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Contests : Margaret Reid Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2009 : First Prize
THE BEWICK'S WREN
The nest of the Bewick's wren consists of twigs, hair, leaves, and grass, placed in a cavity, such as a mailbox, fence post, hole in wall, or birdhouse. Such nests have been found in greenhouses, garages, and sheds actively used by humans, which suggests a relatively high tolerance for disturbance.
—Field Guide to Birds
i.
That Chinese emperor kept his nightingale
tied by a silken ribbon to his chair;
"My song sounds better in the open air"
the poor bird argued, but to no avail
Andersen tells us in the fairy tale.
A different tune is whistled by the pair
of small brown birds who've settled in to share
the children's empty room. The chatty male
and modest female built their slapdash nest
of hair and mud and grass and leaves and sticks
inside a fortress of pink plastic bricks—
a Malibu Dream House, formerly possessed
by Princess Barbie and her consort Ken:
the perfect palace for a Bewick's wren.
ii.
The Bewick's wren, unique among his kind,
shows an unprecedented deference
to female intuition and good sense.
The male wren ventures forth alone to find
potential nesting sites, leaving her behind
calmly extracting beetles from a fence
with her curved beak. With patient diligence
he stalks the garden, paying special mind
to post holes, chinks in walls, and hollow trees.
He's settled on a likely candidate
to satisfy the most fastidious mate
when from the corner of his eye he sees
an open window, a deserted room,
a Dream House waiting for a bride and groom.
iii.
Flicking his feathered tail from side to side
(sure sign of agitation in a wren)
he wobbles on the windowsill and then
retreats to treetop, trying to decide
if this is valor or just suicide.
He knows the dangers of the world of men,
he knows he should avoid the humans' den,
and yet...and yet...he thinks about his bride...
He shares her values, honors her concerns
for safety, warmth, the comfort of the brood
of nestlings; he knows her attitude
towards ostentation...yet perhaps she yearns
(like him) for some enchantment in her life...
a Camelot to live in with his wife!
iv.
The next day he is back, and she is there
beside him. Heads cocked, tails flicking, they survey the scene
weighing the pros and cons, the choice between
safety from hawks and owls (They wouldn't dare!)
and room to spread one's wings in open air.
Standing in shadow, I thought I was unseen
but suddenly the female turned her keen
and troubled gaze on me, as if aware
that mother-to-mother she might seek advice
from someone who had raised a chick or two
in this strange habitat: "What would you do?
Is this fine house a trap or paradise?"
"Both," I replied, meeting her anxious eye,
"But in the end my nestlings learned to fly."
v.
He went in first, and soon his head appeared
at Barbie's bedroom window; jaunty now
he fluttered to the roof, and then somehow
squeezed down the chimney and disappeared.
We held our breath until he reappeared
at the front door, where he paused to take a bow,
dipping his head in welcome to his frau.
He made it clear whatever they had feared
might lie within this pink flamboyant pile
had moved out, or was never there at all,
and after close inspection, wall to wall,
declared the place a splendid domicile.
The female wren and I exchanged a glance:
"Go on, go on," I whispered: "Take a chance."
vi.
So they moved in. It's good to hear the sound
of children's voices in that room again,
the clamor and the happy chatter when
papa flies in with something that he found—
a worm or spider scrupulously ground
to suit the gullet of a baby wren;
a brief respite of harmony, and then
the shrill demands for still another round.
The Field Guide warns that by the fourteenth day
they'll all be gone. Naked and blind and helpless at their birth
in two short weeks they'll claim their place on earth.
But never mind, it's as the sages say:
Welcome the coming, speed the departing guest,
and learn to live with one more empty nest.
This poem won the 2009 Margaret
Reid Poetry Contest sponsored by Tom Howard Books. Author Judith Goldhaber received a $2,000 award. Winning Writers assists this contest. Copyright is reserved to the author.
THE GARDEN SPIDER
The common garden spider (Araneus diadematus) constructs its web just before sunrise...The web is started with a horizontal thread stretched between two supports. The spider lets out a thread that is carried to another support by a breeze or air current.
—Newsletter of the Seattle Rose Society
i.
The first step is a drop into the void.
The thin thread, drifting on a fickle breeze
sways to and fro, now borne to earth, now buoyed
by warmer air, it rises toward the trees.
A spider could live well there, could avoid
the gardener's hat, the clumsy blundering bees,
and other lurking dangers that might seize
her fragile world of silken trapezoids.
