Author: virginiabodner_cnwra4

What a trip! poem cards
still buried, every word speaks
…with such gratitude

this birthday gift
worn & treasured

mmmm—vanilla!
warm pudding, soft
& smooth as custard

just a drop or two
in the cup of milk
at bedtime…

mmmm delicious orchid
from the steamy tropics

I light again
the candle you gave me—
your wish is my wish

on our shared birthdays
the tender joy, the patient love
you gave me this day….
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~vrb (5-26-02)
[On her 60th birthday, the whole White Sands amphitheater sang Happy Birthday to her under the stars, then she & I & Gus slept under the full moon in the heart of the dunes. She followed tracks & sketched at dawn.]

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.]

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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.

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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

Hard to figure another year has passed from the date on the Death Certificate, but when was time ever easy to figure? At this rate, stages of life & lives, too, pass in the blink of an eye….

I add this now on August 5, 2021, two years later. Last year, I put up some notes of hers found on notebook scraps in a pile–

I don’t understand death–
from where I am, it just doesn’t fit.

The body’s set up for it, so they say–
cycling, renewing, reforming,
giving others something to eat.
But now I’m such a klutz! I step on
everything! I chew & swallow for pleasure,
I breathe & release toxins. Can you tell me
one thing I do that only causes life, or good?

