Source of book: I own this.
Ursula Le Guin was primarily known for her science fiction stories and novels, four of which have made it into this blog:
Less known is her poetry, although it appears that it was well respected during her lifetime, and seems to me to have held up quite well. Although she wrote poems at the beginning of her career, most of what she published came late in life, with nine collections published after age 60. Going Out With Peacocks was published in 1994.
This volume is one my wife found for me recently, a used former library hardback.
The poems in this collection cover a wide range of topics, from nature to aging to feminism. Many take classical mythology and put a bit of a twist on them - one where Ariadne and the Minotaur are actually friends, and she hides him from Perseus, for example. There is plenty of wit and a bit of an edge to Le Guin’s writing, even more so than her novels in a way. Because she can “say things slant,” she puts just a hint of the razor behind the wit.
Here are my favorites from this collection:
Last of August
In what meter does the wind blow on a river?
Can I know the clear feet of the water?
And older measure, longer yet suddener.
Boulders under the bright flood mutter
of the mountains, imitating thunder.
A dead tree on the other short falls in one slow drumbeat.
Le Guin lived much of her life in Portland, Oregon - The Lathe of Heaven is set there - and hiked and explored a lot of the west coast. This shows up in many places in this book, with descriptions that feel very familiar to me. I love the above poem for its tying of nature and poetry in rhythm, not mere description.
This next one reminds me a lot of my kids, who, where it is permitted, have tended to collect rocks.
Keeping Rocks
Rocks hold down my flying
papers, my worktable,
my house. I hold me down
with the rocks I put in my pockets.
I keep away from rivers.
Weighty little chunks
of my country
hold me to it
ever more nearly.
Le Guin was a cat person, and wrote a number of poems about cats. One new development of the last year is that my little Toffee, who likely was abandoned and found her way to our house, has gone from house cat to lap cat. (Having previously gone from barnyard cat to house cat - she’s ambitious and moving up in the world…) So this poem seems a good bit about her.
Sleeping with Cats
In smoothness of darkness are
warm lumps of silence.
There are no species.
Purring recurs.
One of my favorite places in California is Prairie Creek Redwoods, a state park within Redwood National Park. We have camped there a couple of times, and will be returning later this year.
The Klamath River runs just north of the park, with its mouth flanked by cliffs covered in trees and wild beaches often shrouded in fog. There are little springs all down the cliff. Recently, the dams along the river were removed, returning the salmon to its historical range. Oh, and they have been releasing condors here too. It’s pretty magical.
Mouth of the Klamath
The month of the river
sucks at the springs in the mountains.
It is her thighs that open here
wide among sandbars to the sea.
She lies down long, the river, and her salmon
swim up her and breeding die, and she
gives herself and all her children to the sea,
the sea that likes down long and wide
to nurse the sky with rainy milk
that the mountains are sucking
from the soft breasts of the fog.
The next one is political, and I think it fits our present moment and my feelings about it really well.
Processing Words
I want to dream out words of anger
on this machine that states my mind
in this late summer night that leans to fall.
Kind and stately buildings lean to fall,
the Libraries, the Public Schools; the dream
of a republic of the mind is undermined.
The hunger of poverty is hunger,
the hunger of satiety is anger.
The state of war is a machine
that holds a lien on minds and words.
The kind republic that we dreamed
of building falls to night.
Also related are the words of D. L. Mayfield, in an essay published today. Many of us dream of creating a “kind republic,” a society that cares for everyone, not one based on dominance, violence, and hate - the kind MAGA dreams of creating for us all to suffer in.
I was raised by people who have no real wisdom, and no sense of a future that is based in anything other than white male grievance politics. The older I have gotten, and the more my parents have claimed that I have become brainwashed by the left, the more I have come to understand that they have been telling on themselves this whole time. They have willingly consumed decades and decades of white supremacist patriarchal Christian propaganda, and are angry and heartbroken that it did not work on me like it did on them.
Like Le Guin, I sit here at my machine that processes my words, and I am angry at what is being done to undermine schools, libraries, and freedom of thought. We could and should be building a better republic, not tearing it down.
This next one is a bit lighter, to take the edge off the bitterness.
A True Story
My friend got Vachel Lindsay into her computer
and couldn’t get him out. He’d hide but not delete.
She’d be bringing up a spreadsheet
and up would come the Congo, gold and black,
or in the middle of a catalog of rare editions
there’d be General Booth entering heaven
and the drums beating, or that prairie bird singing
sweet - sweet - sweet -
Try WordPerfect, people said, try Microsoft Word.
But she was afraid
she might get Whitman, maybe even Milton.
She guessed she’d stay with Vachel
and the prairie bird.
I’d be willing to risk Milton, although I suspect Whitman would never shut up or come to the point.
Several of the poems are dedicated to Le Guin’s children. This one is interesting.
Song for Caroline
Near can be turned to far,
Sea can be turned to land.
You will not turn from what you are
For any man.
Where your heart goes, go,
Where your soul is, stand.
Do not be moved from what you know
By any man.
Le Guin’s relationship to males is interesting. She was married, apparently happily, for most of her life. However, she hinted that she resented not being able to pursue her doctorate due to following her husband, and the demands of motherhood. In the end, she had the last laugh, as her career eventually overshadowed everything else.
She also kept her hair cut short, and explored androgyny in various ways throughout her writing. An advocate for feminism, she certainly did not think women should order their lives around catering to men. A bit like my own wife in that way, for sure.
Perhaps the reimagining of the legend of the Minotaur fits with this idea.
Ariadne Dreams
The beat of sleep is all my mind.
I am my rhyme. I wind the ball
deeper and deeper in the maze
to find the meeting of the ways,
to find before the hero finds
the prisoner of the Labyrinth,
the horn-crowned horror at the end
of all the corridors, my friend.
I lead him forth. He kneels to graze
where the grass grows thick above the tomb
and the light moves among the days.
The hero finds an empty room.
I seek my rhyme. I dance my will,
vaulting the wide horns of the bull.
The waves beat. What woman weeps
on the far seacoast of my sleep?
Let’s end with this one.
The Hard Dancing
Dancing on the sun is hard,
it burns your feet, you have to leap
higher and higher into the dark,
until you somersault to sleep.
The mountains of the sun are steep,
rising to shadow at the crown,
the valleys of the sun are deep
and ever brighter deeper down.
Good stuff - I’d love to find more of her poetry in the future. Definitely read her books and stories, but don’t overlook the poetry.
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