But now the thread hangs slack: the breeze has died;
a leaf lets go, and in its silent wake
the silken fiber shudders like a snake
tossing its silver coils from side to side,
then catches on a poplar twig, and holds.
The die is cast, the future now unfolds.
ii.
The sudden jerk, the thwack! of destiny,
appears to hit her just below the belt;
Until this moment life has never dealt
so strong a blow, such thrilling urgency.
Last spring's adventure—when she'd struggled free,
shedding the packed cocoon in which she dwelt
with her six hundred sisters—that, she felt,
was nothing next to this necessity.
Just suck it up! an inner voice commands
(a voice well known to arachnidae and men)
And so she does: the spinnerets (small glands
located on the creature's abdomen)
contract in violent spasm; the silken skein
grows taut, grows strong, becomes her iron chain.
iii.
This second crossing, nothing like the first:
The distance now a measured quantity,
measured in dew drops—seven hundred three
from starting point to anchor point, traversed
delicate leg by leg, remembered and rehearsed.
And yet the spider, knowing well that she
must find the center (or, more accurately,
create the center) of this universe,
launches her tender body on the air
and dangles freely like a juicy fly
a tasty treat for any passerby—
robin or toad or lizard—prowling there:
all this to trace a pattern on the sky
shaped like a word she cannot utter: Why?
iv.
At the exact center of her world-to-be
she rests until the trembling subsides;
then shakes herself and climbs back up, astride
one filament, a new one falling free.
She knows her private domesticity
hangs from the girders of the world outside,
so, like a timid but determined bride,
she ventures out to the community.
Poor eyesight and a clumsy, stumbling gait
impede her progress down the poplar's trunk;
you'd take her for an ordinary drunk
save that the loveliness which she creates
proclaims her artist, poet, Apollo,
worthy to feast with Michelangelo.
v.
Seen from close up, the path is always straight:
a simple step between two radii.
She reaches for a foothold that's nearby,
touches it once to help her navigate;
the elegant legs contract and elongate
while gripping tightly to the strands that lie
on either side—this M.O. could apply
to any journey, on two legs or eight.
But something curious seems to complicate
her linear path: before one's puzzled eyes
a complex spiral, subtle and ornate,
emerges as by magic. It testifies
to views professor Einstein would endorse:
topography, not intention, sets the course.
vi.
First light is showing just perceptibly
as she sets out upon the journey back.
Beginning at the web's periphery
she lays a different kind of spiral track,
trailing a thread of lush viscosity.
Two busy legs stretch out the silk and tack
it firmly to successive radii;
meanwhile, two other pair take up the slack,
kneading and polishing the sticky thread
to strengthen it. The fourth pair cuts away
the older spiral, leaving in its stead
this sun-bedazzled jewel to greet the day:
Apollo, rising, blesses her: Salue!
Orb weaver, goddess of October dew!
vii.
When chatting with her mathematical friends
(Euclid or Thales or Pythagoras)
in that empyrean of eternal bliss
to which arachnidae and men ascend,
some spiders have been known to condescend
so far as to forget their differences
and in the course of reminiscences
let slip much more than prudence recommends
concerning the abstruse geometry
of logarithmic spirals, convex sets,
and choices at successive vertices.
A silence falls: Pythagoras forgets
his mystic teachings, stung by jealousy:
O, for eight legs, and silk, and spinnerets!
This poem won a Most Highly Commended award in the 2009 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest sponsored by Tom Howard Books. Author Judith Goldhaber received a $100 award. Winning Writers assists this contest. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Judith Goldhaber
Judith Goldhaber is a poet, playwright, and journalist. As a poet, she has been addicted to the sonnet since the age of 14. She grew up in a 100-year-old farmhouse in New Jersey without electricity or indoor plumbing, but now lives in Berkeley, CA (with both). A collection of 100 poems, Sonnets from Aesop, with illustrations by Gerson Goldhaber, was published in 2005 by Ribbonweed Press, and was awarded the "IPPY" as one of the ten outstanding independently published books of 2005. A second collection, Sarah Laughed: Sonnets from Genesis, followed. Her sonnet cycles have won many national awards, including First Prize in the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award for Poems on the Jewish Experience; First Prize (twice) in the "In the Beginning Was the Word" poetry competition; Grand Prize in the Dancing Galliard Sonnet Contest; and the National Poetry Review's Annie Finch Prize. Her poems have appeared in The Jewish Quarterly, The National Poetry Review, Astropoetica, The Garfield Lake Review, Prism Quarterly, the Literary Review, and several anthologies and collections. As a journalist specializing in physics and astronomy, she has published over 1,000 articles. As a playwright, she has written the book and lyrics for two musicals based on the lives of great individuals in modern science, focusing on their humanity and little known aspects of their lives. Her musical about Stephen Hawking, "Falling Through a Hole in the Air," received a grant from Paul Newman's "Newman's Own" Foundation, and was produced by San Francisco City College. Her new musical (about Einstein's "lost" daughter Lieserl) is looking for a producer, and two book-length manuscripts of poetry are looking for a publisher. She also juggles a husband and two daughters. Her email address is judithg70@hotmail.com.