Eye to eye, matching seed to seed
the life giving/ the death dealing–
how can it be that the mind just disappears??
the scales hover/ in absolute equality:
~~~~~~~nothing!~~~~~~~
that’s what we’ve got–nothing!
(but I don’t quite buy it)
—————————vrb [undated]

Roughly scribbled, these were more notes than poetry, uncharacteristic of either her “classic snaps-shots” or her adventures in form, memory, & pondering, yet sharing her tendency to surprise. Like notes she never came back to, her observations here suggest kinds of speculation she rarely articulated. Such things, at the heart, weren’t matters of doctrine or even belief so much as of being & feeling, the actual (inner, personal) experience of oneness/ connection/ love–whether of persons for each other or for places, devotional dimensions, principles of relation, entities & their representations.

Virginia’s capacity for empathy, for feeling the feelings of others, came with an ability to distinguish qualities more or less directly, not from ideas but from an amalgam of observation & vibration, less a matter of belief system than of the individuals practicing. She didn’t theorize, in other words, but practiced her own devotions–“life-study”; motherhood; music & dance; yoga & poetry; gardening & painting; teaching & friendship…. Whether visitor in someone else’s sacred space, or simply observing inwardly, she experienced qualities of sacredness with an open heart & mind.

However willing to share, she didn’t generally talk about her experience. Though she wore a family cross in some wedding pictures, she didn’t consider herself a member of any one religion, but friend of most, very much including belief in the physical sciences. She was far too attuned to life (as lived & observed) to believe the sciences were all that mattered, however, or that they’d really come very far yet in resolving the main mysteries.

Among the spiritual teachers & traditions she respected most, Basho & Tagore stand out purely from the writings; plus Sri Aurobindo & Mother, from our time in India, where a 3-day visit to Pondicherry turned into a 7-month immersion in ashram, school, & preparations for Auroville. The Mother’s principles of education especially aligned with hers, exemplified in the school’s approach to “free progress” education, the individual’s integration of holistic practices.

The teacher’s job was certainly not to indoctrinate, nor to stuff with a conventional curriculum, but to “draw forth,” encourage, inspire by example, experience & share the joys of learning, as well as of working & playing together…..

April wind
apple blossoms
take a wild ride
—————vrb

However much in its own season, Virginia’s snapshot is also timeless. Her life’s wild ride had so many wild rides within, even aftermath to her last fall no exception. She took us with her a few times right to the edge, it seemed, coming back as if only to share–

on the other side/ it really is different…

or, facing her east window at dawn:

one more hula
under the blue sky….

Volumes passed through her attentive hand, with or without words. Poems just now being found in her hand (like April wind, above) expand the dance.

We’re thinking we should choose some of Virginia’s poems to make a small collection called Take a Wild Ride, as a gift printed for friends, old & new. It should probably include at least three sections: ‘snap-poems,” like the apple-blossoms, above; ‘thrilling adventures,’ like “All downhill from here…” (one of the wildest rides in words anywhere, e.e.c.’s Divinity Avenue notwithstanding); & a third to be named ‘Later…,’ with reflections….

Feel free to send nominations–by title or first line–for poems that should be included in a hard copy gathering of her best, by email with “VRB” for subject c/o bodlibrary2020@gmail.com. (Communications sent via the website’s “Comment” box are likely lost when trashing the spam en mass.) 

 

New VRB materials are up on various pages. (Just click on the top menu & you’re there.) Most POSTS (below) are skippable–or skim-able for VRB material. Apologies if/when/where my words get in the way. Finding & feeling such work, my enthusiasm often spills over into comments & background not necessary for appreciation of the work itself.

Some pages are clearly works-in-progress; others contain experimental tours de force, composed with a finely tuned ear, eye, hand, heart & brush. There’s a lot more not up than up, including copies of finished works she made for & gave to others. (Drop a note if you’ve got special interests.)

If one aim here is to share more of her work with friends not otherwise aware of its range (which no one was, even Yours Crudely), another is to make new friends for it & her, who may love & admire the work & its maker in their own ways, not necessarily as we do. One of the strange features of certain arts is how examples can be so expressive & independent of their time at once, thus establishing such an intimate link with their makers in ways that transcend ordinary time, even while embodying it.

I’m not sure there’s a name for Virginia’s kind of artist. Her first art was response to life, its outer forms in nature, inner forms in savored experience–which included music, poetry, dance, painting, complementary ways of enhancing experience in which impression & expression become one. The sciences were part of her repertoire from the start, too, learning not just the names, but particulars of form & feeling. Her parents were naturalists, her father a noted ornithologist who also helped rehabilitate some of the injured, by which she became a friend of crows, especially Crocus, who even showed up at our wedding (a story told somewhere on the site).

Virginia never called herself an artist, a musician, or even a poet, just went on making art, music &, especially, poetry throughout as part of a fully lived life–often just tucked away & just now being discovered; sometimes a copy of what she’d made & passed along to particular people (lucky recipients). A few of these publicly identified as poets (e.g., Elizabeth Lamb, Harriet Kofalk) recognized her gifts, but none knew their full extent, either range or volume.

This was not at all from hiding, however. She didn’t realize extent, range & volume either, because she wasn’t thinking in those terms herself, or shaping experience to the. She wasn’t making “a body of work,” any more than trying to make a name for herself, let alone a career. Besides the career of life itself, she had a career–& it was teaching. The creative, inner work emerged from the life experienced, & relationships, the openness to sharing, period.

She didn’t leave a neatly tied little bundle of life’s work like Emily Dickinson, for example. She did leave bundles, however, in folders, boxes, drawers, little notebooks, scribbles on pads, and certain special collections in a few sketch books. A number of finished groups are done in her own hand, with drawings, sometimes found copied from originals made for particular people. Other are messier, some finished except for a clear hand; some showing up more fragmented in folders labelled “in progress…” or “to work on…”

