Welcome to: Virginia’s Flying Filing Cabinet (in progress). Pieces get uploaded sporadically. More are found & held for typing (or, when in her ‘finished hand,’ scanning), to upload later (sooner if others express interest). Being called Celebrating Virginia Bodner shows the site itself isn’t her own making, although its main contents are.
ORIENTATION: The site contains POSTS like this, with reflections on Virginia (the person), her life & work, as well as on the site as a whole; & PAGES (or ROOMS), as per the clickable Top Menu. [Pages/rooms shown in brackets or parentheses may need a password to enter, while some others may not show at all yet. Anyone still interested in more should let us know c/o bodlibrary2020@gmail.com.]
In theory, scrolling down the POST list goes back in time, but not reliably. Dates given by Virginia on her drafts can be trusted, but website dates are often temporary fictions used in organizing, e.g., the date contents are first put up on-line, as the Post titled “Aug. 5” illustrates, having content from Aug. 5, 2021 as well as Aug. 5, 2020–one written before & one after this post dated May 26, 2021 (but edited for clarity January 14, 2023).
Some posts become out-dated, e.g., older welcomes & orientations. Others continue to stand on their own, especially those featuring her own works, e.g., her exuberant “All downhill from here…,” an account of a daredevil girlhood adventure with her friend Kitty Houghton, originally composed as part of a longer anniversary poem about aging!
Virginia’s poetry, rooted in time, crosses ages, becomes timeless. Pieces stand on their own, hardly any two quite alike, going up on the web-site more or less randomly, as found & transcribed, for better organizing later. At least our Flying File Cabinet (or, as Emily might have called it, hope-chest with feathers) offers old & new friends a few samples. [Let us know if you’re ready for more, as works have continued to be transcribed & “collected” in a more coherent context, c/o bodlibrary2020@gmail.com.]
OVERVIEW: Virginia herself seems to have felt, but not yet quite defined the larger whole being made, which took its shape & meaning (like the life as a whole) in the work lived day by day, within a net of experience & relations, all part of the larger arc. Initially, visitors here will mostly be loved ones, people who knew Virginia well enough to appreciate her voice in the works & the resonanating spirit informing it. Dayenu.
If you knew the person, you already recognize the intrinsic value in her voice. Even those closest to her are still in for surprises from the works themselves, however, including their emotional depth & artistic range, intentionally exploring both together. Each of her arts informed the others.
Those meeting Virginia for the first time through her work will find the person & art one. She made no separation between art & life while living them. She never called herself a poet, for example, though those who knew her well recognized how truly she was–even with little idea of her range. Poet, artist, singer, dancer, & musician, each was part of her repertoire, practiced for the lived values found in the doing–& sharing. Each added values to the others, as in her love of music, dance & painting to the poetry.
Although the various arts contributed to the inspiration, a significant number of her poems were explicitly written to & for particular people, expressions of heart & mind re-sounding in synch with embodied lives on the page. Taken as a whole, these can all be considered love poems, with love in its multiple shades–for friends, parents, children, lover-spouse, each with its own personal range. [One group is being collected under the title Love, the Mystery of, taken from an Olatunji album played the night that shaped our lives together more than any other.]
If that had been all she’d written, it could be considered a full contribution to poetry, with gifts for all, each gift an artistic adventure. There seem to be poems in various other categories also, however, each rich in its range & variety. One of these consists of purely personal explorations of subject, form, & meaning, questions she sets out to examine–it’s tempting to say, “with no other audience in mind,” but that leaves out a writer’s possible sense of potential reader as an unspecified “intimate inner companion.”
Many of the poems in this category draw inspiration from the music & poetry she’d learned to love growing up. She never called herself a “musician” either, but played as well as listened–piano, autoharp, voice–all with an “amateur’s” love. Inspired by music listened to in solitude, her verbal études, studies in motion & emotion, take various forms, modes & tempos. Being “studies,” meditations, contemplations, she tended to tuck these away in a drawer once done–some not quite done, but ready to come back to….