An Interview With Judith Goldhaber, by John H. Reid
Reprinted from Tom Howard Contest News, January 2010
How did you happen upon such a novel and engaging subject as the wrens' building their nest in a doll's house?
The simple answer is that the story of the wrens and the doll house actually happened, pretty much the way I describe it in the poem. The more complicated answer is that this poem is one of many I've written in the past few years that draw from a deep well of feeling about the empty nest—my daughters growing up, leaving home, and making their way in the world. I have never been fond of the confessional style of poetry, either to read or to write. The word "I" seldom appears in my poems, unless it is spoken by some animate or inanimate stand-in for myself—a spider or a raven or a butterfly or a duck (or, in one case, the planet). But I pack a lot of personal emotion into these poems. I am a believer in Robert Frost's words: "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader."
Did the subject seem to instantly lend itself to a traditional rhyming form or did you experiment with other formats as well?
I almost never experiment with other formats. I am hopelessly addicted to the sonnet (for lyric expression) and to the sonnet sequence (for storytelling). To me, the familiar rhythm of iambic pentameter (so close to ordinary English speech, yet "elevated"), the ear-pleasing chiming of recurring rhymes, the orderly progression of ideas from octet to sestet, and the final jolt of the twist at the end make the sonnet the perfect form for expressing a powerful idea or emotion. And a series of sonnets, bound together by form, is perfect for telling a long story. Long narrative poems are hard to read, but a sonnet sequence or cycle keeps the reader going because he/she expects, and gets, a small payoff at the end of each link.
Approximately how much time did you spend writing and polishing this poem?
Since my poems usually involve some kind of animate or inanimate stand-in for myself, I spend quite a bit of time researching the subject—reading, Googling, etc. For example, when I had the idea of writing about the birds in the doll house, I didn't even know what kind of birds they were. Once I had identified them as Bewick's wrens, I read everything I could about their habits, and this material provided the inspiration for the detail in the poem. I even emailed the head of ornithology at the Smithsonian Institution to find out the preferred pronunciation of "Bewick". (Buick? or Bee-wick?) He responded promptly—Buick! (Everyone likes to help a poet.) In actual writing time, I usually write and polish one sonnet, or one link in a sequence, in two working days. I take a long walk in the morning and wait for an idea and a few lines to come to me, then rush back to my computer and turn them into a poem.
You also won a Most Highly Commended Award for another entry, "The Garden Spider". In your own estimation, do you prefer one poem to the other, or would you rank them equally?
It's hard for me to judge "The Garden Spider" objectively, because it has a very special meaning to me. It was the first poem I wrote after a dry period that had lasted for almost 40 years. And the first line of the poem, "The first step is a drop into the void" is a metaphor for what I was trying to do—reclaim my vocation as a poet. I had been a precocious, prize-winning poet as a teenager and college student, but the muse had deserted me for 40 years of adult life, marriage, motherhood, and a career as a science journalist. A poet friend visiting from London, Claire Barnham, dragged me to some poetry readings (which I had been avoiding for many years), and the muse began to stir. It was October, 2002, and my garden was full of hard-working specimens of Araneus diadematus and their beautiful webs. Always the curious science writer, I wondered how the web was made, and looked it up. The field guide's description of the spider's web-making began "The first step is a drop into the void", a path I followed.
How long have you been writing poetry and have you enjoyed any previous successes?