Just as each of her short ‘snap-poems’ are distinct moments, each of the longer pieces is its own adventure–an exploration of experience, from senses & the doors of perception to mysteries of heart, form & music. A natural scientist, her work draws from where observation, relationship & experiment meet.

She didn’t talk about things like poetry, least of all her own; she simply practiced its essence, including experiments played out on the edge of the possible, as if to test just what could be done in words in motion through lines (as in All Downhill from here, for example).

She took each poem–hers or anyone else’s–just as she approached each person, as a genuine original. When her poems are put together, the power of her own uniquely quiet & reflective voice starts to become ever more evident.

Individual pieces are going up, therefore, with an added excitement from the sense of a larger discovery-in-progress, one only becoming clear cumulatively. It may take more complete transcription & uploading, plus entirely re-considered organization of the materials, for the impact the work-as-a-whole deserves.

Even so, the first steps include finding, transcribing & uploading. As with any walk in beauty, the spirit of the whole emerges step by step, through the particulars….

[Though not listed under Recent Posts, “Hello, friends” & “Forever young,” the two earliest, can be found at the bottom of the Post-page scroll, or by clicking July 2019 & Sept. 2019, respectively, under Archives. –June 15, 2020]

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Memories–Singular & Collective: Strange. The word memory contains many levels. Not all memories are from our own experience, for example. Never mind for the moment memories embedded in DNA &/or social institutions. We also remember facts we’ve learned, like that on this date (many years ago, not 2020) Virginia Alice Richardson was born, in Reno, Nevada. I’d bet she was only called that on the paperwork, however, except for rare. ceremonial occasions. She’d have been “little Ginny“at the time.

Though I’d not be born until the next December, north of Boston, I still remember the fact & can even imagine some of the experience, almost as if I’d been there, an astral spirit observing from above, seeing her snuggled in her mother’s arms, & in the nursery with her soon-to-be Plumb Lane neighbor & lifelong friend, Kitty Houghton, already a few days old….

The membrane between memory & imagination is porous, no line at all, really, just a slight shift in way of looking or framing what’s ‘seen.’ This can be so even when our own intense experience has been directly involved, as in “imagining/ remembering” our own infancy. Impressions of experience remain, however deeply below or within the fact memory.

So, too, the impressions of a life, a love, a person with whom shared experience has deeply layered across time, place & circumstance, including a spiral of memorable birthdays! Our first “date” as a couple happened on my 21st, turning the date to an anniversary. And on her 60th, how we celebrated the full moon all night long in the heart of the dunes at White Sands! Some memories alright. (“Better not get me started.”)

Too late. It is Memorial Day Week-end, after all, a holiday celebrated on at least two levels, personal & collective, both levels with the same focus, remembering those no longer here, who gave their all, in one sense or another, with, for &/or to us–a time when the factual memory is just the beginning, our attention tuned by our collective appreciation, along with our love, the felt bonds of our personal connection.

In honor of little Ginny’s birthday, then, new found VRB writings will start getting put up on a brand new page, “Up 6/2020,” adding contributions at least through to the solstice….. The writings themselves come across time, often (but not always) dated. They are unique, unlike anything I’ve read or known before–except from her. Even ones she might have shared read as if for the first time, fresh & surprising.

They’re not all what she might have considered “finished,” many becoming parts of works-in-progress, stored in lively folders, while the life-in-progress kept generating her new responses. Some folders even hold finished collections, sometimes the copy of an original given as a gift. She did not write for publication, or with that in mind, let alone the idea of either career or recognition.

She did write to share, however, as well as to explore, experiment, reflect, & practice a loved art–at once for its own sake, for her own (its effects on state, feeling & attitude), & for life (e.g., sharing with others). She loved poetry as she loved music, dance, drawing & painting–& still, she loved life, people, other creatures & nature more. She studied piano & hula as a girl, then drama & modern dance; yoga, batik & dance in India; autoharp & sketch-book. All of these flowed into her writing in one way or another–simply because all flowed into her life, as lived & shared.

None of these were “professions” to her, reminding us that the ama in amateur refers to the love such a practice may be done for. In her two professional trainings (which she often practiced together), natural science (the living world) & teaching (individual beings-in=progress), she also acted from love–starting with respect, growing with appreciation, enjoyment, curiosity, wonder, mutual encouragement….

Her main teaching, whether professional or personal, was always by example, most notably in qualities of relation, how one approaches & relates to what’s studied & practiced, whether between student & subject, people in the class, or people & environment (natural & social). She brought the same qualities to her poetry, whether in what she had to say, how she said it, or feeling of the music. Yet each folder seems to have its own quality.

Welcome, friends–old, new, & yet to come. Among the old, a card recently from a student of Virginia’s during her first year of teaching (at Selwyn School in Texas), a middle-schooler then, & friend since, said she checked the site every week or two for new additions. Thus, an encouragement to add more from the treasures still being discovered. 

1st, newcomers just landing here may want to jump down to the bottom post (chronologically first) for a general orientation to the site. Two poems of Virginia’s you won’t want to miss have also been newly uploaded as clickable files in the middle of the “Poetic Discoveries” post (two posts down).  Otherwise the pages clicked to from the MENU above speak for themselves. Drop an email or comment if so moved, including requests.     

oh, beloved
when the dancing is done
& the years have passed

I will wait for you
by the bridge
where the swallows come
~~~~~~*~~~~~~

