f/k/a archives . . . real opinions & real haiku

The Massachusetts Association of Court Appointed Attorneys (MACAA) issued

 a press release today (April 4, 2005), giving its initial reaction to the Report of the

Commission to Study the Provision of Counsel to Indigent Persons in Massachusetts

(see our post).  The statement praises the hard work of the Commissioners and spotlights

the recommendation that assigned counsel rates “reach the 75th percentile of national

rates by 2009.”

– read the full story here, which notes

MACAA’s carefully-worded offer of cooperation is more significant:

Light footsteps on the bridge–

necks of drifting swans

just visible through mist

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spring clouds–

the thoroughbreds

nod through their breath

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shoots of new grass

over a crumbling tombstone

the faded epitaph

 

 

 Rebecca Lilly, from Shadwell Hills 

(Birch Prees Press, 2002)

 

 

 

• 
  
  from dagosan:  

the river’s back

within its banks —

her look of disappointment

 

             [April 4, 2005]

 

 

 

potluck

  Yesterday, Professor Bainbridge chided the liberal elite who do not

agree with Steve and John Paul II that “truth” is decided in the salons

of the Vatican.  I predict that, during my lifetime and Steve’s, another Pope

will apologize to women and gays for the way the Church has treated them

over the millennia.

 

Remember my piece on podriahs from March 26?  A website called

Offshoring Digest liked it enough to place the entire posting within a black

frame on its “news ticker” page (haiku and all) — but, with only a hyperlink

 to the original post, and no mention of this weblog or the author.  I do grant

a non-commercial Creative Commons license.  Offshoring Digest appears to

be commercial. Copyright aside, am I right to be irked that there’s no attribution?

update: April 7, 2005:  Rebecca Arcega, editor/writer of Offshoring

Digest responded right away to my message asking for attribution,

and I’m pleased to have the podriah posting at their site.

 

Bonus: flood haiku from two Honored Guests:

 

 

dinner party
glancing up from grace
to the flood mark on the wall

 

                    Peggy Lyles  from To Hear the Rain

 

 

 

flooded plain —
fence tops show which water
belongs to whom
                                 — George Swede – The Heron’s Nest

In his book, The Pontiff in Winter : Triumph and Conflict in the Reign of

John Paul II  (2004),  John Cornwell writes that the papal role takes over the

personality of the individual who is elected to the “strangest, most impossible

and isolating and job on earth.”  [p.8]  He quotes Pope Paul VI:  “I was solitary

before, but now my solitariness becomes complete.  Hence the dizziness,

the vertigo.”

 

  Karol Wojtila, who became John Paul II, was also a poet of note,

especially in the years before his papacy. See The Place Within (1982).  In 

The Pontiff in Winter, Cornwell tells of an incident that may help us understand

the papal solitude of John Paul.  [p. 9]  It revolves around a theologian who sat

next to the Pope at a Vatican dinner:

“Holy Father, I love poetry and I’ve read all of your verse.  Have

you written much poetry since you became Pope? ” To which the

Pope said: “I’ve written no poetry since I became Pope.”   So the

theologian said: “Well, why is that, Holy Father?”  The Pope cut

him dead, turning to the person on the other side. 

 

Twenty minutes later, John Paul turned to the theologian and said

curtly: “No context!”  That was all.  . . . .

 

But [John Paul] had imparted a tragic truth perhaps.  The papal office

takes over the whole person.  That is what the job demands.  When he

said there was no “context” for poetry, he seemed to be acknowledging

that, in the depths of his soul, deep down where the poetry is written,

there lies a terrible, vertiginous solitude.

I’d like to think that Karol Wojtila made himself a promise after that awkward  

dinner encounter — to reconnect to the part of him that was the poet. The

small volume of published in 2003, The Poetry of Pope John Paul II,  may

have been the result of that pledge.

 

When I read The Pontiff in Winter last month, I was saddened at the thought 

of a poet too consumed with the obligations of office to have the time and the

“context” to write poetry.  John Paul II and I may have disagreed on many

issues, but I bet he would agree with me that the dignity he asserted for every

human being includes the right to maintain a connection between daily life and

the inner soul — so that each of us has the opportunity to nurture a relationship

with our personal Muse.  No job, not even one as important as the papacy,

should take away the poetry of life.