I was born into a family of writers and journalists and poets. I wrote my first poems at the age of 12 or 13. By high school I was winning state-wide prizes, and by college I was writing sonnets virtually indistinguishable from the ones I write now. (So really I have not matured at all as a poet—I don't know if that's good or bad.) My greatest influences as a poet were: a) growing up in the midst of nature, in an ancient farmhouse without electricity or indoor plumbing; and b) reading great poetry early in life, and unconsciously committing countless pages of it to memory. I carry around in my head an enormous anthology of the poetry that I read in my youth—Yeats, Shakespeare, Frost, Jeffers, Eliot, Millay, Wordsworth. I never took a college course in poetry, never joined any kind of poetry group, never even considered trying to make a living as a poet or academic. I did, however, go into "the family business" as a science journalist, specializing in physics and astronomy. Before long, my kind of poetry went out of style. (Poetry without either rhyme or formal meter never interested me, and still doesn't). Both the academic world of modern poetry and the vibrant poetry-slam scene seemed closed to an outsider. The muse deserted me, and though the desertion made me sad, I accepted it and moved on.
In 1988, as a journalist, I had occasion to meet Stephen Hawking, the great British astrophysicist who is paralyzed by ALS. This encounter obviously touched something very deep in my (paralyzed?) creative self, for quite unexpectedly, a poem, "Hawking", emerged. Over the next few years, I wrote the book and lyrics for "Falling Through a Hole in the Air", a musical fantasy about Hawking, which (with composer-collaborator Carl Pennypacker), was produced at San Francisco City College a few years later. Another musical, about Albert Einstein's "lost" daughter Lieserl, followed, but has not yet found a producer. I found it easy and liberating to write song lyrics, but it took another decade for poetry to re-emerge. When it did, it came in a great rush. Beginning with "The Garden Spider" in 2002, I have written over 300 sonnets—including one unpublished book-length collection of long sonnet sequences, The Coming Earthquake (which includes "The Bewick's Wren") and two self-published books, Sonnets from Aesop (100 of Aesop's fables rewritten as sonnets), and Sarah Laughed (tales from Genesis rewritten as sonnet sequences), both illustrated by my husband, Gerson Goldhaber.
Virtually every one of the twelve long sonnet sequences in The Coming Earthquake has won some kind of a major national prize, including the Annie Finch Award of the National Poetry Review, the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award for Poems on the Jewish Experience; the Dancing Galliard Sonnet Contest; the "In the Beginning Was the Word" Poetry Contest (twice); the Winning Writers' War Poetry contest, and, now, the Margaret Reid Prize. Yet only one of these sonnet sequences has been published! They are too long for the journals, and book publishers don't seem to be interested in poets who don't have the usual academic credentials and contacts (for blurbs and reviews). It's very frustrating. Cash awards are great, but one also wants to have readers.
Any words of encouragement that you'd like to share would also be much appreciated.
Words of encouragement...Hmmm. I would say that despite missing the recognition that comes with being a conventionally successful published poet, I have derived deep satisfaction from finding my own poetic voice very early and sticking with it for a lifetime. Some might say that this shows nothing but a lack of nerve. Perhaps if I had attended some workshops and sleep-away camps for writers back in the seventies and eighties, I might have learned to love (and write) the kind of poetry that others were writing, poems more acceptable to the taste of the times, and I might have avoided the 40-year dry spell. But I doubt it. To me, poetry is pure magic; I don't know where it comes from; all I can do is say "welcome" when the muse decides to visit.
A word about self-publishing. It can work in certain cases. After numerous vain attempts to interest a publisher, my husband and I established Ribbonweed Press to publish our book Sonnets from Aesop. (We had quickly realized the futility of trying to find a publisher for a book containing 100 sonnets illustrated by 100 full-color, full-page paintings. The cost of dealing with the pictures would be prohibitive for any publisher, and the book would have had to sell for upwards of $50 to cover expenses.) By doing a lot of the setup ourselves, and printing in China, we are able to sell Sonnets from Aesop for $14.95. It was published in 2005 and won an Independent Publishers Award (IPPY) as outstanding independently-published book of the year. Sonnets from Aesop (and its later companion, Sarah Laughed: Sonnets from Genesis) has sold well in local bookstores and on Amazon for several years.. Both books are still available (and selling) on Amazon. The combination of classical theme (Aesop and Genesis), full-color illustrations, and low price has made these popular gift books, for adults and children. But I doubt if this approach would work for a simple volume of poetry. I have not tried it for The Coming Earthquake.
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