The Little Hawk
The sustaining beauty of simply paying attention
I’m in the middle of my busiest time of year. For twelve months I work toward this ten-day period when I run around herding cats, making small talk with big writers, helping people get un-lost and generally trying to make the world a better place by bringing book lovers together to talk about literature.
It’s the 42nd annual Key West Literary Seminar. It started on Sunday when the first of my eight faculty and 92 workshop and scholarship students arrived on the island… and the flight delays started… and the texts began streaming in. Every day and night until next Monday is scheduled with events.
Today, twenty more writers arrive (hopefully — already there are flight delays) and tomorrow John Irving gives his keynote.
I know many of you readers have heard this before, and some of you are in Key West with me now, but each year I’m astonished we manage to pull this off with one full time employee and two part timers, one of whom is me.
I’m sitting here at my desk in the space I call my office (as opposed to “the” office1, where volunteers are racing around frantically and construction workers are hammering away) waiting for news of a delayed flight. This is what I’m looking at.
The little hawk is just so nimble and cute and deadly
This poster hanging by my desk has a Mary Oliver poem snaking amongst the image of a hawk, snake and tiger. One day when I was feeling overwhelmed, I tried to piece it together, not sure about the flow because of the way the text meanders.
The little hawk leaned sideways and, tilted,
rode the wind. Its eye at this distance looked
like green glass; its feet were the color
of butter. Speed, obviously, was joy. But
then, so was the sudden, slow circle it carved
into the slightly silvery air, and the
squaring of its shoulders, and the pulling into
itself the sharp-edged wings, and the
falling into the grass where it tussled a moment,
like a bundle of brown leaves, and then, again,
lifted itself into the air, that butter-color
clenched in order to hold a small, still
body, and it flew off as my mind sang out oh
all that loose, blue rink of sky, where does
it go to, and why?
I was struck by the comma in front of and after “tilted.” I loved that pause. Even now when I read it again, I can feel the pause, the lovely, brief emptiness of it. It takes my mind off fires, wars, politics and lets it drift in the wind for a bit.
Feet the color of butter. I love this contrast; how unexpected. I take a breath, thinking about that juxtaposition.
The action, the tussle of hunting, ending in “blue rink of sky” and the rhyme—again, unexpected. Lyrical. For the minutes it takes me to read the poem, absorb the language, imagine the scene, my brain is loose and free and calm. Oh, the sustaining beauty of paying attention!
Because he is so incredibly nice and his book is so damn good…
… I have to recommend Andre Dubus III’s book, The House of Sand and Fog, published in 1999. For those of you who haven’t read it yet, run to the bookstore to buy it and then savor it. A novel about immigration, yearning, human weakness and pride, real estate and the tragic serendipity of life, it is one of my absolute favorites of all time.
On a craft level it’s also extraordinary. He individualizes the characters so well, inhabiting their minds and conveying their neuroses deftly. No heavy handed stuff here, just delicate and tragic storytelling.
And the themes are so relevant today.
Combining unadorned realism with profound empathy, House of Sand and Fog is a devastating exploration of the American Dream gone awry. ~Oprah.com
I picked up Andre and his wife Fontaine at the airport on Sunday. In the fifteen minutes it took me to get them to their hotel, he asked all about me and my work and I learned all about him, including the fact that he sent this book to 27 publishers before Norton picked it up.
He also remarked that he wrote this tragic book during one of the happiest times of his life.
“The” office is in the Elizabeth Bishop House, which Key West Literary Seminar bought some years ago and is in the process of restoring.
Lovely post - all the writers converging, the chaos and excitement, and then the little hawk...
It's going to be magical! I learned so much from Joy Castro, on writing the memoir.
Being in community with like minded scholars was confirmation for me.Thank you Katrin for the opportunity. I hope to return one day as a published author!