ah, rascal moon!
where are you hiding
my beloved?
~~~~~~*~~~~~~

that milky, dusty blue
one distant ridge
to the next
~~~~~~*~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~vrb (rev 3/28/2010)

[rev = revisited &/or revised, e.g., tightened & clarified, as this has been today, rev 3/28/2010, our 46th anniversary.]

Long-returning friends & those here for the first time will surely be grateful for what Virginia Bodner left behind–gifts for eye, ear, heart & mind, many shared here for the first time, especially writings just being discovered. We have our memories, and feel her influence, too. Beyond her unassuming beauty of eye & ear, good will & spirit, she was also reflecting in tranquility, connecting heart & word, exploring the media of personal expression….

She had grown up at home, both in & out of her body–diving from the high platform or flying off with a crow; dancing in leotards & disappearing into music; at one with nature, & in tune with her own feelings; equally engaged in the lives of the mind & interested in the nature of the world. Her lovely, quiet voice had been tuned by piano, dulcimer & autoharp; more so by the elemental sounds encountered in nature; more so still by her own heart-felt attention to the delicate life of the world.

It was the quality of her relating that had the main impact, source of her influence & effects. Her artistic & poetic makings are of the same cloth–ways of tuning, feeling, asking, exploring; shared adventures & reflections. In the words of the old Hebrew thanksgiving song, Dayenu, “it would have been enough” for the insight, good will & pleasure of the person.

Yet there’s more to be found–& be grateful for–in her artistic example, both practice & product, a by-product of craft, caring attention to details. Much of her poetry practice happened in solitude–not hidden, but made & tucked away in quiet moments apart, often a form of meditation, fine-tuning awareness, mood & sense of being. These could be gems of an instant, sketched perceptions, or musical excursions.

Many of her poems are also inspired by, about, &/or written for & to particular people, made for sharing. These were often letters in poetry, direct communications between connected people, less poetry-as-poetry, the practice of an art for the art’s sake. She never practiced poetry-as-professioon, but explored its personal meanings, range, modes, & potentials.

She had all the tools of language, insight, experience and feeling for that unlimited art. Though she studied natural sciences (& teaching), she’d loved & practiced ‘language arts’ from an early age, including the oral–playing a memorable Anne Frank in high school; reciting poetry (Homer to e. e. cummings) in college–where she also discovered Tagore & Basho & a life partner similarly inspired, leading both to India, Japan & countless poets, poems, song-offerings & blessings after, world-wide & local, from the masters, pro’s, neighbors, family, friends, students, frogs & birds.

Although grateful for what Yeats called “monuments of…magnificence,” the great works so moving & meaningful through the ages, she never believed the arts were meant mainly for masters & admired contemporaries alone (the 1%), but to provide value for all ages & levels of sophistication. Come to think of it, this was the same as her relation with the natural world–not restricted to the most magnificent & awe-inspiring examples, but a vital part of wherever she was, or we are.

Sophistication & knowledge were not the keys to what the arts offered by way of value-added experience of being human. In this, her relationship was also the same as with the natural world. First came a quality of attention, experience & relationship, a respect, good will & interest in, out of which learning more & knowing better grow. Neither nature nor the arts were subjects that began or ended at school ground boundaries.

She brought nature into school, while also the opposite, taking the classroom outside, restoring a little wetlands as an outdoor classroom. What had been a field of rubble & mud became a place for contemplating nature, as well as for exploring inner experience, where the arts expanded the range of response. More of that story is told on the Our Little Wetlands page. The point here is that neither nature study nor the arts were ever primarily academic to her, but active engagements in the daily life.

As a student at Radcliffe, she broke school rules to rehabilitate an injured bird (Iris) in her dorm room. Nor was this her only wild friend. When she’d left for college, she said goodbye to a rescued crow (Crocus), who’d been flying free for some time, but greeting her each morning. After an absence of about four years, Crocus showed up in the yard for her wedding.

If you knew her well, you recognize the spirit of the person. If you’ve never met her before, some such remains possible through the work left behind–especially the poetry–whether written as meditation, to/for specific readers, photo-album or to test/expand poetry’s potential.

Newcomers may want to check the earliest post below (“Hello, Friends”) for orientation to the site, a work in progress. Those especially interested in her writing will find the most examples so far on the Pen-Play page, but some also in Friends (two poems at the top) & the Poetic Discovery post below (two to take breath away), as well as a prose article in Our Little Wetlands .

~~~~   the pot is fired
~~~~~~with wood & dung
~~~~naked we enter the flames

~~~~~emerge clothed
~~~~in smoke & whispers