Two Poems from Joseph Cornell: The Man Who Loved Sparrows/ a book by Tana Miller and Jan Zlotnik Schmidt

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Joseph Cornell Teaches me how to Write a Poem With no Words



we sit in the tiny pack-rat dining room 

in his family house at 3708 Utopia Parkway    

Joseph Cornell    tall    craggy    pours tea

while his gruff matron-mother huffs- 

puffs in the adjoining kitchen

and his brother Robert sits in his wheel chair

forever confined to the living room



let’s see Cornell says and pulls out a dossier

from the haphazard multitude of boxes

stuffed in a mahogany credenza



well for me    first something catches my eye 

or I think or dream something 

or someone tells me about a dream

and whatever it is sticks   grows 

next I collect bits: things like watches

 feathers maps old letters    any flotsam/jetsam 

that like the moon endlessly reflecting the sun’s light

mirrors that thing pounding within my brain



he frowns sips his tea    opens the box    

his fingers sift through the broken dolls

old photographs    caress a tiny compass

    

then    you know    choose what is right

arrange rearrange discard cut paste trim fold

be careful    don’t make it about yourself   make it about

whatever put down a taproot in your mind    he paused    

for a moment then whispered    never forget surprises    

artists must be magicians    all art requires white magic    



his troll-mother announces from the kitchen doorway

Joseph your brother needs his walk now 

isn’t it time your friend left?



Joseph Cornell hurriedly unfolds his grasshopper length

I jump up    kiss his papery cheek

thank you I say

he doesn’t reply 

he doesn’t walk me to the door

no one says goodbye





		—Tana Miller





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Cornell and the Sparrows


The boy peers through the half-open window, 

presses his fingers against the peeling wood frame, 

and steps into a dust filtered stream of light. 



Inside, the man, pale, arms thin 

as bamboo stalks, stretches his arms wide,  

a resting place for sparrows.

  

They perch on the man’s shoulders, head, arms.  

scratch at his flesh  peck at seeds spread 

like confetti on the Formica kitchen table.



He wonders why the man let these birds into his house.



Sometimes the man is in the garden. He gives him things, 

a silver ring, a cork ball, a flattened cut-out of a mermaid,   

a rabbit’s foot, as grey as dust, fur matted down. 



Keep it for good luck, he said. 

Once the man gave him pencil and paper

taught him to sketch a swan, a cloud, a star.  



The man sits still in dimming light. 



He listens to the singing birds. The boy doesn’t know

he lives in a boxed-in world of constellations,

emptied planets, circling moons.  



Dreaming his ancient bones to sleep.





			— Jan Zlotnik Schmidt





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Tana Miller, during a thirty year teaching career, Tana authored language arts curriculum guides for her school district, co-founded and facilitated a grade 5-8 annual literary magazine, presented whole language workshops in Hudson Valley schools and at the New York State Reading Conference. Tana co-founded and participated as a volunteer for ten years at a book group at Danbury Federal Prison for Women in Danbury, Connecticut. Her poetry has been published in several feminist journals and in A Woman’s Voice; Slant of Light (Codhill Press); An Apple in Her Hand (co-author, Codhill Press), Rethinking the Ground Rules (co-author, Mediacs Books). She has taught creative writing as well as memoir writing at Life Spring Institute, Saugerties New York. Tana cannot remember one day in her life when she didn’t spend some time reading. She also considers her flock of eleven grandchildren as the most interesting people she knows. 



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Jan Zlotnik Schmidt is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Emerita at SUNY New Paltz in the Department of English where she taught autobiography, creative writing, American and contemporary literature, women’s Literature, and Holocaust literature courses. Her work has been published in many journals including Alaska Quarterly Review, Broadkill Review, Cream City Review, Home Planet News, Kansas Quarterly, Memoir (and), Vassar Review, and Westchester Review. Her work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize Series. She has had two volumes of poetry published by the Edwin Mellen Press (We Speak in Tongues, 1991; She had this memory, 2000) and two collections of autobiographical essays, Women/Writing/ Teaching (SUNY Press, 1998) and Wise Women: Reflections of Teachers at Mid-Life, coauthored with Dr. Phyllis R. Freeman (Routledge, 2000). In addition, she coauthored with Laurence Carr an anthology of women’s writing from the Hudson Valley: A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley (Codhill, 2013), which won the USA Best Book Award for an anthology. Her poetry books include: The Earth Was Still (Finishing Line Press); Hieroglyphs of Father-Daughter Time (Word Temple Press); Foraging for Light (Finishing Line Press); and her chapbook about the life of Bess Houdini, Over the Moon Gone: The Vanishing Act of Bess Houdini (Palooka Press).  She has been a frequent reader of her poetry at venues in the Hudson Valley.