Through the Hourglass - Introduction

The fact that a national magazine, Town and Country, published my poem “Ledge” does not make me a poet.  The fact that many of my friends tell me that they enjoy and look forward to my poems, sometimes even passing them along, does not make me a poet.  So what does?

Perhaps it is simply that this particular form suits me best as I struggle to get to the heart of the matter, a sudden glimpse of the extraordinary under the ordinary, my constant wonder at and commitment to family.  Poetry should not be coy, trying to hide meaning in odd lines and strange rhythms.  For me it is the opposite: I want the reader to come with me into the heart of the emotion, to the wonder and emotion I feel.

Through this form I try, as husband, parent and now grandparent, to convey amazement, bemusement, delight, and a sense of celebration (for it is transitory).  By embracing a single situation, a poem also fits me as I give tribute to the larger family to which we all belong.  We cannot and do not exist alone.  We are connected to, sustained through, and inspired by the examples of friends and others who touch our lives, sometimes unwittingly, like toothless Rose, who begs on 17th and K Streets in Washington, DC, who drinks Diet Coke “to keep my figure,”and who despite outward signs of collapse, gives us a precious glimpse of her core spark. 

The arc of this book begins with Courting and my earliest poems, love poems for the newly met, not-yet-my-wife Ottilia.  She, a teacher and resident of a small apartment in Fort Lee, New Jersey, lived within sight and sound of the George Washington Bridge.  As we dated, the trips out from Manhattan along piers sticking out into the Hudson River evoked piano keys for me, and the rhythmic thump of the taxi wheels provided percussion for “Westside Drive: 2:00 a.m.”  The poems of our courtship are accompanied by three of the same period, poems inspired by our budding relationship.

Then poems on married life and our young children, Byron and Hollis, ushering in the Golden Age of Parenting.  This is the era of “Dad, watch me!” and of adventures together, stories at night, the desire to snuggle close, the seeing all as glitteringly new.  “Handholds” and “Tides” exult in their growing confidence, competence and caring, dimly foreshadowed by the sense that they will all too soon be off on their own.

I begin their teen years by poetry celebrating their limitless energy and the boundary pushing that crashes against our settled, adult shores in “Teen Challenge.”  My exultation cedes soberly to the reality that teens need to be away in order to discover themselves.  At this stage they don’t know who they are, and so define themselves by who they are not.  “Kite” reflects that painful day at the summer beach house that could not contain us all: the kite string snapping.  “Spring?” describes the trying times for a marriage when work, shuttling to sports and plays, school and the struggle to get homework done, and the struggle to pay bills can make a marriage more a business than a union, a focused partnership in which one can forget, as we did for a time, the core passion that began it all.

In another poem in this section, I reach out to connect with my son, whose love of literature took him to James Joyce and led me to write “Upon Giving Ellmann’s James Joyce to My Son.”  Thankfully, we persisted through these sometimes turbulent years.  I wrote “Silver Anniversary Sonnet” and “Grace” as quiet benedictions to the return of the essence of what we were and are as a family.  And then a bit of pure fun: birthday and other holiday poems (okay, doggerel) were a staple of our family tradition, and so I include “Valentine for Hollis.”

Next, the Miracle of Grandchildren.  The gift of grandkids brings me back to the earliest days with my children in full flood: new life, new worlds, new joys of discovery.  I’m on the floor again, again playing Fish, building sand castles, wrestling, telling stories, getting homemade pizza sauce all over the kitchen, and again, my God again, Curious George. Lauren and Katie serve as muses for such poems as “Sidewalk Cracks,” “Wondering Along,” and “Summer at the Beach.”

In Portraits, I limn friends whose lives interweave with ours or others who simply (but profoundly) offer inspiration and connection.  They reflect the amazing spark of the divine in each of us, and the hope, often undeclared, that pushes and elevates us.  “Rose” is conjoined with the fate of a pre-teen son of a friend who barely survives a car crash but struggles back to normalcy.  The guitarist in “Musician on Boston’s Blue Line” apologizes to a dead composer and a clutch of awestruck passengers for his one missed note in a tangled fugue as he strives to reach Bach’s ideal, and reminds us all to “play on…and on…”.  “George” swims hard through, but not above, his childhood of abuse, inspiring us all.  In “Dirt” I celebrate the competent, courageous and unfailingly committed colleagues and friends who do the brutally difficult work of trying to prevent youth violence, thereby allowing those on the edge to reach their potential and to improve the communities in which they live.  I try to convey the sudden and surprise spark of the transcendent in “A Sparrow at Dulles Airport.”

The last section, Going and Coming, opens with thoughts on the illness and death of close friends linked with the new life at the other end of the arc.  Here I contrast Mike’s last days with the baptism of my granddaughter Katie.  “Zyg” examines the 10-by-15-foot room that is now the universe of this esteemed world citizen.  Has all tragically shrunk to this tiny nook, or has it expanded because of the constant love expressed by a train of family and friends who stream in to visit Zyg?  Small physical space or limitless, unquestioning love, beyond word, beyond and deeper than any worldly accomplishment?

My book concludes with “Mother” and “Imago Dei,” two poems that raise the same question, “Why do we wait so long—often until a person is dying—to express love for another?  What’s the risk?  Why the timidity?  We are all loved by and made in the image of God, and thus be emboldened to love despite fear of rejection or loss.  In love we are confirmed and commissioned.

I believe that the arc is shaped by and always pulling us toward love and connection, the heart of this book.

John A. Calhoun
Falls Church, Virginia
October 2010