The drive home tonight was a surreal trip through a world for giants. The western sky was finger-painted in brilliant blue. The fading twilight backlit a highway overpass under construction, the unfinished supports like gargantuan blocks. Utility poles with their utilitarian trinkets and curled and twisted power lines looked like whimsical toys. Enormous winged light fixtures lit the way into Oz.

I was surprised to find out that harmonizing required you to sing a completely different tune from what other people were singing.

Alan Alda

infrastructure humor -

power line art

Photo taken at the Texas State Capitol.

The previous seventeen posts are from a high school humanities project I turned in forty years ago at Academy of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. The second half of the project can be found at Humanities Project 1971

The original materials have suffered from heat and my careless handling over the years, but are largely intact and authentic. I found some evidence of possible tampering. At least one page was missing, and a few of the photos seem to have been manipulated. However, I think the project has retained its overall impact.

As I retyped each of the poems over the last two months, I was moved to briefly be in the poet's seat, to experience the unique expression of being, the eruption of art, of understanding, from each writer. In taking photos of the images, originally from National Geographics and Smithsonians dated before June of 1971, I came to appreciate each artist and photographer. They offer a diversity of perspective from around the world in such a beautiful and gripping way. I'm also grateful to Mother Carmen Smith who assigned this project to us, and to Ms. Juanita Durio who brilliantly taught the visual arts segment of the class.

love is a place
and through this place
of love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

e.e. cummings---

ALONE

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were--- I have not seen
As others saw--- I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I lov’d, I lov’d alone.
Then--- in my childhood--- in the dawn
Of a most stormy life--- was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me roll’d
In the autumn tint of gold---
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by---
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Edgar Allen Poe---

THE GERANIUM

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,
She looked so limp and bedraggled,
So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,
Or a wizened aster in late September,
I brought her back in again
For a new routine---
Vitamins, water, and whatever
Sustenance seemed sensible
At the time: she’d lived
So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,
Her shriveled petals falling
On the faded carpet, the stale
Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.
(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)

The things she endured!---
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me---
And that was scary---
So when that snuffling cretin of a maid
Threw her out, pot and all, into the trash-can,
I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,
I was that lonely.

Theodore Roethke---

The image on the page with this poem is altered, and I've chosen not to post it.

A BILL TO MY FATHER

I am typing up bills for a firm to be sent to their clients.
It occurs to me that firms are sending bills to my father
Who has that way an identity I don’t often realize.
He is a person who buys, owes and pays,
Not papa like he is to me.
His creditors reproach him for not paying on time
With a bill marked “Please Remit.”

I reproach him for never having shown his love for me
But only his disapproval.
He has a debt to me too
Although I have long since ceased asking him to come across;
He does not know how and so I do without it.
But in this impersonal world of business
He can be communicated with:
With absolute assurance of being paid
The boss writes “Send me my money”
And my father sends it.

Edward Field---