Icarus Also Flew

In Memorium: Jack Gilbert

I had planned to post some new work tonight, but having just learned of Jack Gilbert's death, I must observe a moment (or a few days) of (visual) silence. I think we share this instinct to try and fill the voids like this one he left with words about our connection to him, or his brilliance, or how he made this world a richer place, or at the very least, an undoubtedly simple and beautiful line from his poetry. I want to do all of these but I posit that a better response is to attempt to stare into that void, and feel it's lack.

after Icarus

Twenty-five years ago, today, my friend and colleague, Chris Williams stayed home "sick" from school and climbed onto his roof to photograph the Space Shuttle Challenger's takeoff. This launch seemed different to him than the rest, and he started photographing it. This is his image of the accident's aftermath. I was 7100 KM away, on the other side of the world and wouldn't hear the tragic news until the next day. I still can't fully articulate or decipher the myriad holds that this event has on me. On a symbolic level there's the destructive collision of our greatest hopes and promise of the collaborative human spirit against our same failings and limitations. Those days, when the figurative towers of Babel fall, always make me weep. Nonetheless, I want to pause to remember and honor those 7 that shared Icarus' pursuit and tragically, in an uncomfortably literal way, his fate. I want to underscore and remember them not for their death, but for their brave incarnation of that dream many of us still carry.  

I'm tempted to close with one of my favorite poems, Falling and Flying, a line of which inspires this blog's name, but instead I close with this one. It was penned decades earlier and it's opening and closing lines were quoted by President Reagan in his eulogy for the Challenger crew:

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.

Where never lark or even eagle flew —

And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

                                -John Gillespie Magee, Jr. 

                                 18 August 1941                                                    

 

Poet for Hire

I just returned from a week long photography conference in New Orleans. One night, sometime around midnight, we came across this poet who had set up shop in front of a bar. For a suggested donation of $10-20 he would compose a poem on any theme you suggested. There was a line and a 30-minute wait to get your poem. Sometimes it's easier to make a living doing what you love than we let ourselves believe.

Here's to the poets that sustain our language, and at times, also show us how to live.