Old Roads, New Stories: A Literary Series
Something nice happened in November. And something nice is happening today.
In November, David Lang added this comment in the box below my essay, “Also, the Universe Purrs”: “This was very good, Rob. Thank you. You are the only other person I’ve met who read Jubilate Agno. May we all, always, strive to be a mixture of gravity and waggery. Happy Thanksgiving.” Writing is an odd kind of social act since there’s no way to know if anyone’s taking up the role of Reader, and if anyone is, it’s rare that you get to know what they’re thinking. So thank you, David, if you’re reading this. And thank you for prompting me to share a few more quotes now from Christopher Smart.
Wow, was that guy a nutball, especially compared to Alexander Pope. Pope was full of square pronouncements and iambic Enlightenment-philosophizing. Heck, Pope called one of his major poems an “essay,” whereas Smart called his own major work a “jubilation.” I know there might be a few fans of Alexander Pope, but I promise you that none of them are me. No, I prefer Smart’s zany-wise jumble.
Take this celebratory outburst, for instance: “rejoice with the Pigeon who is an antidote to malignity and will carry a letter.” Love that line. It makes me wish we could swap a million flocks of them for the internet. Would it be practical? Not really, but we’d sure be less malign, and we’re starting off the new year now—peak season for good resolutions—so maybe we can quit being practical and let fly with a few more pigeons and lot more hope.
Or take a look at another line, where Smart shifts his attention from the air to the ocean: “rejoice with the Whale, who is array’d in beauteous blue and is a combination of bulk and activity.”
Or even better, here’s one for the natural world: “For EARTH which is an intelligence hath a voice and a propensity to speak in all her parts.” To me, that sounds like the M.O. of Terrain.org, and it isn’t just personification; it’s demonstrably true—ask botanists if trees speak together in a language, ask linguists if American English has a gob in common with an ecosystem, ask kids if plants and animals have thoughts and friends and feelings, and they’ll look at you like, Duh.
Which brings me to another great line, and it’s one full of cautionary wisdom, like an arrow pointing to the opposite of wasting time (and our opposable thumbs) by scrolling: “For the mind of man cannot bear a tedious accumulation of nothings without effect.” Amen, and fair warning. We’re much better off if we accumulate somethings instead, whether it’s memories, or favorite songs, or even lines of poetry. So that’s what I’ll try to do right now in the style of Christopher Smart—13 whoops of celebration, one for each moon above us in the coming year…
REJOICE in the Corn Cob, that genius deliverer of summer flavor.
Rejoice in the skyline with all its directions to look in.
Give praise to the Crow whose Kaw! is like the punctuation mark of Quiet.
Give praise to Birds’ conversations, and to Wolves—wild lyrics in the continent’s chorus.
Praise also every Coral Reef, part garden-burst part neighborhood of angels. May we save ourselves by saving them, for a bleach-white reef is a bone heap.
Give thanks for the snow in December.
Give thanks for the fireplace glowing.
Give praise for those weirdo oranges, Satsumas, from Japan. Such luck that we’re alive to eat them.
Rejoice in dinosaur fossils, for they make kids’ faces go ‘O’ when they see them.
Rejoice for the miracle of reading, rejoice for the rain,
and for any goodness yesterday,
and in advance for any goodness tomorrow,
and for my granddaughter giggling at Home Alone 2. She just turned 8 today.
Rob Carney is the author of nine books of poems, including The Book of Drought (Texas Review Press, 2024), winner of the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, and Call and Response (Black Lawrence Press, 2021), and his collection of creative nonfiction, Accidental Gardens: New & Revised, is forthcoming from Wakefield Press. His work has appeared in Cave Wall, The Dark Mountain Project, Sugar House Review, and many other journals, as well as the Norton anthology Flash Fiction Forward (2006). In 2013 he won the Terrain.org Poetry Award and in 2014 he received the Robinson Jeffers/Tor House Prize for Poetry. He is a Professor of English at Utah Valley University and lives in Salt Lake City. Follow his Terrain.org series Old Roads, New Stories.
Read an interview with Rob Carney appearing in Terrain.org: “The Ocean is Full of Questions.”
Read Rob Carney’s Letter to America in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, published by Terrain.org and Trinity University Press.
Read poetry by Rob Carney appearing in Terrain.org: 6th Annual Contest Finalist, 4th Annual Contest Winner, and Issue 30. And listen to an interview on Montana Public Radio about The Book of Sharks.
Header photo by adriannesquick, courtesy Pixabay.