The category for which she was most widely known by other poets at the time were those ‘snapped’ in what may be called the “Basho tradition.” Having written on this extensively elsewhere, I may just note here that its central feature–moments of keenly shared awareness in down-to-earth words–came natural to her, including Basho’s core advice: Let there be no barrier between yourself & nature–notice your subject’s delicate life & feel its feelings. When poet, subject & feelings are one, poetry happens as if by itself.
One feature found in all her work & life is that key Basho capacity for empathy, feeling the feelings of others, not as objects, but from within. From the intimacy of notes written for a beloved to the all-out rush of exhilaration in “It’s all downhill from here,” from the caring of parent & child to her complete disappearance in “spring winds–apple blossoms/ take a wild ride,” she lived at one with elemental & interpersonal nature, inner & outer landscapes joined.
More of the same (still waiting for better for editing): The arts were never professions for her, but like her friendships, natural expressions of being, caring & sharing. She shared equally with professional friends & fellow “amateurs“–in original meaning, one who does for the love of the doing. In her case, that described not just her arts, but her twin professions: teaching & ecology, rooted in love of people (especially children) & wildlife.
Her professional commitment went whole-heartedly into the teaching. One chapter of that story is told in the Orion Afield article about her outdoor classroom project. Other chapters, equally inspiring, have yet to be told. In any case, the teaching came as natural to her as nature-study, both ways of relating to the living world with wonder, respect, good will & connection.
The same can be said of her relation to poetry–the range of her own practice just coming to light. One may be reminded of Emily Dickinson, the value of whose work mainly came to light posthumously. As people & poets, they were each fully unique & distinct talents, however, in both experience & expression.
Though Virginia brought empathy to performance (whether as Anne Frank in high school, dancer in college musicals, or linked-poet in a renga), she never sought audience, reputation, or recognition for herself. Finding value in both the doing & sharing, she sought “the sincerity ancient masters sought,” as the teacher Basho once put it. She never “submitted” literary work herself, for example–yet one branch of her poetry did achieve some professional recognition while she was alive–a story mostly for elsewhere.
By way of example, one linked poem she was part of received a Museum of Haiku Literature Award from Tokyo after appearing in Frogpond, the Haiku Society of America’s quarterly. In 1989, the Boston-based Kaji Aso Society named a verse of hers their year’s ‘Grand Champion,’ a complete surprise.
~~~~~~~~~white lilacs
~~~~~~~~~~~before dawn
~~~~~~~~~~~their own light. (vrb)
She loved the arts, both appreciated & practiced, as a natural enhancement of human life, each with its own rewards. It was as simple as that. Might she have imagined –or been drawn by circumstances into–one of the arts as a profession? Possibly, if so most likely theater–having enjoyed acting & dance in her student years (e.g., the title role in her high school’s production of Anne Frank’s story, plus a few musicals in college). She shared her love of all the arts (& sciences, too) as a teacher, encouraging her students’ practice.
As well read as she was, she’d not have chosen writing as a profession. She never entirely warmed up to writing for assigned deadlines. She resisted when Orion Afield prodded her for an article on the outdoor classroom project editors had heard about, though in that case, her sense of professional responsibility as teacher (& a colleague as co-writer) helped see the article through.
Poetry was another matter, not associated with deadlines. Most of her writing simply happened in moments of strong feeling, immersed awareness, quiet reflection–whether the snapshot of a Basho-like hokku (opening-verse), thoughts shared with a friend, or musical experiment, or made as crafted gifts shared as expressions of kinship. Or explorations where thought, music & feelings led the way, quiet moments set aside in life’s flow. None were made for reputation or chasing fame, or personal recognition as poet.
Like a front porch musician, she was happy to play with friends of whatever level of ability or experience–or simply listen. She was a treasured partner in many linked-poems, for example, with both local beginners & international renga luminaries as hiking companions. Poetry & sharing were simply part of living fully, saying something perhaps about why so much life remains in them.
Aug. 7, 2021/ Aug. 28, 2021 / Dec. 25, 2021