowed boats,
the men who loved them
gone to their graves


the stone gristmill
broad on the starboard bow,
stories
falling into the bay
from its motionless wheel



If only the leaves
were not so green,
this lover’s heart
might enjoy
a little emptiness.


give me an old dog
(his puppy years worn out)
content to lay his muzzle
on my knee while
I sit beside the fire


the earth is not forever
islands of the Chesapeake
slip into to memory



Link to Publication: http://www.lulu.com/firepearls

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
M. Kei is an award-winning poet and editor of short poems, specializing in the tanka genre. Heron Sea is his first collection. A poet of the Chesapeake Bay, he is the editor of the Chesapeake Bay Haiku Almanac as well as Fire Pearls, Short Masterpieces of the Human heart. His poetry appears in journals such as Modern English Tanka, Simply Haiku, American Tanka, Modern Haiku, and more. He is a winner of the Tanka Splendor 2006 contest and a Runner-up in the Lighthouse Poetry Contest. His poetry appears in the anthologies Haiku Miscellany (Croatia), To Find the Moon (USA), Sixty Sunflowers (forthcoming) and Landfall (forthcoming).

Visiting the Wooden Woman

Today I did laundry then headed down to Baltimore to visit the wooden woman, aka the Skipjack Martha Lewis. I haven't been to see the old lady since I broke my hand in January, but last Thursday my evaluation showed my grip strength in the broken hand is up to 30 lbs -- a definite improvement over the 12 lbs or so when I started therapy. Captain Greg gave me some easy work: scraping paint from Martha's forward starboard bottom. I am getting to know that portion of the boat's anatomy rather well; I was ripping planks out of it at Christmas, leading to the following poems:

a new year
and new planks
for an old skipjack;
if only the seasons of boats
were as certain as the calendar

winter work
long scratches on
my forearm parallel
the torn planks
of the old wooden boat

Both previously published on the Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society website.

Plus a number of other poems, but they've been sent to Landfall and Streetlights and are awaiting responses.

Martha's starboard bottom was my initial introduction to her a couple of years ago, under Capt. Bysshe. She was hauled out down at Georgetown and I caulked most of her starboard bottom. I'm starting to feel a sense of ownership for that portion of the boat . . .

Today was nice because among various small jobs, I went aloft for the first time. First ride in a bosun's chair, first time 68 feet above ground, and me with acrophobia. I've been wanting to go aloft for a while, but never had the chance. I've hauled the line to raise the captain and mate for maintenance, but having the broken hand I didn't feel qualified to haul Capt. Greg up so he hauled me up instead.

My acrophobia used to be quite horrible, but I've noticed some things about it. 1) How bad it is is related to my stress level. 2) I've been deliberately confronting it to get over it, and I enjoy challenging myself to do things I couldn't have done in the past. Like dangle from a line 68 feet in the air... 3) Plus, Ritalin has the nifty side effect of dramatically reducing phobias. I discovered that by accident. I don't know why Ritalin has such an evil reputation, all the side effects I've experienced with it have be lovely.

Anyhow, I went up and inspected the mast top and enjoyed the view. Martha's mast is 65 feet, but since she's hauled out of the water, add another ten feet to that. I went as high as the hounds, which is about five or six feet below the mastcap. I'll be going back next Saturday to sand and a varnish the masttop and epoxy to death the splinters in the masttop under the mastcap. That should be about an hour and a half of work the captain thinks.

Maritime News

In other news, I am keeping busy, too busy! Last night I was elected to the Board of Directors of the Havre de Grace Maritime Museum, in Havre de Grace, Maryland. "Where Bay Life Begins" is the new slogan which will be implemented throughout the course of the upcoming capital campaign. The capital campaign will complete the pavilion on the grounds, creating exhibit, storage, and rental space, enabling the Chesapeake Wooden Boat School to move downstairs in the main building and the first floor be expanded entirely into exhibits and additional features, such as a library/resource room, offices, handicap elevator, etc.

So far the museum is a cute little museum, very inexpensive whose dominant features is the wooden boat school that restores and builds wooden boats. The wooden boat program is widely recognized for its excellence. Other notable features are the sustainable landscaping and its nearness to other nautical features, including the Concord Point Lighthouse and Lighthousekeeper's house, the Decoy Museum, and Havre de Grace Promenade. Plans will include the replacement of the wooden dock that was washed away by Hurricane Isabel.

Since I am in the process of changing careers from what I used to do into museum management, especially development and fundraising, it's quite exciting to be a member of the board during this time period. And since I am also a local with a passion for the history of the Chesapeake Bay, a degree in history, and experience in non-profit, educational development, with a passion for wooden boats... It was a natural fit.

If you have any interest in maritime history, Maryland, or the Chesapeake Bay, or just to win brownie points with me, please visit the website of the Havre de Grace Maritime Museum and become a member or donor! We will love you for it.

Up until this point in my blog I have concentrated principally on poetry and will continue to do so, but I believe very much in poetry of place and now that I've covered the history and development of tanka/waka/kyoka (see archives, especially the earliest ones), look for more poetry of place and maritime information to be interspersed among the modern tanka posts.

~K~